Restaurant Menu Tricks (2020)
bbc.com
bbc.com
Nonetheless, for the last six years I cooked I was a private chef on a mega yacht. People ask me if the guests told me what they want to eat. I say never because I never asked what people want to eat. I cooked what I want to eat and then make enough for the guests and crew. It is the best menu strategy. In fine dining, the customers make decisions all day long and in the case of being a private yacht chef, the guests are making million and billion dollar decisions. The last thing they want to do is have to decide what to eat for dinner. The family I cooked for rarely ate off the boat. And when they did it was because I said something like, "I hear there is a very good restaurant in St. Barts named ....," which was code for "I want the night off."
I believe the reason one waitress would sell every last Paris-Brest and the other would sell every last Napoleon was because they told the guests in the restaurant what they wanted to eat for desert. They made the decision for the guests.
Nine times out of ten I'd usually just get the meal of the day from one of the ladies. It was always good, and it was actually kind of fun to wonder what you were going to get! I definitely see the appeal of not having to think about it.
The Special.
Just show up, sit down, turn the coffee-cup right-side up, and order exactly like this before anyone has a chance to put a menu in front of you: "I'll have the special."
If they're doing it right, there will be no questions about your order.
Coffee will show up. Soon after, food will show up.
It will be fast, hot, inexpensive, and of a general quality that is par or better compared to anything else they might be have on the menu at that particular diner.
But reading this and the comments here, it occurs to me we sort of have something comparable: the legendary Full English Breakfast.
(Insert Full Scottish, Full Irish, and Full Ulster as appropriate. I can't remember what it was called but I've had a few Full Welsh as well.)
You go in, and you order a Full English, and that is the extent of your choice. It's generally wonderful.
But that's where the similarity ends.
As an American, even I know that a Full English has a defined set of things included. Sausages, mushrooms, etc: It can't be a Full English without the things that constitute a Full English Breakfast.
But otherwise, the special (or maybe more properly, "the daily special" but nobody ever says it like that) isn't like ordering a Full English at all. The special isn't even a little bit predefined.
The Special could be a club sandwich and potato chips, or meatloaf and mashed potatos, or a burger and fries, or some tacos, or regional fish like Walleye or something. Or whatever.
And the main distinction is that The Special changes daily, and oftentimes there will be different Specials for lunch, breakfast, and dinner.
In American diners, the special is usually written on a sign on the wall and/or maybe outside by the door.
Whatever it is, at whatever time, it's just a reasonably-complete meal that they're selling at a special low price right now that requires minimum effort on everyone's part and that they're prepared to serve a ton of today.
And tomorrow, the special will be something completely different.
A person may or may not be able to order whatever items that comprised yesterday's special, but if they can then the price will be higher today than it was yesterday.
But that doesn't matter, see? Just walk in, order "The Special," and food will show up.
This is still strange to me.
Perhaps the context matters: I am not a fussy eater, and I love street good and cheap eats. I much prefer it to fine dining. But there's a reason for the latter: I'm a lifelong vegetarian. So long as I can get something without flesh in it, I'll eat anything, preferably deep-fried.
But whereas across the British Isles I can ask for a veggie Full English and get something good, I can't imagine walking into a food place and ordering sight-unseen, unless it was a veggie place, and they are typically upmarket and expensive, not the sort of basic joint I happen to prefer.
This thread has been an education. :-)
But the second time I was WTF?!? I asked and got told by the server that they had remembered what I ate and went from there. The process was: if I wanted to order, when we sat, ask for a menu. They sometimes had specials that were different (not just a marked down chicken dish) then we got menus to see them. Otherwise lunch appeared. It was really kind of nice that they knew what we liked and brought it. We seldom had the same plates which was also interesting.
And here it is almost 35 years later and I still remember lunch there. Miss you Jenny and Dave.
We always brought our toddler and at the beginning the lady says assertively something like "I'll take her" and hauls our daughter around the corner. So after about 20 minutes of no sign of daughter I decide to go take a peek at the situation. Well it turns out she has a daughter of her own, Down's Syndrome, it appears to be, and our daughter and the cook's daughter were having a fine time hanging out at the end of the corridor around the corner. I went back to the table and finished our excellent meal.
We are always interested in these sorts of things and now we find them more commonly off the beaten track in Mexico.
I'm not sure why Americans have so many food allergies these days, but I can only guess it something to do with either food quality, or parents that don't make their kids eat various foods. Japan has long had a culture of eating whatever food your parents gave you, and absolutely never wasting food.
As for dietary restrictions, yes, that's absolutely a thing unique to foreigners here. Japanese people don't have silly religious restrictions about food like other cultures, and vegetarianism and veganism are not terribly popular, though they are slowly growing.
