While I will grudgingly dice a rib or two to make a mirepoix, I otherwise steer well clear of celery. And since discovering that Suzanne Goin, as revealed in her cookbook Sunday Suppers at Lucques, sometimes substitutes fennel for celery in a mirepoix, I have happily abandoned celery and its ribs all together.

Recently at a restaurant in Portland, the kind that only has two seatings a night and serves a six-course fixed menu, I was faced with an escarole salad that had celery in it. Maybe, I thought, escarole has some magical property that makes celery taste good.

It doesn’t.

So I ate the rest of the salad and left a neat pile of celery on the side of my plate. A perfectly logical course of action, except in the eyes of my fellow diners.

“You’re not eating your celery,” said G.

“I don’t like celery,” I said.

“How could you not like celery?” asked C.

And then we were off, discussing all the foods I didn’t like. The part that bothered me was that G. had been the one to point it out. Picky eaters should stick together, and he’s a much pickier eater than I am. (I should say here that G. has come a long, long way and is not nearly the picky eater he once was. But still.) He doesn’t like beans. He doesn’t like tomatoes. He doesn’t like vegetables as a category. The next night, when we were served chili with beans in it at a Halloween dinner party, did I point out that G. was picking all the beans out of his chili? No.

But then it occurred to me that G. had not only not had my back at dinner the night before, he had been the first to stick the knife—or celery stalk—in.

“You’re not eating your beans,” I said.

All heads at the table swiveled in his direction.

“You don’t like beans? How could you not like beans?”