It depends on the restaurant. Some restaurants are mostly about the customer; others are more about showcasing the imagination and skills of a chef.
In general, though, if I go to a nice restaurant, I’m paying for the chef’s art or trade or whatever the hell you want to call it. Hell, I don’t even want to pick my food. I usually ask, what is the chef particularly fond of today, and just order that (or order whatever the place is known for.) I particularly love it when there is no choice, just a tasting menu with maybe a few questions about what you absolutely dislike, your allergies, etc.
Of course, even the highest-end restaurant has to care about what the customer thinks, and this is still a service industry, so there should be diplomatic ways of navigating the situation but, in the end, if you’re the type of restaurant that trades on upscale quality, I believe it’s the chef’s call in the end.
It’s the same in a lot of creative service industries, though. High-end branding tends to focus on the skill of the service provider/artist/craftsman. The customer is paying for the provider’s skill and vision. I’m a mid-level wedding photographer, and when somebody pays me $300+/hr for my skills, I, of course, will take their needs into consideration, but that price does not mean I’ll do whatever the customer wants me to do. I don’t, and I can’t if I want to continue branding my vision and my identity as a wedding photographer. Same thing with high-end restaurants. They are branding the skills and visions of their chefs. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere. Simple.
At most restaurants it is. At the kind of restaurants we’re talking about, it’s not. You’re not hiring someone to cook for you. You’re paying an artist to do what he does.
I think this is really a question of the meaning of the word “chef.”
I voted the intermediate choice, but some will argue that the meaningful understanding of “chef” is that of a cooking artist, as opposed to a cooking craftsman. It is outside any proficiency of technique and necessarily includes an aesthetic vision.
Just so.
I’m sure some chefs have been, by some measures, technically worse cooks than some of the people working for them. If you want to hire an excellent cook to prepare a meal to your preference, cooks other than “chefs” may well be better. You’d be crazy to commission a famous and expensive painter (or musician, etc.) if you didn’t definitely want his particular style; asking for anything else means cutting out the very thing that he’s paid a premium for in the first place.
Those restaurants are going to end up like the prima donna Nawth Chucka posted about.
Even taking the whole ‘artist’ milieu as given, an artist can compensate for the request and still make something outstanding. Otherwise that so-called artist has diminished himself to the level of an Olive Garden cook–forced to follow a recipe without knowing how to deviate.
Otherwise, unless it’s something that can’t be done (hold the mushrooms in the mushroom casserole) or is way off the charts, restaurants in that level are, IME, beyond accommodating. Can anyone link to a restaurant where they’ve asked for something and been refused a request?
I think it’s the difference between makers and creators. I can make almost anything, and do it well. My sister who makes a good living creating jewellery is massively creative. Cooks are makers; chefs are creators.
Most restaurants - especially high end - have much of the dish prepared beforehand. Sauces are made and kept warm, garnishes are chopped, vegetables are cooked and held warm, the protein is cut into the right-sized pieces and may be partially cooked hours before you order it. When you order it, everything is brought together and the last-minute bits (grilling/heating/etc) are done. There’s really no other way to do it - that sauce might take 3 days to make, they can’t do it to order. And nothing is dried out.
Not really, not in any restaurant level. You can’t go into a pizza place and order them to make you pasta, even if they have the ingredients there. Employees must be trained; ingredients are ordered and portioned according to the menu; pricing is set based on menu items.
Again, not really. A high-end restaurant puts an incredible amount of effort into producing a group of fantastic dishes; asking the chef to stop in the middle of service and make anything other than a very basic alteration is throwing a wrench into the works. It doesn’t have anything to do with talent or laziness.
Plenty of higher-end restaurants nowadays are stating that they won’t do certain things. There’s a whole article about it here. And I know I’ve been to restaurants that state on their menu “No substitutions.” Heck, I’ve been to pizza places that won’t do substitutions - it’s not even a high end thing all the time.
As long as I’m not ordering off the menu, they can give me what I want, or they don’t get my money. I don’t care what the chef thinks tastes good, I only care what I think tastes good. Since I’m the one eating it, after all.
