# Restaurant Rules to Live By **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 18, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093 "2011-03-18T00:40:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/181 "2011-03-20T23:09:43Z")
I understand that y’all are a passionate crew, but please back off the personal insults. Thanks, **twickster** , Cafe Society moderator ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/182 "2011-03-20T23:50:23Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > What’s non-vegetarian about cheese? Did you mean vegan? I’m under the understanding that there are different schools of thought on vegetarianism, including whether vegetarians can eat eggs or cheese (or eggs AND cheese). I think Veganism is much stricter than a vegetarian who doesn’t eat ovo-lacto, but I dunno personally. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/183 "2011-03-20T23:58:09Z")
> [@PookahMacPhellimey](#): > > Yet another corollary to Core Competency: the longer the menu, the less likely they are to be able to competently cook all of those dishes. Shorter menus usually mean better food. > > Some of the best restaurants here have either handwritten menus of just three or four choices per course, or no menu at all; the waiter comes and tells you what they’ve got that day. I have high hopes for a new BBQ place going in on the boulevard for just that reason. They are revamping an old Church’s building, and I got to talking with the new owner. He plans on selling tri-tip sandwiches, fries, and a few sides. That’s it. If his cooking matches his enthusiasm, I’m there for lunch every day. A spin-off could be: the smaller the restaurant, the better your chances. The best taco place in town seats 6. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/184 "2011-03-21T00:42:55Z")
Just to be clear, I was joking about the fact the restaurant I linked to had a dinosaur motif rather than a pig motif. I’ve eaten barbecue in the north and barbecue in the south. You get better barbecue in the south. But New York makes better pizza. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/185 "2011-03-21T00:54:09Z")
Core Competency breaks down when the kitchen gets put on wheels. Korean tacos are proof Og loves us. ---
**Author:** ![Zago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecccb3/32.png) [@Zago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zago)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/186 "2011-03-21T01:02:33Z")
Where I live (Boston metro) restaurants _ **definately** _ pay attention if you tell them you have an allergy. Restaurants may find it a pain to cater to allergic patrons but they pretty much have to in order to stay in business around here. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Nader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Darth\_Nader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Nader)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/187 "2011-03-21T01:02:44Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > The best taco place in town seats 6. …and the menu is painted on the wall. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/188 "2011-03-21T01:16:10Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > A spin-off could be: the smaller the restaurant, the better your chances. The best taco place in town seats 6. > [@Darth\_Nader](#): > > …and the menu is painted on the wall. Both of those points describe the best pizza place I found in years of living in Toronto. Family-run, seating maybe six or eight–or nine, if Mamma could be convinced to give up her chair behind the counter–and as per a point brought up earlier, there was often homework left open on the soft-drink chest (the few tables were for customers). And it was the best pizza in town. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/189 "2011-03-21T02:15:12Z")
Emory center for heart failure gave me one rule for restaurants: Avoid restaurants. ---
**Author:** ![Charley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@Charley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charley)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/190 "2011-03-21T09:46:09Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > I’m under the understanding that there are different schools of thought on vegetarianism, including whether vegetarians can eat eggs or cheese (or eggs AND cheese). Specifically, the issue with ‘normal’ cheese tends to be the use of rennet in the cheese making process. Rennet is most often taken from animal sources: the lining of the stomachs of calves. Vegetarian cheese will have been made using non-animal rennet. Like most things with an individual’s dietary rules, it really depends on how strict you are with your own limitations. ---
**Author:** ![kombatminipig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5ac83/32.png) [@kombatminipig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kombatminipig)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/191 "2011-03-21T09:56:10Z")
> [@Darth\_Nader](#): > > Dude. You should try their Borscht Ceveche Parmigiana. Ask for extra rose water on the side. As a Swede, I take affront at this. The Herring Ceveche Parmigiana is, on the other hand, awesome. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/192 "2011-03-21T10:09:13Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > On the other hand, it’s extremely bad publicity for someone to die conspicuously on the floor of their restaurant as a result of food that they assured the customer was safe to eat, even after being warned about the ingredient’s potential to cause death. They could also be criminally and civilly liable for the death. Would they? How much of a level of care does a general multipurpose run of the mill restaurant owe to the patron to guarantee that ingredient X is not inside the food on pain of death? I totally get it that the vegetarian restaurant using lard to fry food is going to have problems - that’s not I am talking, what we are talking here is the normal restaurant that doesn’t remove all of the cheese from a salad. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/193 "2011-03-21T10:18:07Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > Hate to keep harping on the Mormons, but would they serve coffee, tea, Coke, wine, or cocktails in a restaurant that catered to tourists? If they even had such a restaurant? I understand one can have a pleasant dining experience without such things, but I think anyone would look askance at a menu listing flavors of Koolaid, LOL! Is there such a thing as Mormon cuisine? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/194 "2011-03-21T10:43:53Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Core Competency breaks down when the kitchen gets put on wheels. Korean tacos are proof Og loves us. That’s not core competency, that’s someone else’s rule about combining ethnicities. And I agree, it’s not always a good rule. Banh Mi French/Vietnamese sub sandwiches are God’s disproof of the rule. Core competency means you don’t go to the Korean taco truck and order a hamburger. ---
