In my bardo between Google and Glean, I received a payout from Google for my unredeemed paid time off - literally thousands of dollars all at once. I saw it as a sign that I should vacation more,¹ and that I should treat myself.

So I went to the fanciest restaurant recommended to me, in New York City no less, which cost over $300 for the prix fixe menu. My grad student friends couldn't afford the money, and my finance friends couldn't afford the time (on a weekday), so I went as a party of one² to lightly menace the fine dining service staff.

For one dish, they brought out fluke (a.k.a. summer flounder) served five ways. In one of those ways, they served the fluke with caviar and a gold spoon. I recalled the trivia that you shouldn't eat caviar with a metal spoon; the caviar reacts with the metal to produce a metallic taste. So I asked the head server:³

“Should I be eating this caviar with this metal spoon?”

The head server responded with their most polite, firm no:

“Oh, well, we've been serving this dish for a while with no issue.”

Curious, I searched on my phone for clarification. As it turns out, inert metals won't react with the caviar, so you can use them to eat caviar. Excited to share the good news, I ushered the head server over:

“You can use inert metals like gold to eat caviar! I guess it was … a fluke!”