Nobody Beats the Wiz!

Since I can’t possibly devote enough time to all my stories in one night, I’m submitting in installments.

Allison Attends the Most Excruciatingly Boring Gemmology Class Ever
Wednesday, September 19th

Seriously, it was horrible. Let’s not relive it in full: ugly “gemstones,” no instruction and lots of rolling of the eyes among classmates. The class is best summed up with this little story: the gemmology woman (I don’t think she deserves to be called an instructor, at least for our group) handed my friend from New York, Jody, her 8th box of terrible stone bits to examine for goodness-knows-what and all Jody could say under her breath was a despondent “really?” Moving on.

The Cheeseburger That Was Not

After gemmology class, I stayed in Paris to go out to dinner with my friend Monika, who is Hungarian, but lives in, and I gather prefers, Switzerland. We did a good tour of Les Galeries Lafayette before walking to a pedestrian area of bars near her house in the 8ieme Arrondissement. We settled on a bar called Razowzki’s, which I remarked “sounded like a bar you’d find in Chicago.” After a glass of wine, we looked over the menu and I noted dishes called “Tribeca Salad,” “Nolita Salad” and “Brooklyn Bagel.” Interesting . . . I had landed in the only New York themed bar in the neighborhood.

As I’m sure you could all infer, since I am “cooking” for myself in a miniscule kitchenette, I’m in dire need of meat. Alors, I opted for the cheeseburger. Okay, the description went as follows:

Cheeseburger: bun, beef, salad, onions, cheddar cheese and mayonnaise

Good enough. Leçon appris earlier about the ham hamburger so I double-checked the beef situation. All good. Let’s do it. I’ll have the cheeseburger sans mayonnaise.

Now, when one says cheddar cheese, I believe you. I don’t assume that you reserve the right to put any sort of cheese you may have all willy-nilly on the hamburger. However, I can pretty much deal with any type of cheese that’s not of the blue variety. You know what I can’t deal with? Cheez Wiz! This is not cheese. This is a “cheese food product.” It clearly says so on the CAN it comes in. To simplify:

Cheez Wiz ≠ cheese

Or

≠

Write that down.

Ugh, my glorious cheeseburger dream was all double-thin-pattied, triple-bunned and cheez-wizzed out. Gross. And try as I might, I just couldn’t scrape off enough to escape the nightmare. Don’t get me wrong; I ate it. There was no way I was going to let this Wiz ruin my protein pursuit completely. The burger itself wasn’t that great, but what are you going to do? Katie and Sarah, all I could think of at the moment was Mato Mato Squiz.

I won’t even go into how Monika the vegetarian ordered a pastrami sandwich thinking it was the “brother sandwich” of minestrone soup. Um, not the first time she’s made that mistake either.

All in all, it was a funny dinner experience and it was nice to go out to a relaxed non-group dinner. I’m now going to be the American girl that asks at every restaurant “Is it real cheese or is it the Wiz?” I don’t care. I can’t face that stuff again.