TheFoodTutor

Are you phenylketonuric as well? Sorry to ask. Just interested.

He is a fine person. I saw a picture of him on his blog and he didn't look like he needed slapping at all. One nice thing about people who do inform me of their allergies right up front is that, where I work, we have extensive training about all of the ingredients in all of our food. I'm in the kitchen all the time and I get to watch preparation of the food, look at recipe books, and see where everything is stored in all of the 5 walk-ins. All of our servers go through a full day of kitchen training, too, when they're training to work on the floor. So I'm in a pretty good position to know what ingredient is or is not in a particular sauce. Our Au Jus, for instance, tastes like it has mushrooms in it, but it does not, so Marlene could have it.

I guess that's why it bothers me. Because I happen to be one of the people who really does pay attention. If you don't want mayonnaise, or cilantro, or sesame seeds, or you want the sauce or dressing on the side, I'll do it for you. Trust me. I'll run back to the kitchen and make sure that your ribs are cooked without barbecue sauce, but give you a little bit of the sauce on the side, so you can stick to Atkins but still get a taste of the sauce. I will try to follow your order to your exact specifications, and I don't even care why you want it that way. Fibbing to me is like saying, "I know you're not particularly bright, or you're someone who doesn't care about doing your job well, or possibly both." It hurts. So ask me to substitute a different side item that might be lower in carbs. I'm fine with that. But if you ask me a bunch of questions, and swap sides and make modifications to your entree so that you can have a low-carb meal, and then you snap your fingers at me to ask where your bread basket is. . . Well, then I'm just going to send Carrot Top to your table to smack you.

I had a friend who used to eat in a Chinese restaurant with me every night, and we always, always ordered the War Su Gai, which is a really crappy chicken dish, but anyway. . . My friend would constantly complain the next day about how the MSG in the food had given her a headache. One time, she finally asked the waitress if she could have the War Su Gai, but this time, without the MSG? And the waitress told her that this particular dish, the way they served it at that restaurant, never contains MSG. Oh, I had to try really hard not to laugh at her. It's a funny thing about the requests on cilantro, because there seem to be a lot of people who don't like it. I don't mind leaving it out of something, and a person doesn't have to say they're allergic to get me to handle a special request. Last week, I had a table where all 4 of the patrons asked for cilantro to be left out of something, or asked if it could be possible to get the cilantro-ginger vinaigrette, without the cilantro? Now that I cannot do. After all the requests, I remarked, "Wow. This is one cilantro-hatin' table!" And one guy said, "Why don't you just take it off the menu?" Well, because obviously some people like it. I happen to be one of them, not that it matters.

I wonder how common that situation is? Obviously, he's not one of those peanut-allergics who cannot be in the same room with someone who's eating a peanut butter sandwich, then. Well, yet another reason to have a well-established resource for a guide on allergies. As far as claims of allergies go, I've seen someone claim to be allergic to just about everything you can imagine. Even salt.

I waited on several dinners with presentations like these. I even got a really nice pen with a picture of Candida Albicans on it, from Diflucan. I love that pen. And unfortunately, the people who ask for very, very well done steaks, "but still moist, please" are so common that the sentence cannot even be considered strange. It's literally an everyday occurrence. Probably the worst things I've heard came from a waitress who used to warn people against ordering the house coffee, as it had chicory in it and she didn't like chicory. She was also fond of telling people that Mahi-Mahi was too "fishy" for her tastes. It was such a shame that they never fired her. She was absolutely the least competent server I've ever met.

