My local newspaper printed a letter today from a woman who said that she and her husband eat out a few times a week, and has noticed that even if she orders the same thing as her husband, she will be served visibly less food, and other people had told her the same thing. They’re still charged the same amount.
I just can’t imagine someone trying to pull a stunt like that nowadays IMNSHO. Has anyone else noticed that, and if so, what did they do about it?
Never had that happen with the wife and myself. Usually the cooks have no view of where or who the food is going to so I don’t get how they would vary the portions based on man/woman.
Yeah I’m pretty skeptical I’ve never noticed it with my wife and I. Though we always tend to order different things so we can try each other’s food;)
Its the logistics that make me skeptical this is not something that could happen with unconscious bias. The kitchen staff have no idea that dish is destined for a female customer, that fact would need to be communicated to them and then which dish is which relayed back to the server
I’ve eaten out in restaurants thousands of times with women in the course of my life, and have never noticed this even once. Even when we order the exact same thing (which happens fairly frequently).
Maybe it’s specific to the letter writer at a particular restaurant?
She seemed to think that the waitperson was indeed telling the cook this, and they would prepare the food accordingly.
Speaking only for myself, I certainly never told a cook, “Give one of them more food” and given the skimpier plate to the woman.
The waiter/server must have specifically told the cook to do this, or told the cook about gender, at the least, because the cook would have no idea who he’s making the food for.
Poppycock! I worked in food service for a number of years as a youth, and there ain’t no way for the line cooks to know the gender of anybody they whipping shit up for.
Click Bait Bullshit
IWSTM, that one disgruntled ex-employee could cost you an order of magnitude more than you could profit by shorting people and ounce of this or that.
Yeah, this is fiction.
The preceding posts that comment on restaurant logistics are correct. In the vast majority of professional kitchens, the server who brings back the order gives it to the expediter (the “expo”) who captures the order in the system. The cooking staff work from tickets, or from barked-out dish names, or a mixture of both depending on the size of the kitchen and the complexity of the organization. The people cooking the food have literally no idea who it’s for.
The only possible way this could happen is if the restaurant is extremely small and there’s one server who is communicating directly to the single line cook.
Total fiction.
One wonders how she determined that. Did she bring a scale and weigh everything?
It was sus to me. I’ll let everyone here know if there is any follow-up in the days to come.
(If anyone’s wondering, spitting in or otherwise tampering with food, also in every place I ever worked at, led to a one-way trip out the door.)
I mean, I’ve seen menus that list a smaller portion of prime rib as the “ladies’ cut”, but you have to order it that way.
The only scenario I can imagine is if the server is bringing out two of the same order but notices one is slightly larger than the other, so gives it to the person who looks like they eat more. But it sounds more like BS.
And men can order it, if that’s what they want themselves.
I wish more restaurants in fact offered the choice of a somewhat smaller sized serving. It seems to me that they set the ‘standard’ order to be what they think will satisfy men of up to, maybe, 90% of the largest customers they generally get, and women are basically forced to order the same size, even though women overall eat less.
IOW, women have to overbuy so the restaurant can feel sure the customers with the biggest appetites won’t go away feeling shorted.
I mean, yeah, there are doggie bags, but not all leftovers reheat well, you don’t always want to eat the meal again that quickly, and lots of time dealing with a doggie bag from lunch until you get done with work or set the play or whatever is awkward or unsafe.
Not my first restaurant job, but my first hands-on waiting tables job was at Denny’s in 1985. At that time, they had a “Senior Menu”, smaller portions for people 55 and over, but we didn’t ID for that any more than we did for the kids’ menu. It was fairly popular.
If it’s something portioned directly in front of the customer, it can happen- this is definitely a phenomenon in our work canteen. One of the staff consistently serves noticeably bigger portions to all the male customers, especially the younger ones, than she does to the female customers.
On a similar note, a friend of mine spotted this happening when ordering a bottle of wine for the table when out with her husband here in the UK. The sequence typically goes: server comes over, gives customer a small glass to try it, asks if it’s OK, then top that up to a proper glass, pours remaining customers a glass, leaves bottle on table. Being that sort of person (a research scientist at the time) she decided to check if her suspicions of bias were based on reality, as they ate out a lot at different restaurants. Every time, she photographed the two newly poured glasses next to each other and recorded who was asked to check the wine and who was given the bill.
In the time she kept up with doing it, which went on for about a year, she never once got the larger serving and only one server poured in a way that wasn’t visibly uneven, who was also the only one who poured both a sample for approval. The rest of the time the server poured one sample and the majority of the time (I can’t remember the proportion, but it was something like 80% of the time), gave it her husband for approval before pouring hers, even though she placed the order every single time. It was a while back, but she was sharing it on social media with pics of the wine glasses. Some of them were fairly close, just hers slightly lower, some were ridiculously different.
Her husband also got presented with the bill every time they gave it to one person, rather than placing it on the table.
They’re both from mainland Europe originally, and this did not happen on trips to visit family, just in the UK. The one server who poured evenly was also Dutch.
So yeah, I won’t argue that there can be bias in restaurants, but as everyone’s pointed out, this can only apply at the customer-facing bit, cos the kitchen normally doesn’t know. Maybe in a small cafe where they can see the customers it could happen - I have worked in a place like that and the chef was making stuff knowing who was eating it, because it was mostly regulars.
As I recall, that used to be common, the same way that golf courses had “ladies’ tees” and “mens’ tees.” Now, golf courses seem to be differentiated according to colored tees and handicaps, and menus seem to be differentiating between 6oz/8oz/10oz in steaks. As you note, prime rib used to have a “ladies’ cut,” but now it goes by all kinds of different names: English Cut, London Cut, British Cut, or whatever. You want to know what the difference is, just ask. In my experience, if you ask, the servers are happy to explain that (for example), English Cut is for the patron who wants some beef, but not a lot; while British Cut would suit a hungry pro wrestler.
Can they not just put that information on the menu? I recall a French meat restaurant which would indicate the cut (rib, belly, sirloin, spider, flank…) and weight. (Also the animal— some of the available choices might surprise you.) Not that they refrained from being cute; for example, you did not have to order a la carte; they had menus, and I recall that the MENU PRESIDENTIEL was subtitled “(menu des gros)”.
I would definitely have to agree. It’s literally unheard of.
One possibility not yet mentioned is that the couple ordered the EXACT same thing; by chance one portion was slightly bigger; and it was the waitperson who set the plates down with bias.