**Author:** ![Purd\_Werfect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@Purd\_Werfect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Purd_Werfect)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/195 "2011-03-21T11:38:38Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Is there such a thing as Mormon cuisine? I would imagine hot dish/casseroles are pretty prominent. Large families call for frugality. To respond to posts earlier in the thread, my wife and I stayed on Moab, Utah years ago, and it was fine food wise. Beer and wine at the restaurants we went to, and decent food, including quite satisfactory BBQ at one place. I understand that Moab may not be representative, but there is good food to be had, it just may be sparse. There was also an espresso place that opened at 5:00am so we could get our coffe and drive out to arches prior to the sun rise. Also, a friend of mine from Salt Lake City swears by [The Red Iguana](http://www.rediguana.com/home.html), a Mexican inspired restaurant in SLC. I don’t know how authentic it is, but the menu sure looks good. They even have Pibil on the menu. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/196 "2011-03-21T13:15:55Z")
In regard to fatal allergies, I think if I was running a restaurant and some patron told me that had fatal allergies to even small quantities of something I knew we used, I think I’d politlely decline to serve them anything wasn’t prepackaged, heated up in sealed package, and dumped on plate for serving. ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/197 "2011-03-21T13:16:11Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > As mentioned, each distinct cuisine a restaurant offers lowers it’s quality by about half. Except in cases where certain fusions make perfect _historical_ sense. Bahn Mi sandwiches, the fusion of French and Vietnamese is one such example. The long long French presence in Vietnam (and the entire region) makes French/Vietnamese fusion remarkably sensible. [Cuban-Chinese](http://chineseculture.about.com/od/chinesecuisine/a/CubanChinofood.htm) is dying as a trend but another historically reasonable amalgamation. > [@RealityChuck](#): > > 1. In a new city, never eat in a restaurant chain that you can eat at back home. It’s pretty silly to travel 1000 miles to eat at an Applebee’s. There are times, however, when it makes perfect sense to go for the chain. We were staying outside of Beckley, West Virginia, a town of roughly 16,000. Anything that wasn’t a suspect looking hole in the wall (where the food was probably good but the atmosphere perhaps not so welcoming to outsiders, especially not black outsiders) was a chain – with the exception of the Chinese buffet, run by a Chinese family with homework on the back table and the most authentic and unusual Chinese dishes I’ve ever seen at a buffet in my life. > [@tim314](#): > > As a vegetarian, I certainly don’t give my rationale, but I _will_ say “Can it be made vegetarian?” or “Can you leave X out? I’m a vegetarian.” Otherwise, you say “Can you leave the chicken out?” only to find when you get your order that the menu neglected to mention that it contains bacon, and it didn’t occur to your waiter that this might also be an issue for you. I never, ever ask “can it be made vegetarian?” because, thanks to utter fools who eat fish, or worse, _chicken_ (or bacon) while claiming to be vegetarians, the word has lost any common cultural understanding. I say very specifically “I need this with no meat, poultry, bacon, or seafood of any kind, and no chicken broth, veal stock, any kind of meat broth or stock, can you do _that_?” Without specifics, you’ll get something you’re not bargaining for, especially in food with sauces. The hidden broth, man. Damn hidden broth. > [@Leaper](#): > > What’s non-vegetarian about cheese? Did you mean vegan? It’s not that a cheese lasagna isn’t vegetarian per se, it’s that it’s not a _vegetable_ lasagna, with actually vegetables in it, which is what a lot of people think of when they see “vegetarian” lasagna. Both a vegetable lasagna and a cheese lasagna are vegetarian, but only one has vegetables in it. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/198 "2011-03-21T14:43:40Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > As mentioned, each distinct cuisine a restaurant offers lowers it’s quality by about half. > [@tumbleddown](#): > > Except in cases where certain fusions make perfect _historical_ sense. Fusion is not the same thing as multiple distinct cuisines under one roof. For that matter, most distinct traditional cuisines themselves involve “fused” elements. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/199 "2011-03-21T15:37:27Z")
If you eat at a buffet, ONLY go during lunch or dinner hours when they are busy. There are few things worse than a buffet with the food sitting around because business is slow. ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093/200 "2011-03-21T17:39:27Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Is there such a thing as Mormon cuisine? Mormon cuisine, from what I’ve gathered, has a large emphasis on using shelf-stable (canned, especially) foods, since part of the tradition is to have a very large pantry at your disposal. I think it might be several months worth of food at a time? And of course that has to be cycled through so as to not go bad. There’s also a lot of Jello, and I’m told the frog eyes salad\* is Mormon. You can debate whether fry sauce is Mormon or Utahan, but then, I’m neither, and I love good fry sauce. \*Neither a salad nor made of frog eyes, really. It’s sort of like ambrosia meets tapioca pudding by way of orzo. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restaurant-rules-to-live-by/575093.md?page=11)