Mate, when I say I don't like something ....

..it's because I really really don't.

So the other Sunday after we'd been to the Open Day at the Dig we went somewhere for lunch. It's somewhere that has recently been re-opened after almost two decades and someone else had told us it was very good so we thought we'd go and check it out. 

The OH ordered soup and a toastie, and I had a scone. The scone was good, and here's the soup

and I'm told it was very nice. With it the OH was offered a choice of a cheese scone or some sour dough bread. (As an aside I don't see the point of this if you're about the eat a sandwich as well, but there you go) Anyway he refused both politely, saying he wasn't keen on scones and actually didn't; like sour dough bread. He doesn't. Nor do I. Plenty of people do. We know that and it's fine. We don't go round trying to convert them to not liking it. If only sour dough aficionados were as tolerant.  as we are.

We were not very far into our refreshments when the chef came and took up position sitting at a table across the aisle from us, and opened a conversation that was so one sided as not to merit the designation 'conversation' at all.  He told us we did like sour dough bread. He was sure of it. The reason he was sure about it was that the only reason we could possibly have for saying we didn't like it was that we had yet to taste his,. He had gone into sourdough bead making at some length. Studied it, you might say. He had is own secret. It was all in the fermentation. He fermented his bread for longer than anyone else he knew.*   That was what made his special. Once we had tasted his sour dough bread we would never again say we didn't like it. 

*I caught the prase 'for two days'. I'm not sure whether that was how long in total, or how much longer than everyone else he left his bread mix to bubble, but since it is the nasty fermented taste that I particularly object to in sourdough bread, the point was moot in any case.

I am totally bemused by this and also a bit flummoxed about what we were supposed to do. We are polite pleasant people who don't make scenes or even like to contradict other people in public. There again obviously this young man doesn't feel the same restraint. But why not? We were customers. We were in his café (or café bistro as they call it) to enjoy a leisurely lunch. We were not there to be harangued and told that we didn't know what we liked or didn't like, and that after we had tasted his version we would change our minds. How is it that other people think they have the right to come and tell you what your personal likes and dislikes are when they have never seen you before (and in this case will certainly never to see you again, since that is how I respond. I'm too timid to say anything but I vote with my feet) 

Maybe we are naff, or peasants, or have unrestructured palates, or whatever it is you are suspected of when you own up to not liking sour dough bead. It doesn't give anyone the right to tell us that we don't know what we like. Or dislike, as in this case. He should have stayed in is kitchen, cooking, And then he might have had himself a returning customer.