I don't have food allergies, but I have experience with people in restaurants who have allergies, and some who merely say they have allergies. I would be glad to see a card that clearly identified people who do have allergies, listing what substances they cannot have and what actions need to be taken if something is accidentally ingested. Food allergies, particularly nut and shellfish allergies, are very serious and can be life threatening. That is why it's particularly infuriating that there are so many - and I say this because I've seen so many obvious examples - people who say they are allergic to something when the truth is that they just don't like it. I managed a location of a popular chain restaurant where this was a common practice. On a specific incident that stands out strongly in my head, a man called me out to his table to complain that mayonnaise was on his burger, when he had asked for one without mayonnaise. The man stood up from his table to yell at me, saying over and over, "I am lactose A-tolerance! (sic) One bite of that and I would end up in the hospital!" Given that lactose intolerance doesn't usually send people to the hospital, and that mayonnaise doesn't generally have milk products in it, I had to assume that he was trying to overstate his displeasure for some other motive. If he had been allergic to eggs, he could have simply said that he was allergic to eggs, whereupon I'd have told him that he couldn't have the bun, either. Currently, I work in a restaurant that has a very popular salad with peanut sauce drizzled over the top of it. Many people tell me to leave the peanut sauce off, since they're allergic to peanuts, to which I respond that I'll have to leave the tortilla strips out, too, since they're cooked in peanut oil. Usually they say, no, the tortilla strips will be fine if you leave them in, and then I know they're lying because peanut allergies are pretty darned serious. So there are 2 remedies I'd like to suggest. First, the card sounds like a good idea, and if it has medical legitimacy, I'd be grateful for a way to identify people who really do have allergies. Second, if you are dining with someone and you know they do not have an allergy, but you hear them tell their waiter that they do, reach across the table and slap them immediately, and tell them it's from me.

I have similar feelings about it, because when I've done Atkins, my tendency has been to fix the same foods for myself over and over. However, the longer I stay on the diet, the more creative I get with that group of ingredients. I did Atkins when I worked at the I.R.S., because when I have a desk job, I have to take drastic measures to keep my blood sugar from plummeting throughout the day. If I eat a carb-filled breakfast and go to work in an office, by 10 a.m. I will be drooling and unable to finish my sentences because my blood sugar will be that low. My routine at the time was to make a variety of omelettes for breakfast, salad with protein for lunch and a fairly simple meat and veg for dinner. The thing that I found astonishing, however, was that my co-workers, who had bought whatever they wanted to eat from the cafeteria for lunch, would always be jealously eyeing my salads - sometimes a nicoise assembled in a used cottage cheese container, or whatever I managed to throw together that day. I really think there are a lot of fairly pleasant things to eat on low carb plans, and the limitations on carbs tend to force one to use the more nutritious and lower carb vegetables, instead of eating bread or rice.

I feel a need to point out that not everyone, or even a majority of everyone, tips 20%, much less tips 20% on the total after tax. Some people tip 15%. Some tip 10%. Some tip less than 10%. Some regularly tip 5%. Some think 50 cents a person is still a good tip. And some people never ever tip anyone under any circumstances. That's just the way things are.

I do not mind the idea of pooling tips, but I have never worked in a place that actually does it. I have, however, been working in places that require tipshare among bussers, food runners and such. The reason I don't mind the idea of pooling tips, particularly in upscale or fine dining environments is that tips are really a crap shoot. One night, you have the section with only 2-tops, so you get the same number of tables, but not as many covers as the person with the 10-top in their section. However, you will be running their food for them, since one server cannot run 10 entrees at once. Because I'm the type who's always working cooperatively with other servers, I get screwed on the nights that I have the smaller table sections when it comes to tips. Any place that pools tips should have a cooperative system, where everyone treats all the tables as their own, which is really the best way to provide the highest level of service. Saying, "I'll go find your server" is simply not as good as saying, "What can I get for you?" All the higher-end restaurants in NYC pool tips, according to bitterwaitress, and he says it's a system he has no problem with. The case with Joel in Atlanta, however, appears to have more to do with fraudulent tipsharing, forcing servers to pay for breakage and walkouts, and servers paying tips to managers. That's a horse of a different color. Oddly, in my experience, the servers with whom I've worked who were adamant about stating that they'd "never work in a place that pooled" were some of the laziest and least competent servers I've ever known. I don't know why, but they were always the ones who perceived themselves as being very competent, while everyone else thought of them as the slackers.

Certainly, everyone should receive the same high quality service, and they pretty much all do if I'm waiting on them. It is nice, however, to be able to distinguish the people who will recoil in horror when you place their seared Ahi before them, saying, "Eeewww! I didn't know it was going to be RAW!" If I can pick these people out before that happens, I have an opportunity to hint to them that seared means that it's only touched the pan very lightly, and so will be very rare. And I really don't want to be touched by servers when I go out, so I don't touch customers either. I think it's creepy, and I'd only give someone a light hand on the shoulder if they were someone with whom I was slightly familiar. Actually, I find several of the tricks on that list to be somewhat repulsive. Smiley faces? Gah.

