Some things are better not known

On Friday night, Julie had had a bad headache all day, and I was at the language school catching up on emails until dinner time, so we decided that we weren’t going to cook, but instead go out. By the time I got home, it was only an hour and a half until David’s bed time, so instead of going to across town to the only pizza place we knew of (a good 20 minute walk), we decided to go to the restaurant at the hotel adjacent to our apartment, Hotel Ostrabruck. This hotel has a reputation of being one of the nicest in Tver, and we had been told that its restaurant was “very expensive.” Nonetheless, we thought one nice dinner out would be a nice way to cap off a difficult week of language learning.

Indeed, the restaurant was quite nice, with multiple forks, knives, and plates, a wine glass and an ornately folded napkin—all reminders to me of my college busboy job at the local country club restaurant. In fact, though, it was would Americans would consider “normal” restaurant prices--$10 per entrée. But, for Russians, who as a whole average a monthly salary of $350 per month (so I was told by one of the teachers at the language school), this would have been an expensive meal. After we ordered, two crackers with a slice of cucumber and a pink spread on it was delivered to our table. I asked what it was (in Russian!) and we were told it was complementary (it is almost the same word in Russian and in English) and I was told the name in Russian, which sounded familiar to me.

The reason why the word sounded familiar was I realized what it was—caviar. The day before, as my language teacher, Olga, and I were talking about restaurants and food, we got on a tangent of caviar, which was on the menu we had been going over. Well, I had always known caviar to be black, but she had told me that there were also pink types as well. She also told me that she preferred the pink caviar, coming not from the sturgeon of the Black Sea, but from a different type of fish found in Vladivostok in the east. Olga also told me that this type was relatively cheap, costing only a few dollars per jar in shops, unlike the rather expensive sturgeon caviar.

SO, we now had caviar on our table—something I had never eaten, and to be honest, never really felt the strong desire to eat. But, “when in Rome…” So, we both ate it. I couldn’t bear the thought of nibbling at it, so I just stuck the whole cracker in my mouth, closed my eyes and chewed. Julie took the slower, more delicate route of actually eating it in reasonable bites. I must say, it just tasted to me like salty, fishy-flavored food. Not great, in my book, but O.K. to eat, if I have to.

Now, here is the best part of the whole situation, the conversation that we had after we ate it:

Jon: So, what did you think of it? Did you like it?

Julie: It was O.K., I guess. By the way, what’s caviar anyways?

Jon: Fish eggs.

(pause)

Julie: I am glad that you didn’t tell me that before I ate it! I didn’t want to know what it was before I ate it.