Very Popular Restaurant Dishes That Tick You Off

[WHS]

Onion Blossoms -- with their greasy, thick, seasoning-salt-enhanced batter and gummy, undercooked insides. This gets my vote for blecchiest popular appetizer on the planet.

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And it's always on the menu next to that nasty spinach dip that's so popular.

[annanstee]

To me, the best fettucine alfredo is made with just butter and parmiggiano reggiano tossed with egg fettucine.  I

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This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream.

[eje]

Any chicken dish that features overcooked, dry, flavorless chicken.

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Not to mention the other extreme.

Chicken that has been so heavily injected with who knows what that it no longer even resembles chicken. I got a safeway roasted "chicken" recently (I should know better). Not only was it incredibly salty and filled with amazing amounts of subcutaneous fat; but, the breast meat had been injected or brined to the point where it resembled not so much chicken, as chicken jello. Bleah!

If Ham is this artificial it has to be called Ham and Water product. Why don't the same rules apply to Chicken?

[jgarner53]

If Ham is this artificial it has to be called Ham and Water product

Ham juice. Ew.

[evongvisith]

I'm tired of artichoke dip, or as someone else noted, that ubiquitous spinach dip (usually made with artichoke hearts anyway).

[Eliza Cross]

I'm tired of artichoke dip, or as someone else noted, that ubiquitous spinach dip (usually made with artichoke hearts anyway).

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Yes! You're still looking at the menu, and the waiter says, "Would you like to start out with an appetizer -- some fried cheese or our artichoke dip, perhaps?"

[ratgirlny]

Chopped salads. To me, a salad is about pure, pristine ingredients. I want the ingredients to be big enough that I can tell what they are! Rather than a confused mishmash of little bits of lettuce, little bits of egg yolk, little bits of indeterminate veggies/fruit, sunflower seeds, mushroom fragments, and so on. Plus, I have always had a stereotype that chopping up lettuce into tiny bits is just a way to hide yucky unfresh lettuce.

Stupid martinis. They have become as trite as frozen Margaritas.

Tasting flights of ANYTHING other than beer. The whole concept originated in the 80's at microbrew bars - when I see it in any other context, I still feel like I am back in college, standing at the bar at the Sunset in Brighton MA, knocking back microbrew pale ales.

[TheFoodTutor]

Tasting flights of ANYTHING other than beer. The whole concept originated in the 80's at microbrew bars - when I see it in any other context, I still feel like I am back in college, standing at the bar at the Sunset in Brighton MA, knocking back microbrew pale ales.

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Call me uneducated, but I've always associated tasting flights with wineries and wine bars, which would seem to me to be an older tradition than microbreweries.

Am I wrong?

[TheFoodTutor]

I'm tired of artichoke dip, or as someone else noted, that ubiquitous spinach dip (usually made with artichoke hearts anyway).

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Yes! You're still looking at the menu, and the waiter says, "Would you like to start out with an appetizer -- some fried cheese or our artichoke dip, perhaps?"

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While you might find this annoying, and I can totally understand that, I happen to work in a restaurant that sells more orders of spinach and artichoke dip than McDonald's sells hamburgers. The ritual, for the many people who visit this restaurant regularly, goes like this: Sit down, server greets the table within 10 seconds, gets drink order, and you say, "Spinach dip." 30 seconds after you've sat down, there's a bowl of steamy stuff with chips on your table.

Sure, for non-regular customers, I can get a puzzled look when I ask if there's anything I can get them right away, and sometimes they protest that they haven't even had a look at the menu, but the regulars know the menu hasn't changed in years, mostly, and they know what they want. Moreover, should they happen to be on the border of collapsing from starvation, they know that stopping into our restaurant is the next best thing to getting a glucose IV drip.

I see myself as a paramedic of sorts, keeping people from suffering severe cheese and corn chip deficiencies.

