Thank you for visiting the Eater Complaints Department, your unedited platform for voicing poor dining experiences, gross restaurant trends, and general underhandedness. Have grievances? Operators are standing by.
From: [an eater]
Date: Friday, May 16, 2008
To: eater complaints dept.
Subject: Bloody Skate at Country
——
I went to lunch earlier this week, with a client, to Country. I was first to order & ordered the skate. My client then asked the waiter a few questions, about the skate, about the grouper, about something else. In giving his answers, the waiter pointed out that the skate was served "on the bone". I had never heard of this, and was a little weirded out (let's face it, skate is a weird animal to begin with), but I decided not to change my order and give it a shot.
So the food comes out, and man, this skate is a piece of work. Bones (or more accurately, cartilage) was everywhere, and it was hard to get at the meat. At one point i got a "bone" in my mouth, and it broke into like 4 pieces, which I had to find a way to suavely spit out...
But none of this is really the issue. The reason I'm writing is, in the center of this piece of skate, closest to the biggest bone, there were quite a lot of blood spots and blood vessels on the flesh, which suggested to me that maybe it hadn't been cooked through. Is this normal and OK for skate? Normally I would have sent it back or asked the waiter to ask the chef, but given the circumstances (with a client, pressed for time) I didn't want to make a scene. Later, I did a search about raw/rare skate, but couldn't find a lot of information. One word I did find associated with skate: neurotoxin. Kind of ruined my afternoon.