The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

Our blogsultant, Tia Graham, tells us that it’s OK to have the occasional blog post that doesn’t really relate to our topics of Leadership and Discretionary Effort, but that reveals something personal, in our core. This is one such post.

I detest cilantro. I can think of nothing - nothing - the taste of which is more foul to my pallet than the vile, green, leafy herb, so used, overused, and misused by so many restaurants today.

Cilantro tastes, to me, like cleaning fluid. How would I know, you ask. But it does. And yet, in the last few years, cilantro has become so ubiquitous in food I order in restaurants, that I have now taken to asking, on what would have at one time seemed to me to be the most ridiculous of circumstances, if something is served with cilantro.

There’s no cilantro on that steak, is there? Oh, actually, I think there might be. Why, are you allergic? No - I just can’t STAND it. Please ask the chef not to put any cilantro on my steak.

I have had mashed potatoes, cole slaw, French Fries, polenta, bread, salads, green beans, pinto beans, corn, and every meat product fit for human consumption made unfit for this human’s consumption by contaminating it with cilantro.

Cilantro is fine for others to eat, in dishes with clear warnings in their names: lime-cilantro dressing, cilantro chicken, and the like. You have to expect cilantro to be dusted into almost everything in a Mexican restaurant, especially the less authentically Mexican ones. And cilantro is a clear and present danger in most Thai restaurants, but again, the presence of this most repulsive of all vegetation, is usually heralded in places like this.

So please, if any professional cooks or chefs are reading this, do us all a favor. Throw out your cilantro. Few people object to it as much as I do, but trust me on this - no one will miss it. And for Pete’s sake, keep it out of stuff it belong in.

If there’s anyone out there who shares my disgust for cilantro, I’d love to hear from you.

 Thanks!

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, consultant, and known cilantro-hater, who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

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