There’s a certain panache to a peppermill-bearing waiter offering to grind
that spice over your food, I suppose, but this pleasantry is lost on me because cracked black pepper tends to lodge in my teeth and burn my mouth. For a period of time, when every restaurant seemed to think it posh to put cbp in almost every dish from omelets to beef stew to coleslaw, apprehension began to erode the anticipation of enjoyment of dining out. This seems to be diminishing, both the ubiquitous practice and my hesitation to ask “just what are those black bits?”
Now restaurants and delis are in a rush of rosemary. In roast vegetables. Meat. Casseroles. Etc.! Rosemary leaves tends to shrink and toughen when cooked and have pointy ends. I feel as if I am picking eyelashes off my tongue. The last time I tried to remove all the darned bits from a dish before I ate it and lined them up neatly around the edge of my plate the waitress stopped and stared. Next time I’ll flick them off the table.
I may be avoiding danger, apart from dying of embarrassment. The spines of bay leaves have been proven to cause serious problems in the digestive systems of some people so we are now advised to remove bay leaves before serving. Rosemary leaves may be a barbed menace. The flavour (which I like) can be had by crushing the leaves.