I suppose I can think of a few times. I can't always wear a button that reads, "I'm a server, too" on my clothing, or have it tattoed on my forehead, so sometimes a jaded server can mistake me for an idiot who knows nothing about eating in restaurants. You know the person I'm talking about. The one who thinks that a steak ordered "medium" will be cooked all the way through with no pink showing? So sometimes, the thing that's wrong is that I'd asked for one side and got another, but when the server asks if everything is OK, and I mention my one little thing, they give me that eye-roll. Yeah, it happens.

weirdly, i have no problem with checkbacks. if there's something amiss, it's a good chance to rectify it without flagging someone down. Right. Unless they don't really want to know the answer to the question. That's when I have a problem with it. That's odd. I work in a place where a 2 minutes/2 bites quality check is required, and I really try to hit it at the correct time - giving the guest a chance to taste the food, but not waiting so long that they have to sit there with an improperly cooked item, looking around the room for me. I genuinely mean it when I ask. Is your burger cooked exactly to your specifications? Or more importantly, your steak? A filet is $26, while the burger is only $9, and I don't want you wasting money on either, really. Last night, I stood over a woman who was concerned that her ribeye would not be well done - because I know that sometimes cooks are reluctant to leave it on the grill that long - and I waited for her to cut into it to check the temperature. It was only about medium, so I didn't make her wait to complain, but just whisked it back to the kitchen. But then again, I happen to work in a restaurant that has really high standards for service. It's almost ruined me for anywhere else, since I find that when I go to other restaurants now, I notice immediately how long it takes for my table to be greeted, how long it takes to get drinks and such. Still, I notice that a lot of people on this board seem especially cynical when talking about how they perceive servers and other restaurant staff. We're not all out to get you, you know, and a lot of us really care about doing our jobs correctly.

I think we're getting into territory where, although a particular sales tactic seems to be annoying and counterproductive to many of the folks here, it does seem that it must be working on the majority of people, or else it would have been discontinued long ago. By the same token, isn't it depressing to realize that someone, in fact a lot of someones, must be buying the merchandise that's advertised in pop-ups?

do we have to choose? i'd opt for both. I'm with you there. As far as where I am working, I work in Atlanta at a very high-volume but slightly upscale chain restaurant (with 50 locations nationwide) that provides free refills on every non-alcoholic beverage, except for our freshly-squeezed lemonade. Even that is problematic, and when people ask for a refill, I sometimes feel a need to say, "Would you like to *order* another lemonade?" since many people assume the refills will be free. I used to work at a fine-dining Italian restaurant where our cheapest menu item was the spaghettini pomodoro, which is basically just boxed pasta with a very simple sauce made with Italian canned tomatoes. Whenever people would ask me what I thought of that particular dish, I'd always want to say, "Well, it's the cheapest thing on the menu, but at $13, it's a rip-off for something that I could make at home for about 35 cents a serving." My tendency would be to upsell to our signature sea bass item, which really showed a lot more of the talent of the kitchen. Calorie-wise, the sea bass was served in a fairly light broth with lemon, tomatoes, carrots and fennel, as opposed to a plate full of empty calories, as in the spaghetti with tomato sauce. I really was upselling for a reason there, because if I could get someone to buy the sea bass instead of the spaghetti, they'd get a better dish, have a better experience, and give me a better tip, all while ordering something that would actually cost the house a little more in food cost. It's still worth the sell, however, since building that customer base leads to more repeat business. Probably the biggest thing to watch out for, if you want to resist sales technique in a restaurant, is the sell on the appetizer right off the bat. Many folks get the appetizer, because they're hungry when they come in, and then they have to box some of the entree before they go, because they've ordered too much. I still always offer it anyway, because sometimes people are so hungry when they sit down that they need to have something to munch on right away. The reasons for offering these things is not always an antagonistic money-grub. Most of the time, my intentions are simply to give the guest the best experience they can get in whatever way possible.

