TheFoodTutor

Well put. This is precisely why I wouldn't put up with this behavior from friends. I am friends with people whom I perceive to be my equals, and if my friends express to me that they perceive me to be inferior to them, or somehow lower on the pecking order, they cease to be my friends. A few minutes late is one thing, or perhaps even 15 if one is caught in traffic and forgot to bring a cell phone, but being chronically late and not calling to indicate that something is amiss is a slap in the face. I'm sorry, but I have too many friends to put up with that sort of nonsense.

I agree totally that having a bad server experience is completely indicative of the business practices of the owner and/or chef, as much as having a bad experience with front of house management is indicative of how loanworthy that business is. Now, whether someone has enough ice for his or her water is a pretty trivial issue, but it's not likely to provoke snarls from waitstaff IF they are working at a place they believe in, and which believes in them in return. You do have to give a little to get something in return. Now, I'm not saying anything revolutionary, as far as actually paying servers minimum wage in the US, providing health insurance or any of the many costly things that could push a good restaurant out of business, if one stepped out of line with all of the other restaurants and started treating servers like regular employees. God forbid that should happen, since the norm dicates that this would be so prohibitively expensive that restaurant owners who are driven by morals would certainly lose out to those who are not, but anyway. . . But, frankly, there are a lot of mistakes that restaurants here make when dealing with their "sub-human" server employees. For instance: *If you're running a special, and the chef brings out a 3-ounce taste for a staff of 14 servers to get an idea of what it tastes like on the first night of the special, but on subsequent nights doesn't offer even a small taste of this special for the 30% of the staff that didn't work on the one night that a minuscule taste was offered, expect that this staff will not effectively sell this special. *If servers ask questions about preparations, portion sizes and ingredients, and they are met with looks of disdain from the chef for their ignorance, expect that they will become bitter. *If your restaurant has a policy that there is no family meal, no employee discount of any kind, and a server can be fired for even sneaking a crumb of bread during a shift as long as 14 hours, or for trying to pay full price for food taken home in a "to go" box at the end of the shift, expect that the servers will be so bitter that they will not represent your restaurant in an appropriate manner. Some of the things I've seen in this business are frankly appalling. If you provide an environment where servers are met with anything not resembling hostility, they generally tend to try to do their jobs as well as humanly possible. Honestly, this is elementary stuff, and yet so many restaurants do it so, so wrong. For crying out loud, you're getting a full time employee for $2.13 an hour with no benefits of any kind, people! How hard is it to treat that person with a teensy bit of respect? And I ask this as someone who has been thoroughly surprised with the dedication I've seen from my server employees as a manager. If you decide to treat your employees like crap, they will communicate to your customers that they should go somewhere else, period.

Yes, please, I would like that.

Yup. That's the truth. A few years ago, I was managing a restaurant that's part of a large chain, the sort of place that serves predictable burgers and a few mild Tex-Mex items. They did a lot of to go business, and I received a complaint one evening from a gentleman who had picked up dinner for his family, and he wanted to inform me that there was a layer of mold on the top of his cup of salsa. Now, since I knew that we didn't pre-pour cups of salsa, and that they were scooped to order, there would be no way for mold to grow on the surface of the salsa, and if we did actually have mold growing in the salsa, which would be very unlikely, that it would be distributed through the salsa when whoever had ladled this particular cup disturbed the salsa in the bin. Moreover, I knew that our salsa bin was right next to our chip warmer, and sometimes a white corn tortilla chip would fall into the salsa, where it would disintegrate into a soggy mass. This is not unsanitary, and one can just scoop it out, or ladle around it to avoid getting soggy chip schmeg in the cup. But I also knew that my to go girl was constantly hard at work, dreaming up smokey love letters to write to our bartender, so she obviously was distracted, scooped the soggy chip into his cup, and he assumed that this was "mold." So, I invited the man to come into our kitchen, which he did, and I showed him the salsa bin, next to the chip warmer, and explained the situation. I then pulled the 1/3rd pan out of the low boy and showed him the date sticker, indicating the salsa was made fresh that morning. Then, I took him back to the walk-in and showed him exactly how much fresh salsa we prepared every day, and how as many as 20 1/3rd pans would be used in less than 24 hours, so salsa never sits around long enough to get moldy, and all of the remaining 1/3rd pans were, indeed, dated from that day's prep. And then I asked him if he was satisfied that there was no mold in his salsa, and if there was anything else I could possibly do for him. And though he agreed with me that there could not have been mold in the salsa, he took this opportunity to ask me to refund the bill for his entire family's meals, because, in his words, "I couldn't eat my chips and salsa, and I can't eat Mexican food without chips and salsa." And you know what? I gave him all his money back, and I refrained from pointing out that the food we served was about as far from actual "Mexican" food as I could think of, because really, there's no need to be snotty, even when you're eating a shit sandwich.

