Foodies too, not just birders

Of course, a bird watcher is called a "twitcher" here, but that's another story.....

This story is about a funny fact we discovered this trip as compared to last.  In addition to becoming birders, our interest in finer foods is new compared to 20 years ago.  Although Mike still loves a good cold chicken schnitzel sandwich.  We found a nice restaurant, Aria, and had a beautiful meal.  We had some leftover greens and Chris will eat her greens morning noon or night.  The suite at Rydges had a fridge and very nice kitchen set up, so we asked for the leftovers to go when our waitress was clearing up.  We were told, rather bluntly, "we don't do that."  Chris assumed the waitress was just giving us attitude, was lazy, or didn't like Americans.  Later she did a google search and discovered while it is not a law in Australia, restaurants have the right to refuse to let you take the leftovers for food safety reasons.  This sort of amused us since they seem much less litigious here and don't follow their own simple rules in general.  For example, blatantly smoking in non smoking areas and cyclists ignoring the signs to give way to pedestrians.  Chris was almost crashed into multiple times by cyclists in the botanic gardens.  So the next night we dine out again at a paleo restaurant, Asana, and we have some leftover "seeded crackers."  Mostly whole flax seed, chia, pumpkin seeds, you know, bird food disguised as people food.  Normally we actually like these healthy type snacks, but these were pretty nasty.  Mike has the clever idea that we should try and take them as leftovers for some birds, so we ask again at this restaurant if we can take them with us.  The waitress tells us yes, but we have to sign an indemnification form!!  This is a cracker, people, not something that needs refrigeration or we are going to get a bacterial illness from if we eat it after removing it from the restaurant!  For a country that seems pretty laid back in general, this really is over the top.  Of course, Mike being the comedian he is took a bite the next morning and promptly said to Chris, oh, no, I'm not feeling well, so at least we have had some good laughs with this.  Strangely, the birds are not interested in them at all and Chris still wishes she got to eat those greens for breakfast.