I am a server as well, and I'm not one to be pushy on the upsell, but I do genuinely suggest things that I think will complement the meal. What bothers me is the assumption that upselling leads to excessive calorie consumption. In my experience, I've found that the customers who resist upselling the most are usually the ones who, after I've placed their order, ask me where their endless basket of bread is. When I tell them that we don't have bread service, they go ahead and add to their order. It wasn't that they didn't want to eat that much in their case, but rather that they were expecting to eat a certain amount of food for free, and a certain amount that they paid for. If calorie consumption is an issue you are concerned about, doing away with endless bread service and free refills on soda would be a good place to start, rather than picking a fight over upselling.

Have you ever waited on her? Well, one thing about these websites that list celebrity tipping habits - they have a way to post the positive as well as the negative. I always tell the truth about every celebrity I've waited on, whether it's Janet Jackson, or Puffy or Benny Hinn or Kenny Rogers or. . . Obviously, I'm not reporting celebrity sightings based on what's in vogue right now. I really wouldn't "brag" about waiting on Kenny Rogers, you know? So, I just happen to be one of the folks who report exactly what I observe. So what I'm saying is that I kiss and tell.

In this sort of situation, I leave the restaurant to visit an ATM, and then come back to give the server his/her tip. One time, I found out at the last minute that the restaurant I'd chosen didn't take Discover, and I only had a small amount of cash. I offered to leave collateral, which they declined, and went to withdraw money for the tab and tip. I'm sure you'd go back to pay your tab, so why not go back to pay the server as well? He or she paid a percentage of her sales to wait on you, and is dependant on tips for a living. At any rate, I agree that the celebrity tipping reports should be taken with a grain of salt, even the ones that come from the infamous S.T.D. on bitterwaitress.com - the source for the J. Lo comment in the story above. The jury's still out on a number of celebrity tippers, but J. Lo has had so many stories from so many different states about her tipping habits that I'm inclined to think she's suspect. I doubt the stories about John Kerry, though, and think it's just politically motivated.

I didn't realize he made butter! Does it have crack in it? that was not amusing!! I'm sorry. Do you live in D.C. or something?

Sorry, Knicke. People just seemed to be running with my "all bug" food class idea. There does seem to be something especially gross about the fact that you wouldn't be sure which part was which in a rice pudding. But, to me, it would just make me think, "Well, I was OK with the chewy bits before I thought they might be maggots, so what's wrong now? As long as it tastes good, overall. . ." I do think cardamom and cloves together would be overkill, because they're fairly strong flavors, to me. I guess it would depend on how strong maggots taste. What am I thinking? Bleah. I should just go back to working on my recipe for Cumin Candied Cockroaches.

I had simply put the 1 rice cup of rice into the cooker, and then the 7 cups of water to start. Then I added a little more liquid, as necessary, but the extra liquid, along with the longer cooking time, led to little spurts of gooey rice "water" popping out of the steam hole. Then, on top of that, my opening the rice cooker while it was steaming led to a light gush of water off the lid. Since my cooker was positioned on my small kitchen counter, next to some of my cookbooks, I wanted to place the towel just on the side of the steam hole, where the hinge is also located, and I just cushioned the towel around the base of that side, to catch the drips. I think the recipe you gave is ideal for the smallest amount of drips, and making larger amounts would lead to too much spill and cleanup, along with excessive additions of water for more steaming. My result was about 4-5 good-sized servings of congee in about an hour's cooking time. I'd say it's definitely ample for many small families for breakfast, and it leaves your stovetop free to make a fried egg to go on top, or maybe some crisp pork cracklings, or a variety of additions. The possibilities are endless, but it's a terrific breakfast/lunch as is, and you can set it and leave it while you do other things. It's really a great idea, and I'm glad you thought of it, because it made a great meal.

Suddenly, I'm inspired to write a recipe for maggot-and-rice pudding. With regular rice pudding, you already have little chewy bits all through it, so the maggots would just be an extra flavor and texture element, with added protein to boot. Now, should I go with cardamom, or cloves?

Thank you! I've gotten so many wonderful compliments on the website since I started posting here on eGullet, and I wanted to point out that, while the business itself was my idea, the website was designed by my boyfriend and partner, Bruce. I guess he really is good for something, after all. Maybe I should put a disclaimer up that I don't do bug cooking classes. Hmm.

You have obviously never been to my ex-mother-in-law's. And patti, terrific observations on the English language. Everyone has their own interpretation of every word. For instance, is a myriad more than a plethora, or less?

I've had some cups of coffee that could be described as "gravy." Mmmmm. Chewy.