That's an extraordinarily nice story. I wish that more people would take an adventurous attitude to trying new foods this way. For my personal preference, as far as the cooking of vegetables, because I grew up mostly eating canned vegetables and sometimes frozen ones, those being cheaper and more plentiful in the area where I lived, I far prefer fresh vegetables that are very lightly cooked now. Asian styles of quickly stir-frying vegetables are the ones I like best. In my adulthood, I've been surprised to learn that it wasn't actually a certain vegetable that I didn't like, but rather the mushy version of that vegetable that repulsed me. To each his own, I guess.

Thank you. Those look very good. I was actually thinking that sesame seeds would go well, too, and since I've got plenty of them around, I may try that.

What kind of seeds are sprinkled on top of traditional Dhokla?

Not to worry. My restaurant is a smirk-free workplace. After all, there really are not stupid questions. In fact, I'm guilty of asking too many questions, most of the time. My boyfriend gets upset when I ask servers questions about food items on the menu, even when I don't intend to order those items, simply because I want to know what certain foods are or what their preparation involves. The only times I ever say anything snotty to a guest is when I'm absolutely sure the guest will get the joke. One day, a customer asked me if he could have some more water and I responded, "No. You can't. We're out of water." Of course he laughed, and I went and got his water. Having a sense of humor is a must if one works in this profession for any length of time.

I try. I like telling funny stories about the people I see in the busier restaurant where I work, because people say some really silly things, and the more people you see, the sillier the things that you will witness. You know, people could just ask me what the word "sashimi" means, and I'd tell them. I've answered the question, "What kind of pasta is in the risotto?" enough times that I'd even answer with a straight face. How does part of an animal die? ← Are there restaurants in Japan where they hack off bits of cattle while they're still alive, or is that an urban legend? Presumably, people who would go there probably know what they're ordering, though, so I guess that would be a moot point.

And I'm sorry if it appears "haughty" to other folks out there, but if you have enough brain power to remember the first and last names of the latest contestants on the reality show du jour, is it too much to expect that you know enough about food to be able to order in a restaurant? I mean, in the case of the "seared" "sashimi" tuna, an animal died for this dish (or at least part of one), and I think it is the utmost in arrogance for patrons to insist that the dish be sent back and have another one prepared, because in spite of the best of warnings, they still didn't figure out that the fish would be nearly raw, and horror of horrors, they can't be expected to actually try something new, even when it's something perfectly safe for human consumption. For Pete's sake, people, when I go to restaurants and I unwittingly order something that turns out to be very different from what I thought it would be (which does happen to me sometimes, since I go to strange restaurants staffed by non-English speakers all the time) I just go ahead and try it to see if I like this new, strange thing. And if I don't really like it that much, I box it up to go so that I can eat it later or let my friends try it. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching Steve Martin in that scene from "The Jerk" where he sends back his escargot because it has snails all over it. Cripes.

You're certainly allowed to not like seared tuna. As I mentioned before, I personally prefer tuna as sashimi or possibly seared (if done correctly) and lesser cuts of tuna can be cooked through, but I prefer to let others eat the lesser cuts of tuna. But you should know that a server is not necessarily being "haughty" when telling a patron what the word "seared" means. Before I served the public, I thought that everyone was like an eGulleteer, having watched numerous cooking shows (after all, there is a whole network) and it's nearly impossible to watch more than a couple of cooking shows and not notice that, when cooks "sear" things, they just briefly let it touch the pan on both sides. Now, at the restaurant where I work, it not only clearly lists that the tuna salad will come "seared," but the menu goes into overkill by also describing it as "sashimi," just in case anyone might not get the hint that it's going to be mostly raw. On top of that, if someone points at the description of this salad on our menu, and they hesitantly ask me if it's a good salad, and whether they should order it, I answer, "Oh, that's a terrific salad. Perfectly seared tuna, just barely cooked for a brief second on the outside, almost raw throughout. It's a great option for fans of sushi." Since I'm pretty good at guessing which of my customers don't like raw fish (hint: they pronounce the name of the salad "sash-aw-mi"), this way I can watch them recoil at the idea that anyone would put raw tuna in his mouth without actually wasting the food item in question, and they immediately say, "EEEeeeewwwwwww! No, I wouldn't like that." And then they order something else. Now, if I'm delivering a salad of this type to a table where a less knowledgable server has not properly indicated what this salad will be like, I do always make a point of telling the guest that, since it says it's "seared" on the menu, that means that the tuna will be nearly raw, so if you don't like it that way, please do not order it again, or at least ask for it to be fully cooked if you do order it, because it's very costly for restaurants to be wasting sushi-grade tuna over and over until patrons learn what words mean. Moreover, it's a crap experience for the guest, because everyone else at the table will have their food while the one person who doesn't like seared tuna sent it back and is waiting for it to be recooked. Would you rather I say nothing and let the patron waste 5 pieces of fish before he or she figures out that "seared" means "mostly raw?" Personally, I'd rather not. It hardly seems moral for that much fish to go to waste.