[MaxH]

To me, the best fettucine alfredo is made with just butter and parmiggiano reggiano tossed with egg fettucine.  I

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This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream.

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Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated.

[Genny]

Caesar Salad that was dressed 5 hours ago...and there are NO anchovies. OK so some people are afraid of flavor and don't want achovies. Why does that mean I get a drippy, soggy, limp-ass salad with no flavor???

Fried Calamari. I love this stuff, when done right. Unfortunately it usually tastes like it has a double dip to make it like a KFC extra crunchy recipe leg! I want my tender, just a little crisp sweet calamari people! Rings, strips, tentacles: I don't really care. Just don't over cook the damn things!

Dishes: Huge. The reason why they give you huge portions is that they are mediocre and they want you to notice the quantity- NOT the quality. I avoid places with huge dishes and huge portions like the Claim Jumper.

[touaregsand]

Let me get Diva's back here for a moment before getting on with my own little rant. 

The problem is that once a dish reaches a certain critical mass, it starts crowding other stuff off the menu: those stupid Caesar's salads; Fettucini Alfreda and, generally, mediocre-at-best pasta dishes; grilled salmon; fried calamari...  and, arguably, baby backs. 

Why? Cutomers embrace the trendy and familiar, restaurant supply houses figure out how to make them easy for and profitable for restaurants to serve.  People, especially accountants, are risk-averse.

What's the problem? Eating out gets boring.  Restaurants begin serving food not because they do it well, but because everybody else is doing it. And you go to try someplace new (or find yourself in strange environs) and you end with culinary deja vu all over again.   

Diva's neighborhood is flooded with baby backs.  They're probably not that good, bcause they're not the product of cheffly passion for babybacks; they're the product of menu consultants and pre-packaged sauce and customers too timid to try the full-size version. No wonder she's sick of them.  I would be, too.

But in my neighborhood, where we're a little more yuppified, it's summertime and what I'm sick of is:

Slicing, not cooking.

I'm not impressed with that $12 hand-crafted artisanal heirloom organic salad you're serving, chef.  I can slice tomatoes myself, I have basil in the garden. And that wedge of iceberg lettuce?  Same thing. 

For dessert, do me a favor.  Put the peaches in some ice cream or something, make me a plum tart, do a little work that I can't do at home.

Because for the next two months, my kitchen is going to have just as much great raw produce lying around as yours (and I'll have the fruit flies to prove it).  Show me your chops. I can slice at home.

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Is 'slicing, not cooking' related to 'shopping, not cooking'?

This is the reason we don't eat out alot at the better places in LA, espcially on a teacher's budget.

[The Hersch]

To me, the best fettucine alfredo is made with just butter and parmiggiano reggiano tossed with egg fettucine.  I

←

This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream.

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Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated.

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Mario Batali's fettucine Alfredo recipe in his new book is pasta, butter, cheese, and a little of the pasta cooking water. No cream. That pretty much settles it as far as I'm concerned.

As to "French dressing": This certainly meant the sweet orange goop back in my 1960s childhood, at least in my part of the US. Maybe not in cookbooks, but in restaurants and supermarkets. I would speculate that it already meant that in the 1950s.

[SuzySushi]

To me, the best fettucine alfredo is made with just butter and parmiggiano reggiano tossed with egg fettucine.  I

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This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream.

←

Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated.

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Mario Batali's fettucine Alfredo recipe in his new book is pasta, butter, cheese, and a little of the pasta cooking water. No cream. That pretty much settles it as far as I'm concerned.

As to "French dressing": This certainly meant the sweet orange goop back in my 1960s childhood, at least in my part of the US. Maybe not in cookbooks, but in restaurants and supermarkets. I would speculate that it already meant that in the 1950s.

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Excerpted from The Dictionary of American Food & Drink by John Mariani:

fettuccine Alfredo. A dish of fettuccine noodles mixed with butter, Parmesan cheese, and cream. The dish has been a staple of Italian-American restaurants since the mid-1960s. It was created in Rome in 1920 by Alfredo de Lellio... The original dish was made with a very rich triple butter di Lellio made himself, three kinds of flour, and only the heart of the best parmigiano.

