macrosan

LOL Deacon, but in fact that's a real practical issue. At my local resto they have some nicely positioned 2-tops by the window, which I prefer from a location point of view, but in truth they're not big enough for two. Especially when they bring you Grissini, bowl of olives, bowl of (home made) potato chips, bread roll, butter, glass of wine, glass of water ... and then when the food arrives When I need to work (and that may be no more than writing in a notepad) I have to take a 4-top. Same if I am there with a colleague. Of course when they're busy, that becomes a problem for me and for them. Ultimately it's the restaurant that runs the risk of losing out.

BD: You, Suzanne and I must make a point of dining out together. Looks as if we won't find anyone else to go with us. Oh I'm in

The obvious point at which the suit analogy breaks down is that a tailor advertises his offerings -- off the rack suits or custom suits. If a restaurant advertised "menu or off-menu meals", or "standard service or VIP service", then I would absolutely withdraw my last reservations about the practice. Steve Klc, I'd like to thank you for your carefully crafted repsonses to my questions. They really have opened my eyes to how chefs think behind the scenes. I really don't wish to sound patronizing, but I'd also like to comment on how in the last few pages all the personal heat has disappeared from the debate. I guess that's because people are being given a proper chance to explain their positions, and to clarify the inevitable misunderstandings that arise from over-hasty writing and reading of posts. I've found the debate interesting and instructive.

Nahh, that was me with out by Ombohat on. That was my ribbing-an-expat-hat As Ombudsman, I'de be bound to say that on balance, and taking into consideration all known facts, but within the context of a full realisation of the given circumstances, and notwithstanding various eventualities which might or might nort transpire, and in the interests of balance and the maintenance of due equilibrium, then .... I can't comment at this juncture Suzanne, what you said about table design is something I've commented on before. It does amaze me how high-end dining establishments seem to disbelieve that people will pay more to be more comfortable. It is alleged that some places deliberately cram in small tables just to show how much in demand they are, and maybe to exercise some authority over their clientele (?). But my belief would be that places where diners can genuinely relax will ultimately become more profitable. There is also a second dimension, which is the effect of crowding on the staff. I remember at both Racine and Club Gascon how the waitstaff were complaining that they couldn't serve us properly because of restricted space.

Ok Fattus, keep talking ... (no not really, please ) You're slowly convincing me. I can't fault the circumstances you described there, and I absolutely wouldn't raise an objection to the result. Whatever happens, I still like Basil's 5-seat place, and next time I go there I'm going to ask for .....

If it were me, I'd leave the flowers on the table and whisk Wilfrid away

Thanks from me too, SteveK. That's a well-balanced presentation, and certainly changes my view on the acceptability, from a chef's perspective, of the issue. It's clear that if a chef positively enjoys the challenge of off-menu requests, and revels in demonstrating his skill, then diners would be remiss in not acceding to his wishes Of course, it's clear that not all chefs do feel that way, so it becomes all the more important that someone create a list (as I suggested earlier) of restaurants who do welcome off-menu requests. Of course one can create one's own list by asking I am still uneasy about the principle of "deliberately holding back..." which I don't think you have answered. You talk to the point about accidentally having extra ingredients or dishes, and there is no issue there. You address the point about making dishes specially in advance for known special customers, and again there is no issue there. You also discuss your willingness, on the spur of the moment, to be creative when requested by a diner, and yet again we have common ground on that. Can you directly answer the question as to whether you think it is acceptable for a restaurant, as a matter of pre-meditated policy, to have dishes not on the menu available on request only to VIP customers (however defined) ?

Hey, you're right The glass always takes 98.3% of a bottle That's a great idea, starting with an empty table. It has style and sense, an unusual combination We could call the place Nappevide, except that would create pronunciational controversy (my estimate would be 473 posts).

