Me, too – It’s the My Wife’s Rule of the Inverse Square of the Empty Parking Spaces.
In the vernacular, look for the crowded restaurant.
Prowling the FLorida Keys for good seafood, my new wife practically screamed at me to stop when she saw a full parking lot. Well, my family would’ve done everything they could to “avoid the crowds” (a mantra where I came from). But I decided to trust my bride’s judgement…
Well, this little roadhouse down a back dirt road was full of locals (in FL, that means Cadillacs with NY tags), to the extent that even at 5pm, we had to eat on the back porch at a picnic table with a couple from New Jersey. Yes, off paper plates. But it was the best shrimp and crawdads and roughy I’ve ever had.
And right here was where I decided that there’s a reason you marry someone from a different background than your own.
We’ve eaten at a couple of places in Salt Lake City, and my husband always ordered a coke. We didn’t really look for alcohol, though. We did notice A LOT of families with kids everywhere we went to eat.
As someone who isn’t allergic to caffeine, just sensitive to it, I never have a decaf coffee that I haven’t made myself - I don’t trust restaurant staff with my coffee, and if I were deathly allergic to something, I REALLY wouldn’t trust them.
I once ended up having a terrible meal because of this rule.
There was a small place in Batavia, NY called Pok-a-dot. Despite its small size, there were always cars there. So I figured it must be really good.
One day, I happened to be in Batavia and felt like a meal. So I decided I should go try Pok-a-Dot.
I went in and took a seat. The waitress asked me what I wanted without even offering me a menu. I figured the regulars must all know the menu. I told her I had never been there before and asked what they served. She told me they served “typical burger joint” food. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries.
This was back several years ago. When the second hand smoking campaigns hadn’t achieved their full power. Restaurants were not legally forbidden from allowing smoking. But most restaurants were already restricting smoking on their own.
It did not take me long to realize Pok-a-Dot was resisting this trend. Every customer besides me was smoking. I think the employees were smoking. I’m pretty sure some of the people were still smoking as they ate their burgers. And I realized the reason why Pok-a-Dot always had a crowd was because it was the place where hardcore smokers went to eat.
And when my burger was served I learned another restaurant rule to live by: Never eat at a place where nobody has taste buds.
I have no doubt that you DO care about the food that you prepare for your guests; I get it and what’s more, I respect and appreciate it.
Do you care that my ENTIRE POINT has been that for people with allergies or other dietary restrictions, briefly communicating those relevant issues with the waiter, inquiring about a specific dish or otherwise letting them know what you want (or don’t want) is not only fine, it’s absolutely mandatory, as again, waitstaff are not clairvoyant and don’t know what you need without being told.
What is NOT fine is going into an overly detailed, uber-complicated spiel about your recently diagnosed, extremely rare medical condition, your spiritually evolved religious philosophy based on the cuisine of the Cherokee Buffalo totem, your aversion to Argentinian produce due to the plight of the farmers in the pampas, a show that you once watched on PBS about the Rawfood movement in Des Moines, IA, or even the time your childhood friend ate at the restaurant where Ted Bundy worked.
Y’know, you yankees can rib us Southerners about a lot of things, and we’ll just smile and say, “Bless your heart.” But when you start claiming barbecue superiority, you’re off your meds.
Not to nitpick, but saying pork barbecue is redundant, like saying beef beef. (a hungry toothy smiley, I like it)
I had a sign for Lion barbecue, but I’d stop for dinosaur BBQ, what the hell. Actually this thread is making me so hungry I had to break into the emergency kielbasa.
If that was your point, you didn’t articulate it particularly well when you first brought it up:
See that bit in the parentheses? That means you are saying, “Restaurant staff don’t care if the reason you don’t want an ingredient is because of a life-threatening food allergy.” Not only have you been proven wrong by the experiences of a customer with such an allergy and a cook, but now you are contradicting yourself by saying that people with such allergies should discuss this issue with the staff. :rolleyes:
Don’t get me wrong - Dinosaur BBQ is very good. But it ain’t Bridge’s. Or Monk’s. Or Mt. Zion. Or Smitty’s. Or about a zillion other places scattered across the South.
They DON’T CARE about your specific allergy, (or religion, or food philosophy or crippling fear of water chestnuts) but that dosen’t mean that you can’t tell them, “Excuse me, I can’t have X in my food, can you please make sure that it will be left out of my entree?”