I've never heard of parsley jus. Is that a California thing?

That is, in a nutshell, the problem. The people who go to restaurants and don't understand what the word "seared" implies. Basically, you can have your tuna fully cooked, or cooked medium, or whatever you want, but it is really a pain in the butt and a half to have to explain to every single human being who crosses the threshold of the restaurant what "seared" means. If I had a nickel for every person who ordered our "seared" "sashimi" tuna salad, and then backed away from the table when it was presented going, "Eewwww! I can't eat RAW fish! I didn't know it was going to be RAW!" well, then, I'd have a heck of a lot of nickels. And while I was sitting on my mountain of nickels, I'd chuck copies of Webster's at all the idiots who don't know how to read menus.

Ew. Well, was the bartender cute enough that you'd kiss him on a first date, at least? I try to look at potentially unsanitary things that way, sometimes. Regardless, I'd have asked him to pour me another Diet Coke. This reminds me of a time when I was having a margarita on my day off at a restaurant I managed. One of my employees had delivered the drink to me, and since it normally is served with a little cocktail straw, he noticed that there wasn't one in the drink and offered to go get me one. I accepted his offer, and he went to the bar and put an unwrapped cocktail straw on a napkin, which is generally the way you deliver unwrapped straws, because it appears cleaner than if you were to carry an unwrapped straw directly in your hand. He set the napkin down with the straw on it in front of me, pointed at the straw and said, "I have no idea how that straw came to be on that napkin, but there it is." That's just one of those things that industry insiders say to each other, because of course I knew that he'd touched the straw. Anyway, thanks for empathizing, Tess. It means a lot to me.

This reminds me of a situation where a customer clearly did not understand this. I work in a restaurant that occasionally offers key lime pie as a special during certain months. The pie is very good, and it's quite popular, but of course we can't always have it, because key limes are seasonal. In winter, we run a cheesecake made with pumpkin and squash, because it's more fitting to have that at that time. So, anyway, one day I greeted a table where the lady, before even ordering a beverage, asked me immediately if we had key lime pie, because she really wanted some. I told her that we did have it that day, but we were down to our last 3 slices, so I should probably go ahead and put in her order, lest we run out by the time she finished her meal and was ready for dessert. When we ran out of key lime pie, it usually took about 3 hours for the new batch to set up so that we could have it as a special again. So she got her key lime pie, but she continued to talk to me about it. She asked me, "Why would you ever run out?" Umm, you mean, why don't we always have enough key lime pie that if thousands of people came in and they all wanted a slice, we'd have it ready for them? This restaurant has 5 walk in coolers, but I don't think we have enough room for that much pie. I pondered her question, perplexed, for some time, and then I asked my best friend what sort of answer he could come up with for the question, "Why would you ever run out?" And he said that he'd have responded, "Because we're idiots, ma'am." and left it at that.

My boyfriend always refers to the latter as "eating with the Rockefellers" because that's what his dad used to say to his mom when she didn't get dinner on the table until later in the evening. "Oh, we're eating just like the Rockefellers today, having dinner at 9 o' clock at night!" I really have never figured out why he said that, unless the Rockefellers were known to eat dinner late. Anyway, it is a much nicer way to get into a popular restaurant, so maybe I can figure out a way to popularize that saying as a way of encouraging people to take a less popular reservation time. Whaddaya think? Can I start a new catch phrase?