That's obviously right, FatGuy, but I don't think it addresses the central difference of opinion on this thread. I don't think anyone here doesn't realize that it's possible to get VIP treatment at a restaurant. And those that want that VIP treatment almost certainly ask for it and get it. Many even get it without asking for it. I don't like your use of the term "VIP treatment" because I think it doesn't properly describe what we've been discussing. That's a subset of this discussion and carries it's own emotive baggage which I think distracts from the main debate. The questions being disputed here were (originally) related to the WSJ approach to their investigation. Lizzie got this right, and she echoed exactly what I said about their antagonistic attitude, and the harm this could do if others followed it. And I think that's an issue of principle which has been worth discussing. Anyone who denies that there are people out there whose attitude toward off-menu ordering is bad are simply deluding themselves. Those are the people who will damage the prospects of those who approach the issue of off-menu ordering perfectly properly. Finally, I want to home in your phrase "held in reserve". If you're saying that a restaurant deliberately keeps special ingredients, and special cooking resources, in reserve so that they can be delivered to favored guests or to a walk-in who demands them, then I have the following view. I have no reason to believe this is so nor evidence to suggest it is not. But if I did find it to be so, then I simply would cease to frequent that restaurant, because such a procedure represents a view by the restaurant of me as a general diner that I find unacceptable. It is the antithesis of hospitality.

Absolutely agreed, Ellen. I also find it widespread and irritating. How often have you played table chess ? You know, they bring the butter, and you have to shuffle six other items around to make room for it Another related crazy fad is where they lay up the table with a giant plate, then as soon as you order they take it away and you never see it again. It was there purely for decoration, and to show they can afford to buy big plates But of course, the rest of the table is laid around that huge plate, so it's all squashed up; as soon as they remove the big plate, you have to shuffle the cutlery and glasses so they're in more comfortable positions. I have two restaurants which come immediately to mind in relation to table size and contents. The first is Club Gascon in London, where the restaurant 'concept' is intended to work like tapas, in other words a table orders a number of small dishes and shares. There were three of us at a table for four, and they couldn't fit the dishes we ordered on the table so that we could move them around. That made sharing extremely uncomfortable. It was also impossible to pick up a glass of wine without the base catching under a plate. The table was indeed quite small, but the problem was also the number of items they put on it, and the fact that the dishes we ordered were on over-large plates. The second is Chez Comme Soi in Brussels. They had unusual (to me) tables which were long and narrow. When we arrived, the tables were groaning under flatware, glassware, cutlery and decorative flower bowls. As soon as we ordered, they removed all the unnecessary items. When we ordered wine, they removed redundant glasses. By the time the food arrived, we had everything we needed, and acres of room. It worked beautifully.

You see ? I knew Simon was bullshitting when he said Henderson knew him

Gavin, you may be jumping to an unwarranted conclusion as to Sookeharborkid's interest in being flirted with by young Gascons. Tsk tsk Sooke, I only tried it once and was not overly impressed. One of the reasons may have been that three of us were crammed onto a small table. There was simply insufficient room on the table to order a number of shared dishes, so the "tapas" concept that some here have said pertains just didn't work for us.

Just to clarify for you, Wilfrid, I was not being sarcastic back there, and it didn't occur to me that Tommy might be. The discussion about ordering off-menu being inherently wrong, or unacceptable, or any of those other adjectives, is simply not the view I expressed, and I don't subscribe to that position. What I said earlier in this thread, and have also said in other threads, is as follows. There are different motivations for people to order off-menu. I characterized four motivations which I have observed, and said that I found two of them (craving status and testing the restaurant) distasteful. The third (dietary restrictions) I was entirely neutral about. I'm very familiar with the need to ring a restaurant in advance to check they can meet dietary restrictions, and it is zero problem for me or for them. Then lastly, came what I described as a "whimsical" motivation. I have no problem at all with whimsy, and as I said earlier, I can't believe that anyone with such motivation would get worked up about having it turned down. Now your episode at Le Cirque was what I would describe as whimsical. You got there, decided on the spur of the moment you would rather have ribs than salmon, and asked for it and got it. Terrific. I do that often in restaurants I know, and specially if there's a limited menu on offer. I ask politely, and accept the answer I get immediately. And I don't think less of a restaurant that says no, and I don't think it's their "duty of service" to say yes. The WSJ article makes out that off-menu selection is a big socio-economic issue, and I disagree with that. They make it into a fight between them and us, between businesses that don't want to deliver off-menu but are being forced to do so by financial exigency, and the diners who don't realize how much power they now have to force the restaurants to toe the line. They imply that they've discovered a way for Mr Average to get the key to the Executive Washroom, but in fact they haven't. At least, I hope they haven't, and that's my point. If indeed the ability to get off-menu dishes, and the "properness" of that, is just an issue of social standing and prestige and money, or if the WSJ article makes diners start to believe that it is, then they will have damaged the restaurant industry, in my view. It's akin to the celeb-watching restaurant scene. I remember a colleague taking me to Barolo (?) in SoHo for an really poor, hugely expensive meal. When we came out, he said "I'm never going there again" and I said "Yeah, the food was disappointing". He said "No-one goes there for the food, but there wasn't a single celebrity in there tonight". I think that if restaurants get a growing demand for celeb-spotters, they will cater to that demand at the expense of the food. I think the same will happen if they get a growing demand by people wanting off-menu if that demand is from people who just want to be made to feel special and care more about that prestige than about the food.