Then you should ask them again as your food is brought to you, “You made sure to have them leave out the X, right? Great, thanks so much!!!”
Just because they will gladly modify your food as you requested dosen’t mean they CARE, but frankly, I no longer care that you are apparently not intelligent enough to understand this point.
In my experience around here–an area with a high Mormon population–they impose their dietary restrictions on themselves, but not on others. None of my Mormon friends or colleagues have ever discouraged me from having a beer on the golf course, or drinking coffee in the office. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the local restaurants I’ve eaten at are Mormon-owned and operated–and given the places I like to patronize, I can assure you that they have a liquor license and can also make a decent pot of coffee.
I waited tables for nine years in fairly nice restaurants, and I was always blown away that the “fatal allergy” people would even dare to eat out.
I’m not talking about the people who’s throats gets a little tight if they eat too much crab, I’m talking about the people who can have a medical emergency when the car they are driving in passes by a Chinese restaurant and they breath in the atomized sesame oil from the kitchen exhaust. Those people are out there.
If you friend is truly one of these people, then he or she is f**king insane to be eating out. Really.
A busy restaurant is chaos in the kitchen. Food is going everywhere. Orders are mixed up. Food is mixed up. People miscommunicate constantly. Cooks and chefs grab each others knives and tools in a panic. Proper procedure is compromised in a rush. There can be a half dozen to a dozen people involved in the preparation of your meal, and you are going to trust all of them with your life? This is a restaurant, not a neurosurgery theater.
It’s not that people don’t care. Nobody wants someone to die. It’s just that mistakes are made. Shit happens. It’s not fair, I know. A person should be able to safely eat out with his or her family and make a meal request and see it honored. But that is not always the case.
When I was serving I would get people that would say stuff like, “I have a deathly allergy to peanuts and if I eat one or if I even eat any peanut oil I will die. I mean it, I will really die. I want to have the Hunan Kung Pow Chicken, but with no peanuts. Can you absolutely and totally guarantee that my meal will in no way ever come into contact, from start to finish, with peanuts or peanut products?”
F**k no, lady, what are you, crazy? I’m a waiter, not your heart surgeon. This is an insanely busy restaurant, not a level 4 bio lab. See that guy in the kitchen? No, not that guy, THAT guy. No, THAT guy. Yes, that guy. While he looks all spiffy in his kitchen whites, I happen to know that he is coming off a 16-hour Fallout 3 bender. And see that super pissed-off looking girl? She’s super-pissed off because the Earth spins counter-clockwise when viewed from the top, and not the other way around. She is finding it difficult to care right now.
So, no, I can’t guarantee shit. Seriously, you are asking me to take your life into my hands when I really have no effective control over the majority of this process?
So, yea, with regard to your friend, do him or her a favor and eat at your place. Or at least carry an epipen and a cell phone.
Now, I should say that if you are in a small, slow-paced, really nice place with a few chefs in the kitchen and conscientious, unhurried career servers on the floor, you should be all right. But otherwise, it is insane to eat out when you have a life-threatening food allergy. Totally insane.
One other thing I should point out is that many people who play the “deadly allergy” card are actually full of poop (by no means am I suggesting this of your friend). While legitimate sufferers do exist, many people simply want to really, really make sure that there are no mushrooms in their pasta.
See, the last time they ordered the dish they asked for “no mushrooms” and, surprise, they got “mushrooms”. So, this time, they are going to make damn sure there are no mushrooms in their pasta. So they play the “deadly allergy” card. And then halfway through the meal you see them laughing and carrying on and randomly scooping forkfuls from various other complex dishes on the table. This is a really good way to piss of cooks and waiters who put a lot of focused energy into doing their best to ensure you wouldn’t die because you, despite the threat of death, absolutely must have our Nasi Goreng. It’s that good. People like this make life difficult and extra dangerous for workers and real sufferers, and erode the gravity of the issue for workers.
This is rather funny to me- I live in an area where most of the Chinese and Japanese restaurants are run by Korean Presbyterians and Baptists. In this area (near Olympia, WA) you can even tell how good the food is going to be by how much proselytizing literature there is on the table. The best teriyaki is from the nice older Korean ladies who want to save your soul so much they aren’t even open on Sundays.
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.
(a hungry toothy smiley, I like it)