... Because most American cooks could not reproduce the richness of the original butter, today the dish almost always contains heavy cream.

(Edited because I can't type.)

Edited July 1, 2005 by SuzySushi (log)

[Eliza Cross]

I think the Black-eyed Pea is onto us. Just received a postcard today addressed to "Resident." On the back: "Our Ribs are Hot." Yep, baby back ribs are on special (and you can add a Bud Light Draft for only a dollar). On the front of the card: spinach-artichoke dip. I am not making this up.

[phaelon56]

I haven't tried it ther than to take a sample of a grilled salmon caesar that one of my former GF's ordered but it was actually much better than a chicken Caesar to my tastes.

And I'm lucky enough to live in an area where the tap water is excellent straight formt he faucet and nearly all the restauranst int town automatically serve a glass for all at the table without being asked.And have a busboy or assistant waitperson who walks around keeping all the glasses topped off.

[kellycolorado]

Ha ha ha! I think Black Eyed Pea was the reason I gained 10 pounds while we lived in Colorado- (not from those particular items though). It was close and homey when we were freezing and tired. Next time we're in CO I'm going to take a closer look at the menu. I pretty much got the pot roast and green beans exclusively.

I think the Black-eyed Pea is onto us. Just received a postcard today addressed to "Resident." On the back: "Our Ribs are Hot." Yep, baby back ribs are on special (and you can add a Bud Light Draft for only a dollar). On the front of the card: spinach-artichoke dip. I am not making this up.

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[annanstee]

To me, the best fettucine alfredo is made with just butter and parmiggiano reggiano tossed with egg fettucine.  I

←

This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream.

←

Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated.

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Okay, I cede this one

Now, we can talk about the horror of adding garlic.

According to my Italian friend Natalie, nobody in Italy would ruin the delicate taste of cream by adding garlic.

[MaxH]

Excerpted from The Dictionary of American Food & Drink by John Mariani:

fettuccine Alfredo.... It was created in Rome in 1920 by Alfredo de Lellio... The original dish was made with a very rich triple butter di Lellio made himself, three kinds of flour, and only the heart of the best parmigiano.

... Because most American cooks could not reproduce the richness of the original butter, today the dish almost always contains heavy cream.

Thanks for the historical reference, Suzy! Naturally it would be from Mariani. JF Mariani -- though sometimes criticized by locals when he travels outside his home turf to write restaurant-scene articles -- seems superb on Italian-American traditions and their Italian roots. Some of his best writing is genuine historical research.

... When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato.  The term was appropriated.

...As to "French dressing": This certainly meant the sweet orange goop back in my 1960s childhood, at least in my part of the US. Maybe not in cookbooks, but in restaurants and supermarkets. I would speculate that it already meant that in the 1950s.

I too think that I saw the red French dressing commercially as early as the 1960s, but its invasion was then far from complete. The standard and long-lived 1965 edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, as mainstream as any cooking source gets in the US, begins its salad-dressings chapter with French Dressing as the prototype, "the classic formula for green salads," a basic oil-vinegar-garlic with 11 variations. That is an example I had in mind from "about the 1960s or earlier." The newer red sweet commercial dressing introduced an ambiguity. Which was absent when the Gourmet Cookbook (1950) began a London Broil recipe "Marinate a flank steak in French dressing for at least 2 hours," making it not the Gourmet's fault if a later generation failed to check the definition in the same book (19 variations there) and got a weird result from using sweetened tomato-flavored salad dressing instead.

Precisely the evolution of what's considered "classic," according to what we happened to grow up with -- whether French dressing or "Alfredo" pasta or cookbook authors or whatever -- is what I was getting at here. (The real history, I've often found, makes us re-examine the familiar.)