is that what you've taken from this thread? that people think it's terrible that some get food that other diners don't know about? oh dear. where did we go wrong. Yeah, what Tommy said, several times in several posts, with remarkable clarity and eloquence

I won't pay the subscription for WSJ, so I have to form my view on the titbits provided by those who have read it. And it seems to me, not surprizingly, that they have gone out of their way to provoke the restaurants they visited into making fools of themselves. The clues picked up by FatGuy, and the places they chose to visit, suggest they wanted to get the restaurants to "fail". On the one hand, I suppose that's just the normal game that newspapers play (bad news sells more copies than good news), but for the WSJ it surprizes me. After all, I would be interested to see a list of which restaurants do and don't willingly offer this service, and I would have thought that many WSJ readers would also like that. I would have thought that those restaurants that do offer this service would be delighted to have it made public. And in this case, I would have thought that a story saying that X Y and Z high end restaurants will provide off-menu items is a bigger story than the one they produced.

"Off the menu" will have different impact according to the off-menu dish ordered and the structure of the restaurant operation. If there is sauteed halibut with lemon sauce etc on the menu, then an order for plain grilled halibut is simplicity itself for the kitchen, it will require no special skilled attention, and it will reduce the work involved in preparing the dish. If the roles of the dishes are reversed, then the off-menu order requires a cook who knows how to make the sauce and compose and cook the dish, and it creates additional work and management attention. If the off-menu order is for a sauced steak dish, and there is neither steak nor that sauce on today's menu, then this raises the question of availability of ingredients, in addition to the time and attention to basic preparation of those ingredients. For a high-end kitchen, some of these requests will be doable but are likely to cause organizational and management problems in the kitchen (however minor those might be). Some requests may not be doable at all, especially if the chef is concerned about being able at short notice to produce the quality level demanded by the restaurant. There are also the front of house issues. The server who takes the order must understand clearly what is required by the customer, and unless the server has culinary knowledge this may be difficult. The server needs to communicate the request accurately to the chef. Someone needs to price the dish and this price needs to be relayed to and agreed by the customer, and then recorded accurately (maybe thru a computer system) so that it appears correctly on the final check. So the whole issue of off-menu orders at the very least will place a strain on the operation of a restaurant. The important question is why would you want to do that to a restaurant that you like enough to dine in, and you go to often enough to believe they should accede to your off-menu request ? Well if it's a test of the restaurant, then it's foolish. If it's just to establish your own status as a favored customer, then it's pretentious. If it's for reasons of dietary restriction, then it's something that should be organized in advance of your visit, so it no longer represents any of the problems discussed above. So what does that leave ? Well, just the possibility that on a whim, when you arrive to dine, you just fancy a particular dish which just doesn't happen to be on the menu. If that's all it is, then it really can't be a problem if the restaurant says no. Of course, there do seem to be restaurants (according to some members here) that positively enjoy and encourage off-menu ordering, and then I would have few qualms about doing so. If this is the case, I cannot understand why such a restaurant would bother to print a menu. They might do better just toi list the main ingredients of the day, and let all their customers design their own dishes. But even in those cases, I would generally prefer to be adventurous, and be guided by the chef's judgement as expressed on his menu.

