The question here is, “In a fine-dining environment, is it more the chef’s duty to cook and serve dishes that bend to a customer’s specific wishes, or is it rather more the chef’s duty to present dishes that he has conceived and prepared in a specific way to produce a specific combination of flavors?”
Note I am talking about a professional, respected, known, high-level chef, like the kind of people that are guest judges on Top Chef or whatever, we are NOT talking about a short-order cook at IHOP or a hired-gun line cook at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
A chef is an artist. The recipes are the art. You don’t tell Picasso how to paint. Don’t tell a chef how to cook. If you don’t like the recipe as is, then go somewhere else. I’ll be in the minority on this, but I think customers are stupid, uncultured Philistines who should never be pandered to. The problem is that too many customers think that chefs are some kind of servants. They aren’t.
In fine-dining, in the situation the OP described (high-level chef), I sincerely wonder why people would spend the time and effort to go there if they didn’t want to eat the food the way the chef prepared it. That’s the whole point, IMO - you want to go to restaurant X to eat food Chef X created. If you don’t want to eat it the way the chef prepared it, go somewhere else.
However, that’s only for fine-dining, at a place with a highly creative really awesome chef. If we’re talking your average restaurant that you hop in on a Friday night because you’re hungry and you’re socializing and all that, then yeah, I think the restaurant should do the basics as far as customizing. I’m talking stuff like salad-dressing-on-the-side, or no-butter-on-my-steak, or can-you-leave-the-sauce-off-the-fish. I’m talking the easy stuff, not something like “can you take the tuna from the grilled tuna plate and substitute it for the chicken from the chicken marsala and by the way instead of a lemon sauce can it please be made with orange and I don’t want any onions within 5 feet of my plate.”
But you’re not the patron commissioning a painting; you’re a customer at a restaurant. By your logic, I ought to be able to walk into a production of “Othello” and ask them to do “King Lear” instead, because goddamn it, I’m a paying customer who bought a ticket!
This is it. At the high-end levels of dining, trying to get the chef to alter recipes is like going into an art gallery and asking the artist to change the paintings.
That said, there are limits. If I’m buying a new Porsche Boxter, I get to choose the paint color and seat fabric, etc., but it’s not reasonable to ask for a flatbed to be welded onto the back.
Similarly, recipes should be adjustable to a diner’s preferences, and a chef who flat-out refuses to make even a small change is just being a dick. However, if a customer requests major or multiple changes that essentially create a different dish altogether (“Can you make the smoked salmon with beef instead?”), it’s OK to politely say, “I’m sorry, but we don’t offer that.”
The customer comes first, but the chef is the expert. The chef should try to accommodate the customer’s wishes – “you want your dessert with raspberries instead of strawberries: that’s not a problem” – but should tell the customer if they won’t work – “you want your steak well done, and tomato sauce on the side: no, I don’t think so, it would just ruin a good steak.” And when the chef says “No”, it should be because saying “No” is in the customer’s best interests.
I believe that in a fine-dining environment the food is not to be fucked with, and for the most part even in a non-fine-dining environment only minimal concessions should be made.
I’m an adult. I don’t like mushrooms. If I like everything about a dish except for the mushrooms I’m fully capable of picking them off. It’s not that big a deal. And if you have so many food issues that you need the cook to make something in a very specific way with very specific ingredients and nothing else, what the hell are you eating out for anyway?
I can’t buy the idea that the chef at a Ruth’s Chris is an artist. Artisan, maybe. But the chef in a chain restaurant is not expressing him or herself through food. They have had no creative input in designing the recipe.
The original anecdote described someone who asked that a pat of butter not be put on the freshly-cooked steak. As far as I can tell, the point of that butter at Ruth’s Chris is mostly so the diner hears a “sizzling” noise when it arrives at your table as the melting butter hits the heated plate. IOW, it’s a sound effect.
I would go out of my way to avoid any restaurant where they had “already created” meals sitting around for Ghu knows how long, just needing a quick zap in the microwave before being sent out.
And that’s your choice, though I don’t agree with the term “snobby.” The vast majority of restaurants out there are casual and usually do their best to customize the food to their customer’s tastes. However, there are high-end restaurants where the chef is doing more than simply feeding people; dishes may take months to design and perfect, and the restaurants patrons tend to be people who are into such things. You’re not. No big deal - you stick to the many restaurants that are more to your liking and there’s nothing at all wrong with that.
I completely agree. Ruth’s Chris is not the type of restaurant we’re talking about.
I disagree, and I think most chefs would disagree with this as well. The recipes are honed over time and made as good as possible, but they are not handed down from on high, sacred instructions never to be messed with. If I don’t want butter on my steak I’m sure the chef can prepare it to my liking without offending his sensibilities. If I am allergic to strawberries the chef can make the appropriate changes. If my doctor said I need to cut my sodium intake I would hope any chef worth his salt (sorry) would work with me to prepare a meal to my liking.
I have no problem with a chef saying “That’s just too much of a departure from our menu for me to make that kind of substitution, may I suggest something else?” But for any chef to think that his recipe must be followed with no exceptions is unreasonable. Fortunately most chefs I’ve known (I have several friends who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and are working chefs) wouldn’t hesitate to accommodate a customers desires. Fine dining works best that way, IMO.
The thread that spawned this was specifically about a meal at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, but I understand that there’s a difference between that and a truly fine dining establishment. To be honest, I’ve rarely eaten at the top-tier places, but I have had very pleasant experiences at higher-end restaurants.
