To think she could have scraped it off?

[ChewbaccasMate]

Hello. I'm willing to be told I'm unreasonable but....
We had a celebration and paid for a meal for around 20 family members. It was pre order menu. One guest ordered a meal plain ie no sauce. This order wasn't communicated as I had that many people to sort I forgot to tell the restaurant. It comes to meal and she refused to eat it and wouldn't scrape the sauce off and instead ordered another meal at a cost of 11 quid to us. Aibu to think just scrape the bloody sauce off and eat it without causing a scene?

Your being unreasonable. If she asked in advance then you should have done it. Why should she sit there not enjoying her meal.

Yabu!

FFS, there’s a bit of a difference between not liking cheese and CHEESE THAT CAN KILL YOU!

Fried egg whites turn my stomach. I'm 50, not a child. If I attempt to eat one, my stomach will bounce it out again and I'll vomit everywhere. This is not a "fussy eating" issue, it's a physiological reaction.

Of course some people never experience this and aren't able to step outside of their own very limited personal experience to realise that not everyone is the same.

...and there is a bit of a difference between not liking eggs and EGGS THAT MAKE YOU VOMIT UP THE CONTENTS OF YOUR STOMACH. Why do people think their obviously extreme and atypical physical reaction has anything to do with childish fussy eating.

I doubt you'd eat anything

I think I would eat anything served to me in a competent restaurant, yes. If it wasn’t cooked right, I’d send it back. I would never order a new meal because a dish contained a perfectly edible food like cheese, fish or mustard.

Fussy eaters don’t generally have life or death issues if they eat a piece of cheese. They should try and grow up a bit. The show Freaky Eaters TV show shows it’s possible.

But how do you know the OP's guest was being childish? She may well have a strong physical aversion to cheese as several of us here have described. It's not for you to decide whether she is being childish or not, she asked for the meal without cheese and should have been served it without cheese.

I would imagine she thought it was the restaurants error given what she had asked you to order. I'd send it back then, but I would suck it up if I'd realised it was the hosts error.

Maybe she does have the killer cheese gene, I don’t know. But most people don’t, they are just fussy. If all the fussy people would just get over themselves, it would be easier to see how many people have a real problem.

@EastMidsMummy you sound really angry about this. Why’s that? If someone is paying to eat in a restaurant they should be able to enjoy it. A competent chef should be able to accommodate simple requests. This isn’t the OP needing to force down the first batch of biscuits made at pre-school despite misgivings about toddler germs.

Maybe she does have the killer cheese gene, I don’t know. But most people don’t, they are just fussy. If all the fussy people would just get over themselves, it would be easier to see how many people have a real problem

Maybe more people are saying they have allergies and intolerances when they don’t, is because of people like you who just think they should get over themselves and eat something they donmt enjoy.

This is not the third world or wartime rationing, and we are fortunate to live in a time where food is plentiful.

I choose to eat food that i enjoy, not force something down i strongly dislike in order not to appear “fussy”.

I don’t like macdonalds, so i choose not to eat when the kids go there. I am an adult and capable of making that decision for myself. I am not a child refusing to eat my carrots.

You don't know whether this person is just not keen or adverse but that they went out of their way to request, in advance, the cheese gone suggests the latter.

Even if someone else is paying why would you not request a change or suck it up? Half of the pleasure of eating out is pleasure from the food. In Ops place yes I would have been annoyed at paying extra but at myself not my guest. If my guest sucked it up despite requesting I would be really embarrassed after at the thought of them not enjoying the food.

I like cheese, but at some times a tiny bit of cheese will give me an instant and very upset stomach. So if i order something without cheese it's because i know it will have a disastrous effect on me within minutes.

My no cheese request would be affected by what else i was doing that day - for example if i know my stomach will be empty, the effect is magnified, whereas another time i know i could chance it and probably be fine - so whilst it may appear to be fussiness, I am actually a functioning adult who knows my own digestive system and whether cheese at a certain time is a good idea or not.