It is not only Americans, it is also Europe. My theory it is because of pesticides. I never had Strawberry allergies, except when i bought some from a big producer.
This wouldn't surprise me at all, honestly. I've rarely gone to fancy restaraunts, but when I have, I generally explain to the wait staff what kind of thing I prefer, and then ask them for their advice and just trust it 100%. The way I see it, if they are competent enough to work at a high-end restaraunt, they know what to bring out to get a nice tip.
Side-note: I'm currently watching through the HBO Show "Succession". If you've seen it, (without revealing any personal details) any insight on whether or not the ultra-rich are in anyway similar to how they are portrayed on shows like that? I tend to think that there are probably a mix of good and bad out there, just like any other economic "class" of people, I've just never interacted with people who own literal mega-yachts before, so it's all assumption on my part. I'll also understand if you choose not to say. I'm just trying to get a general feel of what people in that economic group are like in-person. Are they difficult to deal with? Backstab-y? Petty and childish? Genuinely nice and pleasant to be around? Or just kind of chill, but very business minded and self-motivated?
Source: former employment had me dealing with them, mostly subsequent generations, not the actual people who struck it rich personally.
Edit: They've all had bajillion dollar educations so on some level they're not stupid which means they can be reasoned with but the catch is that they can reason back at you.
On duck fat roasted potato with rosemary? drown it in salt. Salt crusted fish? it said it on the menu. Everything else, you'd slap them if they turned the salt grinder this many rotates at the table.
My co-workers are from the whole spectrum. We can sit at a dinner with identical dishes. Me and one more has troubles eating because it's so insanely salty. A couple think it's a bit over salted but very good. One is adding more salt. How are you to please everyone?
I prefer to add salt myself.
I’d rather the chef use the least amount required for proper cooking and leave it to me if I want more (some things absolutely need salt to cook properly, and in general it’s better to have some). It’s easier to add more than remove any excess.
> I prefer to add salt myself
Exactly. On the other hand I might not be enough of an arsehole because I would never complain about something I could fix so trivially myself.
the two strategies to adjust this i've seen, are either
* a sauce boat for sauced dishes, since the sauce is the thing that contains more or less sodium and is controllable
* more so in Asian restaurants, but you can order sides of unseasoned carbs (e.g. rice) to balance it out
Some things just need salt otherwise the result is very different from what is expected (things like pasta and bread, for example, similarly salt is important for some vegetables). Same thing for brined food, it is unreasonable to expect that to be unsalted. We just don’t have to be dogmatic about it.
> the two strategies to adjust this i've seen, are either
For European food, the easiest is just to put a salt pot on the table (and pepper, while we’re at it). It’s important to be able to adjust sauce and salt independently.
A lot of professional chefs do indeed have faulty tastebuds, because they're smokers.
Whenever I eat somewhere new I ask what the staff would have if they were me. It's almost always a very good decision. They tend to enjoy making recommendations, and I often try something I wouldn't have picked myself.
Unless it's a Thai restaurant staffed by native Thai or Korean staffed by Koreans. I can't keep up with that spice.
At less formal restaurants, the staff are chill enough to immediately tell you what they eat.
At high end restaurants, they can tell you because they've had tastings and ingredient drills.
In the middle? You run into the weird "just enough training to pretend to be formal, but not enough to actually have comprehensive menu knowledge." Hence a lot of refusal to make recommendations or braindead "Do you like steak? The steak's good." (And yes, I know all the ways that customers are assholes about recommendations)
I nearly eat daily at my Thai restaurant near work and it’s delicious and I joke with the cook, that what I would call spicy he would not even notice.
Such lovely people, so grateful and caring. I always tip, which is not common in most my country for a meal at a fast food place.
Failed utterly. Paid high prices for meh pastas and the "grilled vegetable plate." Learned my painful lesson and told the food/wine pros I knew that they were full of it. Didn't hurt that one of them came with me one evening to a place he recommended and saw what came out of the kitchen!
I understand that the prices of these items fluctuate due to various factors, but it discourages me from ordering them because I don't want to 1. ask the price (when you're with people you don't know well it brings attention to you possibly spending more than they would on the meal, and can make you come across as a bit overly focused on price/money - could be interpreted as rude or poor manners) 2. potentially say no based on the price and deal with related social vibes that might put off + come up with a backup on the menu 3. not ask for the price at all and be handed a surprisingly large bill. Some of the times I have asked, the waiter will have to physically leave to go check the price, which is also something I want to avoid.