I don't know of any restaurants around here that intentionally try not to honor reservations for any reason. Restaurants generally try to seat you at the time of your stated reservation, as far as I know. But, as stated upthread, some people are reluctant to relinquish their tables after they've finished their meals, and that can lead to unexpected delays. I take reservations at one of the restaurants where I work, and let me tell you, it's quite challenging. The restaurant is small, with less than 20 tables, and when it's full, it's full. There are simply no other places to squeeze any more people in. I was taking reservations one night a couple of weeks ago, and a guy called on a Friday night and asked me if he could get a reservation for 2 at 8 p.m. the following night. So I looked at the book, and the whole evening was booked solid - somewhat overbooked, in fact. So I told him we didn't have anything available that evening, so he said OK, how about next Saturday, 2 at 8 o' clock? So I looked at the book for that night, and I noticed that 8 o' clock was heavily booked, but there were some openings earlier and later. I offered him 6:30 and 9:30 as options for that evening. And then he said to me, "Look, either you want me to come or you don't!" Well, of course I want him to come and enjoy the restaurant, but I can't make a table exist where one does not. And I certainly can't give him a table that someone else has already reserved, can I? But some people take it as an affront when you tell them that you're already fully booked, even when you're simply telling them the truth. Maybe I should look for a line of work that doesn't make me want to strangle people.

I don't understand how that's a disagreement, given that there are different grades of tuna that can be cut from a single fish, and the preferences stated above seem to indicate that the belly meat - a higher grade - should be eaten raw, but the lesser quality portions should be cooked. The fact that the fish was just caught doesn't have anything to do with the grades I was talking about. I was just looking at a very fresh tuna yesterday that was being cut for sale, but in this case the entire fish was of a grade that I'd recommend for grilling until cooked through.

Well, it's just a matter of the quality of tuna you're using, for me. I once managed a restaurant that served a fully-cooked tuna steak, seasoned in a spicy marinade, grilled and plated over black beans with rice. It was a pretty good dish, but certainly nothing like what you'd get in a fancier restaurant. Sometimes people would ask me to serve their tuna steaks medium rare, and I would have to go out to the table to explain to them that the quality of tuna we were using was simply not the sort of thing that you'd want to serve seared. You can tell from examining the tuna in its raw state by the color of the flesh. Bright, red tuna tends toward the higher grades, and the greyer flesh is a lower grade of tuna, but that doesn't mean that the fish is not fresh, mind you. It's just not the cut you're going to sell to a sushi bar or an upscale restaurant for tartare. But if you take the two cuts of tuna - one high grade and one lower grade - and cook them both all the way through, they will be indistinguishable from each other, other than the fact that you paid at least 4 times as much for the higher grade cut. So if you want a fully cooked piece of tuna, please don't go to a fancy restaurant that has gone to the trouble of getting the highest grade available and have it cooked through. That just brings a tear to my eye thinking about it. But then again, it's your money and you can do what you want with it.

I need to stay away from this thread. I think people in London can hear me screaming from here. Oh, the crimes against food.

As has been stated, lots and lots of money. If you frequent a restaurant that takes reservations, you should understand that they do so as a courtesy to you, at the risk that others can (and will) make reservations and not honor them, costing the restaurant hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per night.

Well, I don't do it for legal reasons, but I do check as quickly as possible to make sure that everything is OK, the steak is cooked according to specifications, the kitchen hasn't forgotten to send out requested sides of sauce, etc. I genuinely do the quality check to make sure that everything is as expected, and that A-1 sauce, if needed, can be fetched (even if it's a loathesome request.) I try to stop by within 30 seconds of the meal being dropped for the quality check, just to make absolutely sure that there is enough ketchup for french fries, that all the food is hot and properly cooked, and that everything necessary for enjoying the meal is close at hand. When I come back to the kitchen, if a guest has asked for something special, it's a significant excuse to shout, "Guest request," in answer to their call for food runners, since I have something more important to do, so that the guest can enjoy his meal. The fact that this thread was started about crab cakes, however, is significant to me, because of an experience I had a few months ago. I had a lady at a 2-top who ordered our crab cakes, which are considered some of the best around, and when I did the quality check, she said that everything was fine. When I did subsequent table stops to refill drinks (and we only have 3 table stations, so this is not infrequent) she said absolutely nothing as to the quality of her meal. Only when she had entirely finished nearly everything on her plate did she say to me, "My crab cakes were full of bits of shell, and I was unable to enjoy them." I looked down at her plate, and both of the crab cakes, plus most of the two side items, were almost completely devoured. There was perhaps a half a bite of crab cake left, a couple pieces of shell on the side of the plate, and a few french fries scattered on the plate. I asked her what she wanted me to do about her disappointment, asserting that I would bring a manager immediately if she wanted the entree comped, and she assured me that she "just wanted to let someone know." So I took her nearly empty plate over to the expo window, showed it to 3 managers on duty, and told them exactly what she said. They looked at the empty plate, and they all said, "She ate them, so she's bought them." When I presented the check, she called me back over and said she was upset that I hadn't comped the crab cakes, so I fetched a manager immediately. The manager discussed the issue at length with her, and eventually comped an amount half of what the crab cakes would cost. Incidentally, her companion had actually authorized his credit card to pay for the meal before the manager table visit, and he'd written in a tip of 15% on the total bill. After the comp took place, he authorized another credit card charge for the bill plus a 15% tip on the amount after the discount. So giving this extra attention to the table actually cost me money. My tip went down because I took extra pains to bring management into the situation, and give them a discount on a meal that they chose to complain about. If any of you out there can think of situations where your income goes down when you pay more attention to doing your job exactly to the customer's satisfaction, I'd love to hear about them. Please.

