My New Years Party 2021 turned out to be an ARFID nightmare that brought back many painful memories for me.
Hi all. I wanted to share this update with you, since I have not had any exceptionally bad eating experiences in a long time and it really affected me. The story involves our yearly family New Year party, which this year was held at an upscale Japanese restaurant here in Bangkok. These parties are always fun and filled with good food and family warmness. However, this year was an epic fail for me, although a win for everyone else!
To set the stage, I just want to remind you that I have recovered from ARFID many years ago and generally eat almost everything now, with the exception of being a strict vegetarian. I do not eat any meat, poultry or fish, but am open minded to everything else. If you like, you can read my full ARFID Story here.
My extended family booked a private room in the restaurant, complete with several private “show chefs’ who created the food one bite at a time and presented it with much fanfare to the appreciative guests. I am the only vegetarian in the bunch, so I knew that it would be a miss for me… The restaurant is famous for all manner of expensive beef, fish, caviar and other things I can not eat. I was ready to settle for some basic yaki soba or rice, but this is where the trouble started…
Everyone began eating bite by bite, course by course while I had a salad. The salad was fresh and delicious. It really made my already strong appetite even more acute! My family is great, since they do not make me feel bad for eating differently, even as they enjoyed foods that make me cringe!
I was able to order some food ala carte and chose a vegetarian yaki soba noodle. It was a very long wait while everyone else ate and ate and ate and ate… Eventually, it came out and was literally the most nasty thing I ever tried to eat. It was basically flavorless, with an unappealing texture and horrible aftertaste. I ate as much as I could, but I think I started turning a bit green and my wife told me to just get some rice instead. She took the liberty of ordering the rice (fried with vegetables) from the wait staff, and told them, please bring my husband some food. He is the biggest and hungriest guy here and needs to eat something!
From that moment, I waited 1 hour and 5 minutes to receive a tiny bowl of rice exactly the size of a single ice cream scoop. It also had no flavor, no vegetables and no seasoning. It was the type of food inmates in a totalitarian regime maximum security prison would receive. It was pure sustenance for a starving soul with no pleasure at all. I ate it like a hungry dog, since I was literally starving at this point, being about 3 hours late for my usual meal. Just to make note, I typically eat about 3500 to 4000 calories a day due to my size and athletic consumption. Today, I ate almost nothing (and nothing at all for about 8 hours now) in anticipation of this big holiday meal.
Even my father in law was so pissed seeing what they brought me. He immediately made them make another rice, but it came out exactly the same, with the exception of adding a few green soy beans on top and increasing the portion from 2 bites to 3!
I am sharing this story just to remind all of us that life can be challenging sometimes for anyone with a special diet. Even though I have solved my food phobia, on this occasion, I was put in a circumstance where the restaurant basically refused to serve me any food that was edible AND vegetarian. This is life sometimes. It is what we all have to deal with….
I did not make a big deal of any of it. I merely got through the 4 hours of everyone else stuffing themselves while I starved. LOL. Eventually, I got home and ate dinner at midnight, with some basic, healthy and delicious food of my own making. I would love to name this horrible restaurant just so that all vegetarians can arduously avoid it, but unfortunately, in Thailand, I can go to jail if I did, especially as a foreigner. This is the “justice system” here!
The point of it all is not to feel bad for me. I know it is not a big deal. I am not a drama queen lol! This post is very much written with (honesty, but also) good humor. I have had countless horrific eating experience in my life, but have not had any in many years now. The experience made me think about all of you out there right now who are suffering from much worse food fears. Please know that you are not alone!
If you live in a country where every restaurant feels the need to accommodate special diets, then you are lucky. You might suffer from ARFID, but you will probably always have something (anything) that you can eat. In Thailand, this restaurant might do their specialty very well (according to the reviews of the family), but they really dropped the ball when it came to providing even basic sustenance for one member of the family who dropped a literal fortune for a private holiday party in the establishment. If you are not part of “the group”, then you are truly alone.
Happiest holidays to all and know that I am thinking about all of you now more than ever before. Sharing the suffering is a form of therapy, so feel free to do the same by sharing your own ARFID story! – Adam