You might say something like "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" but I genuinely don't mind, and can easily afford, paying $50-70 on good seafood when I'm in the mood for it. Crab and lobster are some of my favorite foods, and their market price often comes in around there. So in the course of my life restaurants have probably lost out on hundreds or maybe a couple thousand in sales because of "market price". I'm not sure if this simply something most restarateurs are unaware of, it not being worth it to reprint menus or even put the market price on a blackboard somewhere, or some other psychological phenomenon I'm unaware of - maybe putting a larger price on the menu discourages most other people from ordering it or, makes other diners think the restaurant is "too expensive" even if not ordering it, or pisses diners off when they pay $X one week and come back and see it's at $X+20. Is there a canonical reason?
An Americana classic styled sandwich made with grill style beef patty, melt grade American cheese, two pillow soft buns with organic sesame seeds, and a dash of our back of the house made ketchup.
There’s a difference. :-)
Hamburger (smash patty, charred onion, mornay, frites) $27
That's the idiom these days: a name, and in parens a short list of attributes.
nowadays everybody wants to upsell truffle or fois gras to add a few more $$ to that burger. Sigh.
We had a story a year or so back about the best cheeseburger in the country (according to one respected reviewer, whose reviews generated lines around the block for places). It was in the $8 genre, and people were upset!
Enlarged duck liver, typically liver 10x larger than normal, usually through force feeding. Banned in some countries.
I'm surprised in the current age of being socially aware that this seems to be a trending food?
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-...
wonder what happens if you try to pay with 22.05?
The only adjective likely to make it onto the menu at a white-tablecloth restaurant is "house made", and even that would be on thin ice. The chef would prefer that you just know that of course he's making his own ketchup.
There's a great chapter on this in Dan Jurafsky's book:
https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/thelanguageoffood.html
(The book is almost ten years old, but the trends have only exaggerated since then.)
The reason being that customers of high-end restaurants assume that everything being sold is fresh. If it has to be pointed out in a menu description, that implies that the other items are not fresh or that there's some reason why the place needs to point out a quality that is table stakes. It therefore raises doubt about the quality of the restaurant.
(Troy: "It said market price. What market do you shop at!?")
Also, how come you responded to my comment about lobsters and not my email about containers?? (kidding mostly... but do let me know if you want to chat containers)
It's nearly 2025 and qr codes are a thing. "Scan this code for the current MP (market price)/ TOD (time of day price)/ HTBF (how the boss feels price)/ WBTYAP (we've been tracking your amazon purchases)/ WR (wrong race [...etc] price." As it'll all be on your phone, it'll be up to you to hide, or show, your emotions as the $€££ (sell) price comes up.
weitendorf> but it discourages me from ordering them because I don't want to 1. ask the price (when you're with people you don't know well it brings attention to you possibly spending more than they would on the meal, and can make you come across as a bit overly focused on price/money - could be interpreted as rude or poor manners) 2. potentially say no based on the price and deal with related social vibes that might put off + come up with a backup on the menu 3. not ask for the price at all and be handed a surprisingly large bill. Some of the times I have asked, the waiter will have to physically leave to go check the price, which is also something I want to avoid.
They will however only tell you the price of the specials if you specifically ask, and if you don't ask they'll often not volunteer that information. I have on a few occasions 'screwed' myself by assuming that starter that was the special would be roughly the same price as all the other starters on the menu, only to get the bill and find out it was almost twice the price.
This happens with restaurants that are buying their seafood fresh off the docks (in my part of the US, anyway) because the price the restaurant pays for it can vary by a lot from day to day. The restaurant effectively can't predict what the price will be, so they can't really put the price on the menu unless they set it very high.
Edited to add: That said, about half of the local restaurants that sell fresh seafood around here have a chalkboard visible from the street or lobby that says what the market prices currently are. If you know what you're getting, or have a good memory, you don't have to ask anyone.
“The restaurant industry has probably spent tens of billions of dollars over the years trying to understand menu design, menu engineering and psychology,” he says. “But the opportunities presented by the fourth industrial revolution are huge. Imagine being able to order a meal that has been designed to include your favourite foods with a single click.”
Well, no, as the article suggests, AI will instead be used to direct diners to the most profitable menu item.
Brand: XFREUTIXUN
Brand: ORANCHIC
Low returns: Most people don’t return this
I understand that the people he interviewed are likely in the business of profit making but as a journalist for the BBC I would have hoped for a more honest take.
"Put the most expensive item first so that the others seem more reasonable"
That's just messed up and not something to be celebrated IMHO
Are they afraid I'm a snoop from corporate ?
Even if they won’t explicitly say which they prefer, you can almost always tell which is best from facial reactions.
Usually gets a laugh and a good answer.