A chef's duty: to the customer or to himself?

Cafe Society
101

You know something? People don’t have the same tastes. When I make soup for just me, I’ll put a hell of a lot of salt in it, because that’s the way I like it. It’s my preferred way of eating it. However, most other people don’t like that amount of salt in it.

A chef might be an artist, and he might very well come up with a dish that is his notion of how flavors mingle. But not everyone loves those same flavors, or those flavors in that amount. If someone doesn’t like mushrooms, and the sauce is based on mushrooms, and it’s possible to serve the dish without the sauce…then maybe the customer DOES know what he likes and doesn’t like, and the customer will be happier without the sauce. I’ve quit going to several places because everything is heavily seasoned with pepper in the prep stage, and there’s no way to get ANY dish without pepper in it. It’s not that I don’t like pepper, but because it triggers my IBS. I’ve ordered stuff, specified “no pepper” and been served something that had pepper in it. The chef drops by, says “don’t you like that dish?” and I say “I tasted it, and I can tell that it has pepper in it, which I can’t eat.” Then the chef says that the dish is SUPPOSED to have pepper in it, and implies that people who don’t appreciate pepper are uncultured. Then I tell him that I’ll eat the dish, and enjoy it, and I’ll stay with him for the next half week while my IBS flares up. At which point he goes and sends out a substitution, or a dessert, or something. Same chef has done this twice. I haven’t gone back a third time.

A chef might be an expert at blending flavors, but if someone HATES or simply is not capable of a certain flavor, that person is not wrong to have his/her preferences or problems. The chef is NOT an expert on other people.

102

But that person is wrong to go to a restaurant whose whole model is based on the concept that customers will put their faith in the aesthetic judgment of the chef in order to experience his or her vision of the dishes he or she creates.

Sure, different people like different things. But not all people go to restaurants with the expectation that they will like everything they eat. Some people go to have a new experience based on the reputation of the creator of the food, and some chefs who have developed their reputations to have level have established restaurants based on the concept that people will come to experience the results of the chef’s judgment and tastes.

If that’s the kind of restaurant you’re going to then you are implicitly agreeing to surrender your own personal ideas about taste and flavours and putting yourself in the hands of the chef. If it turns out you don’t like the food, then that’s part of the eating experience. You try something new – sometimes you like it, sometimes you don’t. The most successful chefs will be the ones that successfully create things that more often fall into the “like” category for most customers. But there is no expectation that everyone is going to be guaranteed that they will like the food. That’s the whole point.

103

This is my EXACT dining pet peeve! I don’t want to have to ask myself,“Do I want to eat it, or take a picture.”

104

Hee, hee. I alternately call them “The Antiques Road Show” or “Frank and Estelle” because they are like the Costanzas.

I get to Bouchon once or twice a year, a Thomas Keller restaurant. It is a highly competitive business in an extremely competitive town and county. They will do anything possible to please a good customer. If they can adjust a dish, they will. I wouldn’t go off menu, but I know trained chefs at decent restaurants who are eager to do that.

105

No. I’m going to a restaurant to enjoy the whole experience, not to subject myself to the ego of the chef. I’m willing to try new foods. After all, I’d never have known that I like mangoes if I hadn’t tried one. But the chef’s job is to make sure that his diners enjoy their meal. The chef doesn’t get to claim that he is an artiste and is entitled to artistic temperament.

106

There’s fast food, dining, and fine dining. With fine dining, you discuss what you would like with the chef well in advance. Like commissioning a portrait, only commissioning a meal.

107

You’re not getting it. If that’s what he wants to do, then, yes, that’s exactly what he gets to claim. It’s the restaurant that gets to decide what its purpose is. Some restaurants are created for the purpose of allowing the chef to exercise his ego. If that’s not what you’re looking for then you’re at the wrong restaurant. If you feel like you’re being forced to eat something you don’t want to eat, you have to recognize that you can’t force a service provider to provide a service he doesn’t want to provide. If you’re not the type of person who’s willing to surrender yourself to a chef’s judgment, then don’t freaking go to that kind of restaurant.

