Customers demands and food substitutions

[tony h]

There has been a quite a lot of debate on this site about customers asking for one ingredient in a dish to be exchanged with something else.  How do you normally react to this & what kind of problems or pressures does this put of the kitchen?

[Shaun Hill]

How I react when people redesign the menu depends on what they want. It's usually no trouble to substitute ingredients from one dish to another, similarly to reduce portion size for children and suchlike.

It can be very difficult to remove say garlic or onion from the range of mise en place(prep) that I use to assemble dishes or make sauces during the service. This takes notice

This saturday I have a table with a woman on an elimination diet who has written to me with the half dozen or so things left that she will eat - also a vegetarian and with food intolerances. Another table has someone who won't eat fish and would like plenty of choices and on a third table I have a standard vegetarian who can eat - and wants dairy product amongst his choices.

As they have forewarned me I'll do my best. No notice and one can get a little grumpy