(As inspired by this thread) When I lived in the Denver area, it was often rumored that the many Korean restaurants in Aurora had secret menus, written in Korean so they are kept away from the round eyes of Caucasians and blacks, that included the “good stuff” the restaurateurs didn’t want them to know about. Same thing here in Cleveland; supposedly, restaurants in the Chinatown area have secret menus with the real authentic cuisine that would otherwise be unappetizing to the natives; chicken beak soup and the like.
So, do restaurants really have secret menus, reserved for members of the ethnic group who are “in the know?”
I’ve been to a number of Chinese restaurants that do. I’m not sure if they are “secret”, in the sense that if you asked, the waiter would feign ignorance or something, but I imagine they are kept off the regular menu precisely for the reason you state - most of it is fairly unappetizing to non-natives, intermingling it with the sweet and sour pork is just going to turn them off on everything.
I can say that several restaurants here absolutely do. Like some places in Chinatown–the menu is not secret so much as you have to be able to read Chinese to get at it. Other places have a translated native-language menu if you ask for it. Some places don’t have a translated native menu, but if you look online for the local foodie message boards, you may find that some posters have done the legwork already.
So, depending on your definition of “secret,” these types of menus exist.
Some restaurants do, even some American restaurants, at least non-chain ones. Small, locally-owned restaurants are often very responsive to regular customers. Get to know them and let them know what you want. They’ll oblige as often as not.
For ethnic food restaurants, that sometimes means having an authentic menu that hasn’t been adjusted for American tastes. Cooks at American restaurants will often have specialties that aren’t in the menu (either the dish is still experimental, or they took it off from lack of popularity), but will still have the ingredients available.
“Secret” is probably a bit too cloak-and-dagger a description, but I have been in Korean restaurants where sections of the menu are untranslated, or where I’ve seen Korean customers being given different menus.
Although it does make me feel a little excluded and I always suspect there’s something on their traditional menu that I might like, I also figure most of it is probably segregated for good reason: to prevent clueless Westerners like me from gazing down in regret at a steaming bowl of jellyfish quivering in bile sauce.
It’s not secret. It’s just that there are so many potential dishes that restaurants have to decide on a subset to put on the menu. But that doesn’t mean that the chefs can’t make the dishes that are missing.
For example, when I’ve been dining with Indian friends, they often ask whether the chef knows how to make some regional dish or other from the area of India they’re from, and they almost always get what they ask for. There are many regions in India, and countless dishes from those regions. There’s no way any restaurant could include all permutations on the menu.
But it’s not to do with ethnicity: I love channa masala and palak paneer, but one or other of them is invariably not on the menu in the Indian restaurants we go to. But I have never, ever, been refused either dish when I’ve asked - they’re such staple dishes, that every chef has both the knowledge and the ingredients to make them up specially for me.
Where it comes to Chinese food, I’d imagine the number of western consumers ordering pig’s stomach or duck’s feet is close to vanishing, so they don’t bother putting those things on the menu.
Yeah, when I go to Thai places withe my Thai coworkers, they invariably ask for something off the menu. I don’t think it’s really secret so much as the cook is happy to make native dishes for them.
I frequent a local sushi place that has items not found on the menu. I discovered this one night when the sushi chef sent out a plate that I hadn’t ordered. The waiter told us the chef wanted us to have this special item. It was awesome. I asked my waiter what it was so I could order it again, and he told me you couldn’t order it. Since then he has sent something out every so often.
When you see pig’s stomach or beef tendon or duck hearts on the Chinese menu, but not on the English menu, it’s kind of hard not to say it has nothing to do with ethnicity. I suppose you can say it has to do with “local tastes” if you want to be nicer about it, but there’s often quite a different set of dishes on the English and Chinese menus, and it pretty much does have to do with ethnicity and the type of food those customers are used to and expect.
Anyhow, enough places around here have gotten wise to the fact that there are a lot of adventurous local eaters that they have translated their Chinese menu or include certain “authentic Szechuan dishes” or whatnot in addition to the normal English menu.
Presumably, they don’t include any dishes that would require ingredients that are going to run afoul of local laws.
Why would chicken beaks be less acceptable to a health inspector than any other part of a chicken? Presumably they get them from the same distributors and keep them in the same sort of conditions as they do the rest of the chicken.
I really don’t see a restaurant in the US serving dog, even off the menu. Could you see the uproar if dog-loving people in the community found out a restaurant was serving dog? You’d have to cross a picket line of protesters to get into the restaurant, and I wouldn’t be surprised by threats or vandalism directed at the restaurant or its owners.
You might be surprised. My wife’s family comes from around Gettysburg, and pig stomach (which I love) is very popular. How is it cooked Chinese style?
When we go to Chinatown with our friend from Hong Kong, we never get anything off the menu. But non-ethnic restaurants do this also. The Murky News had an article about what you could order off the menu at local places. I’ve ordered chirashi at places I’ve never been to before, since I know it is no problem to prepare. Never had a problem getting it off the menu.
I know that In cannot get legit hot dishes in most Thai places, but when I went out with my old college professor who lived in Thailand, he asked for them and they complied when they heard him (american) speak Thai.
I finally got real Thai spice when they asked me how hot on a 1-4 scale and I said ‘five’. I did this three times in a row and they finally gave in.
Sometimes it can work in the reverse way you’ve described. On one occasion, I walked into a restaurant, dressed scruffily, to reserve a table for later. They gave me a copy of the menu that sounded pretty cool to me (e.g. shark’s fin), but put off most of the other people that I was reserving the table for.
It later transpired that they’d given me the “authentic” menu, and I wonder whether they’d done it deliberately to put me off.
Also, I followed your link about dog meat. I had no idea that they tortured the dogs.
My favourite Indian restaurant has several “off menu” dishes, that are not listed, he says, because “all Indians know that any good restaurant has them, and not many non-Indians ever order the items.” He happily lists off the items if I ask him, and it’s not really a secret. I just think it honestly never occurred to him that anyone non-Indian would want them. Which I think is crazy, because there’s very little to no difference between the general type of food and what’s on the main menu (except that more items are served “sizzling”, on a hot plate).
My uncle’s German restaurant in Ohio had a separate German menu with things like pigs knuckles, and tongue, and sweetbreads, and chicken necks, that weren’t on the English menu.
Just a practical matter of keeping the English menu to manageable size and still having a way to sell all the parts of the animals.
I have several off menu items. At least that is what i call them and usually a special dish or dessert of reserved portion for the “good” customers/friends.
I love it. Some of them even have names and I love it when someone in the knows asks for one of the items. It is quite entertaining to me when one of the customers asks if i have any special desert hidden in the back and the tourists craine their neck to see what it is they are getting. It is not always better than what I am offering to everyone else. But it is special. And no they cant have it (depending on the item). If my daughter picked berries all day in the Alaskan wilderness you can bet your ass I am not gonna sell a slice of that pie. It will go unappreciated. It is for locals that know my daughter and the place the berries were picked and know the trouble one had to go to get them and appreciate how hard it is to get goods up here. That is just one example of a special off menu item.
Others I am not so hard core about. Some, I am more.