108

That’s why Burger King started using the motto “Have it your way!” Some of its competition at that time would not permit you to make minor changes to the condiments on their burgers.

Or Jack Nicholson trying to order toast.

Or the Soup Nazi.

Look, surrendering to the chef is not a necessary to fine dining. Some establishments require it. Others don’t. It is extraneous to fine dining.

109

Well both, even if only a mental picture. The look of the food is part of the enjoyment the chef hopes you get.

Take Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck. From his tasting menu “Sound of the Sea” is served with an ipod with sea sounds to enhance the flavors.

If you watch any of his TV shows he is like a cross between a mischievious schoolboy, a mad scientist and a master chef. He clearly loves food and will go to any extremes to entertain his guests.

On his site, of the tasting menu, it states:

The tasting menu is a sequence of dishes designed not only to capture a delicious and exciting range of flavours, textures and aromas, but also to bring multisensory appeal, some culinary history and a sense of theatre to the dining experience.

The menu itself says:

The menu can be adapted for most dietary requirements, please notify the reservations department of any special requests upon making a reservation.

but I doubt that you can request alterations upon starting to eat.

I am sure the attitudes of those with orders to impose upon top end chefs is the reason for the proliferation of degustation and tasting menus.

Blumenthal is hardly being a snob, just offering a particular experience. He also owns and operates two pubs in Bray which serve your more normal 3 course meal.

I highly recommend all of his TV series:

In Search of Perfection
Heston’s Feasts
Big Chef takes on Little Chef and
Heston’s Mission Impossible

not only are they great as cooking shows, they are amongst the most entertaining things on TV - informative and funny. And Blumenthal is enormously likable.

110

Exactly. Is this really that hard to understand?

111

Or phone ahead and mention any allergies/severe dislikes. Again, I’ve never had a problem doing this with any level of chef (yes, even at the Fat Duck).

112

Exactly. And this thread, per the OP, is about those establishments that are set up to highlight a particular chef’s food.

99.9% of restaurants in the world are NOT those kinds of restaurants, and many of those are fine-dining restaurants. In those types of places - which are quite good, and often great - it’s perfectly acceptable to ask politely about changes, substitutions, and anything else you want, and most of the restaurants will happily accommodate if they can. But for those .1% of restaurants that are in the first group, yeah, it’s better not to go to them if you absolutely need the chef to do something your way.

Take Next Restaurant, Grant Achatz’s latest, for example. The entire menu changes per a theme every 3 months. Currently, it’s “Paris 1906.” The FAQ specifically states that they are NOT doing a vegetarian option, because it’s impossible to cook the types of food that they want to highlight in a vegetarian manner. Are they wrong to do that? Is it the sign of a snobby chef? Not in my opinion.

Heck, that restaurant doesn’t even have a menu. Everyone gets the same thing. The only substitutions are for a handful of allergies (shellfish, nuts, raw alcohol, raw proteins, legumes, and pork), and those have to be noted when you make the reservation.

Of course, Next is in a class by itself, and differs from a traditional restaurant in a lot of ways. I almost hesitate to bring it up in this thread. But it is the epitome of a chef-as-artist place, a place where if you don’t want to surrender to the chef it really doesn’t make any sense to go there.

113

I think we’re in agreement about those .1% of restaurants that make it clear up front that substitutions are not in the cards. I understand the reasoning there, and agree that the chefs there have a particular dining experience in mind and that if you aren’t looking for that experience you should go elsewhere.

I think we also agree on the 98% of restaurants where there is no “name” chef who has a controlling vision. Those restaurants are a full range of price ranges and dining experiences, and few people would hesitate to ask for reasonable modifications.

The remaining 1.9% of the restaurants are in question. These are places where the majority of the patrons are going because of the chef and the experience he or she has strived to create. Is it OK to ask for reasonable modifications at that level? I think as long as the requests are reasonable (and there’s the rub) then most chefs would not have a problem with it. Some may. Since I rarely eat at those few restaurants where it could be a problem this is more of a hypothetical problem for me. I suppose if the food was good enough and the experience rewarding enough I wouldn’t make a big deal of it.

