The dish is what the chef cooks. The meal is what the customer eats.

At 3pm this afternoon, I bit into a chicken paprikash. “This tastes fishy,” I said to Partner, and shifted to the other chicken thigh on the plate. 

Fifteen minutes later, Partner ate from the fishy thigh. “This tastes fishy,” she said. I agreed, and we continued on with our snack.

At the end of the meal, the waiter asked why we’d only eaten 2/3 of the portion. I said, “That piece tasted fishy.” 

The waiter took the plate back to the chef. Two minutes later, he returned. The chef had tasted the piece. The piece did not taste of fish. “The fish, you see, is kept in a sealed bag separate from the chicken.” 

Partner replied something like, “It tasted fishy to me.” I agreed. Partner clarified: we did not think it actually was fish, just that it tasted more like fish than chicken should. (I did not say anything. I thought it more helpful solution to let the guy spin his way to a result.)

The waiter left. He returned with a plate of pickled red onions. “We discovered what it is!” he said. “Three of us in the kitchen tasted and conferred. These may have been on it, so it might have tasted like fish.”

We tasted them. They tasted like pickled red onions. We said, “These taste like pickled red onions.” He insisted we smell them, then taste them. We smelled them, then tasted them. We said, “These taste like pickled red onions.” 

Neither of us had been terribly unhappy. One of the two chicken thighs tasted like fish. No biggie: there are plenty of chicken paprikash in the Budapest sea.

Later, as I reflect, I’m less irked by the fishy food than the denial. Whether or not the dish “contains” fish, our experience of it was fishy. Taste is an experience.

The waiter could have won. Studies show that dissatisfied customers whose experiences improve are actually happier than those who were never dissatisfied (the Service Recovery Paradox). How about honoring our experience? “I’m so sorry you experienced it as fishy. The chef tasted it and I tasted it and we couldn’t get to the bottom of it, but I hope you’ll give us another shot next time” beats denying the fishiness.

Throw in a free shot of palinka (super cheap Hungarian national alcohol that everybody’s grandfather makes), even better. Partner & I wouldn’t have drunk it (we’ve had enough palinka for three lifetimes), but that’s not the point.

We weren’t fishing for a discount or trying to catch some special treatment. But even if we are, he’s better off taking our bait. Floundering for an explanation only sinks the ship deeper. 

No amount of swimming upstream would change our reported experience, and a little humility would have been net-positive.

The chef tasted the food. We ate the meal.