Had my fourth meal at St John last night, with Tony and Nick, and I was reminded why I like this place. It had been suggested that Saturday night would be less busy than weekdays, but by 8 or 8.30 the place was very full. Service was pleasant, helpful and timely throughout. I started with smoked sprats and horseradish sauce. Just that, no frills, no bits of coloured veg to decorate the plate. This was a taste from my childhood, and it was perfect. I suppose it could be argued that all the restaurant does is buy the smoked sprats, make some horseradish sauce and stick it on a plate at £6 a time (I remember the debate about pea pods!!!) but that's fine with me. I was tempted by the lamb special (but that was for three people) but I settled for another special of poached chicken and leek. The chicken was tender and moist, with a good texture, but overall I found this blander than I expected. I thought the leek would raise its flavour, but if anything it just blended into a mild, albeit pleasantly flavoured, monochromatic dish. The dessert was a killer rhubarb crumble (brilliant) with custard (lovely taste but I prefer it barely falling off the spoon). We had a bottle or more of Viognier white, followed by one or two bottles of house red. Pleasant drinking. The discussion was lovely, the company pleasant, the atmosphere relaxed, and the food excellent. Yes, I reminded myself why I like St John so much

I just read that the Savoy Grill is being taken over by Marcus Wareing. Did I miss this somewhere ? The report in today's Telegraph says that they closed after lunch yesterday for a total refurbishment. They're abandoning the "jacket and tie" rule, and going for an altogether less stuffy and more modern atmosphere. I look forward to this

That's interesting, because it speaks to prior discussions about the concept of asking a chef to "cook for you". This seems to be a case where the request was not just refused, but actually resented (unless the last observation was just a coincidence). It would be interesting to list those restaurants which cater to "cook for us" requests, and then to categorize them, to discover what drives their attitude.

And on a more objective issue, it is likely that an under-occupied restaurant will not get the turnover rate its food stocks need, and so is more likely to use food that is no longer fresh.

I'm not sure I understand this point. In what sense is ignoring the source of food a "luxury" ? Who ever suggested it was ? So in what intellectual sense can we "no longer afford it" ? I think John is artificially suggesting that something exists which in fact does not, in order to make a political issue out of something which is not political. Even if he were right, to relate this to the "bankruptcy of the human race" is awfully overstated, and does John's political position a great disservice. I guess that John's guess is wrong He would have to explain to me to which escalating conflict and economic collapse he is referring, and in what way such geopolitical events could have to do with the structure of a menu, but even when he has done that I would still guess that his guess is wrong.

There has been much interesting discussion about what "balance" might mean when talking about a meal. However, Lizzie's original post makes quite clear that she is talking about contrast of elements. For myself, I am not a great admirer of this approach to dishes, or to meals. Of course I can admire the visual effect of the classic tricolore of peppers, but generally my preference in the visual arts is more minimalist, and towrds monochrome. I have never cared much for swett and sour combinations, excpet (for some reason) in pickled cucumbers. I positively dislike elements of different temperatures in a dish, so for example I have never enjoyed a salad with a hot dish. The idea of different shapes and sizes does nothing for any of my senses. In fact, from Lizzie's list, the one item that stands out as being something that enhances my enjoyment of a meal is her idea of differing textures. In relation to this list, I have to admit that I am discomfited by the idea that a chef is spending time and mental energy on trying to design a dish or a meal around these concepts. Sure, if he decides to use three different colored peppers in a stew for reasons of flavor, then that's fine with me. If he gives consideration to their improvement of the look of the dish, I still have no problem. But if he only includes them for the purpose of color variety, then he's going to lose my attention. I find the other definitons of balance introduced to the thread interesting and appealing. I have read Tony Finch's (almost mystical) description of the oriental perception of inner and outer, physical and metaphysical balance, and I recognize in what he describes something that I feel but have never verbalized. My desire for balance is instinctive rather than intellectual. It's also highly variable, so I find that on one day I will order a plain grilled steak with fries and mange tout and mustard, and on another day I'll have a steak with maybe a bordelaise sauce and fried onion rings. My choice will depend on my mood, and I've always noted that my choice seems entirely whimsical. Perhaps that "whimsy" goes deeper than I thought

Good write-up, seeming to concur with a significant proportion of the posts here. I had to laugh at the line in the second paragraph "The name (pronounced oh-toe) is Italian for eight" which proves conclusively that the writer is a reader of eGullet

Oh my goodness, a schizophrenic in the house. Now listen carefully, Basil, you're a happy doggy, not a happy bunny. Got it ? And you have every right ot be so. I found something to agree with Michelin on

Don't know, Paul, since there is so little GM food being sold as such. I would guess that the price differential in the US is driven more by volume considerations than normalisedd production costs. Non-GM food has become a rarity item over there, so it's more expensive because of that. The real test is whether your GM whole wheat flour at $1.99 is cheaper than non-GM whole wheat flour was ten years ago before GM took hold. I'd be very interested to know the answer to that, if you can find out.