114

Somewhere in between.

I wouldn’t go to one of Gordon Ramsay’s properties in London expecting to be served roast turkey and mashed potatoes. But if Ramsay were to take the attitude of “You’ll eat what I put on your plate or you can go fuck yourself,” I’d be rather put out as well.

115

Didn’t the OP have a situation where the waiter had taken the order with modifications. The kitchen had then delivered something completely different from what was ordered, without ever telling the customer that they don’t change anything. The restaurant needs to either retrain the waiters so they know what the chef wants, fire the waiters, or provide the customers the thing they asked for. It should not be ok in any restaurant to accept an order for something and deliver something completely different.

116

The OP is misleading for uncareful readers because it cites a discussion of a steakhouse’s imprecision but for this thread asked a different question and specifically excluded that kind of restaurant.

Of course taking an order and then delivering something different is never acceptable. Most of the discussion in this thread has nothing to do with that, though.

117

I have no desire to end a perfectly enjoyable fight, but you know… in my experience, very few chefs are the prima donnas that many posters in this thread assume they are.

Diogenes, among others, is insisting that the chef is an artiste and that anyone who wants him to deviate one iota from his creative vision is a philistine who must be squashed like a bug, and sent to eat at Denny’s.

Thing is, in my experience, VERY few real chefs take themselves THAT seriously. If they did, well:

  1. They wouldn’t put salt or pepper shakers on the table (“I put EXACTLY the right amount of salt and pepper in the food… who do you think you are to change the way I say it should taste???”).

  2. They wouldn’t let YOU choose what wine you drink with the meal (“YOU? You think a peasant like YOU is worthy of choosing the wine that goes with this meal? YOU would pick Boone’s Farm! You are not QUALIFIED to decide- you will drink what I see fit to give you!”).

  3. Heck, they wouldn’t hand out menus at all. (“Did Picasso let customers choose his subject matter? Why should I let YOU pick what you want to eat? You customers should sit down meekly at the table and eat whatever I feel like making.”)
    In reality, most chefs WANT their customers to be happy, and aren’t eager to push the Great Unwashed masses out the door. I recall an incident that got a fair amount of media coverage in Dallas, about 15 years ago. The Mansion at Turtle Creek is one of Dallas’ most elite restaurants, and they serve their own gourmet meatloaf. A customer who ordered the meatloaf had the gall to ask for some ketchup to go with it. The snooty waiter treated the customer like an uncouth idiot for asking for such a thing. The customer wrote to the Dallas Morning News asking what he/she had done wrong?

The executive chef at the time was Dean Fearing, something of a celebrity chef himself. Did HE get huffy and defensive? Did HE insist “I make meatloaf the right way, and putting ketchup on it is like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa! Anyone who doesn’t like my food should get out of my establishment, and go to Burger King”?

That’s apparently what Diogenes and others here think the chef OUGHT to have done, but no! Fearing was apologetic, and said the server should have smiled and gotten the customer some ketchup!

REAL chefs generally DON’T think they’re too good to accommodate small requests.

118

Let me shake your hand.

I once went to a show where everything, and I mean everything from the money you received for hanging in your overcoat, to the different stage shows, to the menu, to the ladies’ comments from hidden speakers in the Gents’, were part of the performance. The thing that really caught my eye in the menu was served with mushrooms and I and one other person in my company asked if it was possible to get it without and there were absolutely no problems. The chef didn’t have to waist something on people who couldn’t appreciate it and we didn’t have to leave it on our plates.

119

Actually, I used to go to a place that didn’t have salt and pepper shakers on the table…but the servers would bring them upon request.

120

Let me pose this hypothetical:

I hate blue cheese. Haaate it. I go to a fine dining establishment and find a dinner entree or a pre-dinner salad where 90% of the components sound extremely interesting and wish to try it. But the selection has blue cheese sprinkled on it.

Would your preference be to ask the waiter if it could be prepared with goat cheese or feta cheese or another cheese that the chef feels is an acceptable alternative, or would you say I should skip it altogether as it’s not what the chef has created for the evening and I’m messing with his or her artistic vision?