T. GAMBLE: The horror! Ketchup on steak!

Recently, while out to eat celebrating my father’s birthday, I was discussing the new restaurant we were eating at with friends. I noted that chefs and fancy places often try too hard to make new and imaginative dishes when the good ‘ole tried and true dish is often the best.

We were talking about things like French fries with sugar on them. I mean, a really perfectly cooked French fry doesn’t need anything else. It is like bacon, sort of perfect by itself. What does need help is things like broccoli and asparagus. When I get broccoli, it should come smothered in Kristy Kreme donuts. I’d eat a lot of broccoli then.

Or how about asparagus lightly breaded with a large Big Texas cinnamon bun? Sales of asparagus would increase ten-fold and third-graders would eat it then instead of folding it up in a napkin and stuffing it behind the table napkin holder.

Right now, we all know cheese is the go-to cover for all bad vegetables. Yep, if you see something covered in cheese, it is usually broccoli, celery sticks, or anything else that has little or no taste. Nobody covers a filet mignon with cheese. I have never seen a donut sprinkled with cheese.

I also noticed how people have far too much interest in what, and how, other people eat their food. We all know that to some people, nothing is more horrifying than to hear that someone eats their steak with — the horrors are so much I can hardly say it — ketchup on it.

Now understand, I do not eat ketchup on my steak, but I really could care less if you eat Paul Newman’s dressing on yours. But to some, if they see an offender eating steak with ketchup on it, this must be immediately pointed out. The ketchup eater must first be outed to the public and then publicly chastised because of the insult that has now been cast upon the chef by someone having covered the steak’s taste with the offensive ketchup.

Never mind the chicken plate is smothered in three types of sauces, and it took five minutes to figure out the veal was actually veal under all the gravy and extras poured upon it. We are talking about steak here. Sacred ground that requires adherence to long-held absolute divine rules of ingestion.

Normally the ketchup eater is also such a Neanderthal that he has ordered the steak well done to boot. My, my, my, he may as well have gone back into the kitchen and karate chopped the chef as to do such a thing.

I believe this type “food shaming” is really a superiority complex where the offended make sure they can point out their superior sophistication in understanding the finer points of proper etiquette and eating decorum, proving their status as being far above such a lowly practice. Normally this indignation is expressed while the offended is holding a Milwaukee’s Best Light and vaping.

The only thing worse than the food-offended may be the wine-offended. Please understand, I am an expert in wine of all types. I have more than 40 years of wine-drinking experience. I started with Boones Berry Farm and T.J. Swan before many folks were born. I moved on to M.D. 20-20, affectionately known as Mad Dog 20-20 soon thereafter.

Mad Dog 20-20 should have a warning label saying, “Warning this product may make you enjoy sleeping in a ditch.”

The drinking age was 18, and I’ll just say it happened before then. I don’t need anyone to tell me if the wine is full-bodied or has an excellent aroma. I’ve noticed the best way to determine if the wine is excellent or not is the price. If the bottle is $125, it is probably pretty good to whoever bought it because nobody wishes to admit they just paid $125 for a bottle of wine that tastes likes a bottle of Barefoot wine.

My wife was once part of a school experiment in which certain foods were placed before a student and they then would answer whether they tasted certain things in the food, like sulfur, bitterness, etc. Only a very small percentage of students could pick out many of these trace elements. These students, comprising less than 5% of people, were identified as super tasters. Now, that should make them feel superior or like they have a unique and special gift.

But, it turns out almost all of these super tasters were very picky eaters because they taste things in food, usually bad, that other people cannot taste. So maybe when you see a really picky eater, they are a super taster. Leave them alone. If they need to smother it with ketchup or burn it to a crisp, you aren’t eating it, they are. Like that great American hero Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along?”