One of the restaurants where I work just discontinued "call ahead" seating, because it simply led to more dissatisfaction than any happiness it created, because the perception was that "someone just walked in and was immediately seated, but I'm still on a wait," because the other person had called and was placed on the wait list as if they'd already arrived, whereas the complainer walked in without calling. I'm fine with the change in policy, because "call ahead" did not bring any more people to the restaurant, but it did make some people very unhappy. The same restaurant also has a policy of discouraging "to go" orders, because the quality of the food diminishes when packaged up, taken home and eaten after it's had considerable time to cool. Yes, you get some unhappy people on the phone when you tell them you will not take to go orders on the phone, but they may come in and sit at the bar to place an order to go, and that you will not put their names on the wait list, but ultimately, both of these policies lead to fewer complaints overall, and I agree with them completely, even if it means that some sales will be lost in the short term. It is far better to hold high standards of quality and customer service, ensuring that the guests who do eat in your restaurant get a great experience, every single time. Personally, I don't wait for tables much. If it's a place that I'm dying to visit, chances are they take reservations, and I'm the sort of person who will only make reservations if I'm planning on honoring them. People who make reservations and then don't call and don't show up, well, that's another story altogether, and not a pleasant one when you see how much money is lost on that table. And it's true that misquoted wait times are usually due to people who stay long after their meals are finished. I'd really love to hear suggestions as to how to deal with that. If there's an hour wait at the door, and a table has decided to stay for an hour or two after they've finished everything they ordered and paid their bill, how, exactly, does one ask them to vacate that table without sounding rude?

Um, you're joking, right? Firstly, let me address the "laziness" issue. When cooking foods to rare temperatures or cooking vegetables lightly, the opposite of laziness is actually the case. If someone is ordering his steak medium rare, he's going to be able to tell how fresh that steak is, and how good the quality of the meat, and he'll probably be more aware of whether you cooked it properly, with the correct amount of doneness on both sides, so you have to watch the cooking more carefully, to make sure it's even. And a mid-rare steak gets cold faster than a well-done one, so it's important to make sure a food runner is immediately available, so that it won't be sent back. A customer who orders his steak well, however, isn't going to see as much of the marbeling of the meat or any evidence that this particular steak is on its last day of servability, so you might as well grab the steak from the back of the drawer, throw it on the grill and leave it there until you're confident that it's had the living daylights cooked out of it. Easy-peasy. Same thing with vegetables. If you're just going to stew them for hours on end, most people won't be able to tell the difference between fresh and frozen by that point, so why bother with the difficult stuff? Overcooking is so much easier than undercooking. And as far as chefs dictating what customers eat, well, I'm literally aghast. I work at 2 restaurants currently, one of them ultra nice and the other medium nice, and let me tell you, customers have absolutely no compunction about telling even the best chefs how they want their steaks cooked and how they want the menu rearranged to their liking. People will walk into a very exclusive restaurant and ask for something that's exactly like what the Olive Garden serves, if that's what they bloody well feel like having, and most chefs I know will actually do their best to meet those requests, even if it means running to Kroger for ranch dressing. It's a pretty competitive market out there for restaurants right now, and I feel safe saying that people are either getting what they want, or they're going elsewhere.

I thought risotto was supposed to be al dente, and I love my pork loin cooked medium rare. Maybe you should take me with you to restaurants, and I can eat the stuff you don't like. Seriously, though, you should be able to get a steak cooked to the correct temperature, no matter what your preference is. Are you going by the same gauge I am? Rare = cool, red center Med Rare = warm, red center Medium = warm, pink center Medium Well = warm throughout, thin line of pink in the middle Well = warm and cooked completely through Most restaurants these days cook pork to either medium or medium rare, unless the customer specifies they want it cooked more than that, so often the server won't ask for a preferred temperature. I don't know what else to say to be helpful.