Somehow, I don’t think Picasso would be coming around painting something to the customer’s specifications, especially a bathroom ceiling. If you commissioned Picasso, I presume you were commissioning him for him and his work, not his general skills as a craftsman. You still got whatever he thought was appropriate. I doubt you can just go to him and say, “Hey, I want a photorealistic painting of a mountainous landscape” and he’d jump to it. No, you got a Picasso.
And that’s fine. Most places will accommodate you and those that can’t, well, they made a conscious decision not to want that kind of business, and that’s perfectly fine.
Having your veggies cut and sauces made up ahead of time is normal. But do they really precook the meats? I have worked at lower end places that even don;t like doing that.
And having every thing prepped ahead of time still allows them to hold an ingredient or make a change.
I never said that. I am talking about not using onions on a dish, or holding the sauce. A $10 Line cook can handle that. If a chef can’t, then I really don;t understand how he got to be where he is.
I’m not talking about making a new batch of sauce without mushrooms in it. I am talking about not putting asparagus on a plate. Or cooking the meat how the paying customer likes it. People here seem to be saying a chef shouldn’t be expected to do these things. But again, a simple Line cook can do so without a problem. I’d expect someone with years of very good training to be able to handle a simple change to the order.
There’s an odd bell curve here, I think. If I pay $5 for an entree (say, the lunch special at my local Chinese place), I pretty much much expect that I’ll have to pick out my own mushrooms. If I pay $15 for an entree at Applebee’s I kind of expect that I’ll be able to request some minor alterations.
If I pay $50 for an entree, I want it exactly like the chef wants me to have it. If it contains things I don’t like, I’ll either give them a chance or (more likely) order something else.
If a chef wants to create a culinary masterpiece for his own purposes, that’s great. More power to him; he can do that. But in that case, what am I doing there?
If I order my food a certain way and the chef is not willing to do that, I would accept that (and not too grudgingly), but I’d expect to be told. “I’m sorry, but we don’t really do porterhouse steaks more done than medium rare in this establishment”. Then I have the option of ordering something different. Don’t ignore my request and bring it to me in a fashion very different from what I want, contrary to how I ordered it, and then explain that the chef is unwilling to have food done that way in this restaurant.
No, Picasso didnt have assholish busybodies standing over his shoulders and telling him how his work could be improved by great splashes of pink (“why does it have to be so goddamn blue all the time ?” or unicorns “why do all your paintings have to be that gloomy ?”). He painted like he felt he had to, and that’s why he is remembered today, and his patrons arent.
Hell, if you’re the kind of person ready to throw a tantrum because your steak didnt come with some butter on it, what would you have said if Picasso had made a portrait of you in cubist style?
It can be all summed up by this, if you’re too uneducated to understand that cuisine is an art, dont waste your time and that of the chef, by going to a chef’s place. Your opinion on this will never matter. The chef’s cookbooks wont be published with your notes on it, claiming that this dish could have used some salt, or why the hell that vichysoisse was served to you cold.
A truly great chef should aspire to gastronomic purity while keeping the tables turning over. Upsetting the balance in either direction is a recipe for failure.
A good chef will be able to make accommodations to satisfy the customers. Heck, at fine dining restaurants we are often asked if we have any preferences or aversions so that the chef can better accommodate us. My husband doesn’t like melon, so one dish served to him, which was supposed to have melon, had citrus instead (mine had melon).
In other words, a good chef isn’t hamstrung by diner preferences. I tasted both versions and both were delicious.
For an average restaurant I’d say the chef’s duty is to his customers. But on the level the OP is referring to, cooking is an fine art. And like any other artist, the chef has to satisfy his own creative principles and vision. His individuality is how he rises above lesser chefs. On that level the customers should already be familiar with his “repertoire,” and if they don’t like it, there are plenty of other places to patronize.
I won’t eat the mushrooms either, and I ask them not to put them on. And I’ve never had any complaint (occasionally forgetfulness though). If it is in a sauce I’ll order something else. But if it is something added while cooking, the fancier the place the happier they are to save the expensive mushrooms for someone who isn’t creeped out by them.