I'm not going to eat it anyway and within 2 minutes be running to the toilet to have stomach cramps and spectacular projectile diarrhoea. Also nobody else would know that given it's none of anyone elses business and it SHOULD be simple to say "no cheese".

YABU

At end of day, you either provided the menu options with a caveat that no alterations could be accomodated or you accepted there could be some issues and were prepared to deal with restauarant.

The fact you accepted her request at the time makes it your responsibility to communicate with restaurant.

If id forgotten, Id be mortified and I wouldnt be whinging about paying for a fresh meal.

Its always embarrassing when you have to send back a meal. You are then out of synch with your fellow diners. So you dont do it lightly.

And, like other posters, i suspect she thought it was restaurant at fault , not the host.

If someone is paying to eat in a restaurant they should be able to enjoy it.

Of course. But that’s not the situation here. We’re talking about a guest of the OP in a restaurant. The OP kindly paid for her meal but ordered her something slightly different to what she was expecting. The fussy eater then ordered another meal instead of politely eating what she’d been given or eating round the noxious poisonous (cheese) she’d been served.

I choose to eat food that i enjoy, not force something down i strongly dislike in order not to appear “fussy”.

“Strongly disliking” ordinary foods like cheese and fish is a learned behaviour most people grow out of.

There was a poster upthread who wouldn’t eat fish because she tried it when she was nine and didn’t like it!

EastMidsMummy you sound strangely rigid and angry about this.

I think you will find most people on here eat most things. However, there may be one or two things they actively dislike or which don't 'agree' with their digestion. To me that is not the sign of a fussy eater. It is a sign that we are all individuals. No-one's sense of taste is identical to someone else's, like their sensitivity to sound or vision will vary. Just like the guest in the OP.

I would hazard a guess that even the psychologists treating the 'fussy eaters' in programme you referred to, have foods they don't like or choose not to eat.

There was a poster upthread who wouldn’t eat fish because she tried it when she was nine and didn’t like it!

If you mean me that is not what i said at all. So stop judging.

I wouldn't have scraped it off and eaten it but I'd have asked the restaurant to change it and if it cost I would have paid myself

I am what you would call a fussy eater.. but after years struggling with an eating disorder, stays in hospital and years as an outpatient, what I do eat now is a massive improvement. Eating out makes me so anxious and terrified for lots of reasons. If I ordered something and made an adjustment that I was assured was ok, I'd be gutted if it came differently. It would completely throw me, as pathetic as that sounds as I would have geared myself up for the meal and prepared in my head to eat in front of people.

To some it's just some cheese but we don't know anything other than you forgot to do something you promised and consequently she ordered something else - your fault, let it go

I don't like cucumber, to me it tastes disgusting along with cauliflower, kale, cabbage, and certain types of lettuce (especially iceberg). They taste incredibly bitter to me and not bitter in the way a lemon would be bitter, it's bitterness like that stuff you can paint on your fingernails to stop you biting them. Would you willingly eat food that tastes like that? You have no idea of the rationale behind what you consider to be "fussiness", in my case it's related to PTC sensitivity as I'm a so-called supertaster (it links into my extreme reaction to cheese, the taste is too much) as is my father.

I think the guest was being unreasonable by ordering a completely new meal and expecting the OP to pay for it again. So OP has paid for TWO meals for the same person, as well as the other 19 meals.

As someone said upthread, people do make mistakes and OP unfortunately forgot to relay her guest's request to the restaurant. My issue is - the guest who didn't want cheese is surely big and grown up enough to contact the restaurant herself to ensure her request has got through. Or have a quick word with the waiting staff on arrival.

Your guest requested a change to the meal at the stage of pre order, which you then failed to pass on to the restaurant, you are at fault.
Her reasons for requesting the change are irrelevant.

@saycool - why would she do that if she thought all in hand?

Have you ever tried to get waiters attention on arrival? Not really job on pre ordered menu event.