Miso confused.

I'm a picky eater, I know, and I don't care for sushi. I've tried several kinds and the flavor is always okay, but the texture bothers me. My wife pokes fun at me, although the texture of polenta makes her gag. I'm just saying.

The other thing I don't care for at the Japanese restaurant is miso soup. 

Just a taste thing; its flavors to me are pretty bland, except for the ones that are bad. So I just get something else when there's a choice.

But sometimes there's not.

The best Japanese restaurant around here always gives you miso soup as part of a standard dinner order (a dish such as teriyaki, for example), along with a sad little salad and white rice. I like the homemade dressing on the sad salad, and the rice is good. But I don't care for miso soup, and especially not theirs. And no one else around the house wants it either.

This gets me into Seinfeldian territory. I'm certain one of the 180 episodes of the sitcom Seinfeld must have dealt with such a topic, although I don't recall an exact parallel.

The way I see it, I am faced with 6 choices:

1) Order the dinner and throw out the soup, violating a Key principle to not waste food. (The Depression never really ended in our house.)

2) Order the dinner and force myself to eat the soup I do not like, to avoid violating the Key principle.

3) Tell them not to include the soup, and get mad that they don't give me a discount since I didn't get the soup.

4) Demand that they give me clear soup instead, which they will not do because there is a language barrier and I do not anticipate the concept will be as clear as clear soup over the phone.

5) Try to give the soup to a local bum, except this is a small suburban town with a minuscule bum population. They're hard to find. Soup gets cold fast.

6) Order something a la carte that does not come with soup, which at this restaurant means yakitori and similar things or sushi. You can make a meal of sushi, but I won't; harder to make a meal of yakitori. Besides, I wanted the teriyaki.

My inner Seinfeld won't let this issue go, but I just don't have a solution. On the show this would be a story thread that would ultimately lead to an embarrassing situation with my wacky friends, so I figure I shouldn't pursue it too far. I just know I would be George.