A few years ago (hope I didn't mention this already), boarding a British airline from the US, I was offered a "French dressing" so asked "US sense or British sense" and the steward said at once "I see what you mean, sir; let me check" and came back "British sense" (in which, I feel, the British do have sense). Kind of like the peculiar evolution of the meaning of "entrée" in the US, which has caused similar questions to servers -- "US sense or French sense?" -- another thread, no doubt.

Cheers -- Max

[racheld]

There was a pinky-red garlicky sweet dressing in the 60's, as I remember, called 1890 French---its hour-glass-waisted little bottle stood out on the shelves of Wishbone and beginnings of Kraft. We never had it on salads, as I recall, as one bottle was purchased at a time, specifically for one recipe: Bean Bundles. (recapped ad infinitum in a previous thread on church suppers, I think).

And I assumed at the time that it was made as far back as the 90's, because we had had "French" dressing at home for years, made first by my Mammaw with an eggbeater, combining vinegar, sugar, paprika in astonishing amounts, and a steady stream of oil (poured drop by drop by me as she whirled that old beater, then in a little string til the cup was empty and I could lower my tired little arms).

So, when the "dating" of the pink stuff came up just now, I Googled it, and got "Milani's 1890 French Dressing" in a disappointingly plebean little oompaloompa of a bottle, not at all the curvy pretty one of my childhood (which I carefully scrubbed the labels from and used as vases to give teachers and neighbors and such). But no dates which would say when the "real" French first morphed from a nice mustardy vinaigrette into a vulgarly tarted-up version of itself, clad in pink and pimping its wares by gallons and quarts into just any old grocery stores.

And the one other item of my Google search: A copycat version of Milani's Buccaneer Dressing---verbatim from the "copier" who hadn't a clue as to taste or ingredients:

"Posted in response to a request made about a year ago, Milani's stopped making this recipe in the 70's and when I emailed the company they said they no longer had the recipe. I have no clue if it tastes like the real thing as I've never had it, but enjoy anyway!" (italics mine---and maybe the recipe you gave, with mayo, Marie C's honey mustard dressing and paprika, is a recipe for library paste or lobster sauce---have you tasted THOSE either, you moron??!!) Let's all just take a well-meaning subscriber's request and put some things in a bowl and STIR THEM!!!

End of recipes-cloned-by-quacks rant. And the bean bundles were a hoot.

[The Hersch]

Apparently the pinky-orangey "French dressing" dates to the 1930s, at least according to www.foodtimeline.org:

The tomato-based French dressing we Americans currently purchase in grocery stores probably also began in the twentieth century. Prudence Penny's Cookbook, Prudence Penny [1939] contains two recipes for a tomato-based French dressings. She uses ketchup & tomato soup to flavor her dressings (see recipes below). According to advertisements in Favorite Recipes from Marye Dahnke's File, Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corporation [1938] Kraft was marketing "Two distinctive French Dressings, both made by Kraft. Kraft French Dressing with its delicately appetizing tang has long been a favorite. Miracle French Dressing woes its wonderful "racy" flavor to a special French trick in seasoning." (p. 47). NOTE: the "Miracle" version of this dressing is made with Kraft's Miracle Whip Salad Dressing. It is red in color. The Heinz Company provided recipes for French Dressing (with and without) ketchup. See below for recipe.

This website has a lot of cool information desperately in need of a copy editor/proofreader. I make no claim as to its reliability.

[savvysearch]

Not really a dish I hate, but I can't stand powdered sugar. Hate it, hate it, HATE IT!!! Stupid idea whoever came up with it. Powdered anything, sugar, cinnamon and chocolate.

[sockii]

So my friends, do you have any culinary objections of your own?

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Gotta agree with the complaints against Caesars--at least wimpy ones that skip the anchovies or otherwise bastardize the classic. I like the taste of a well-prepared Caesar but too many places just use it as an excuse for a crappy salad of bottled wimpy dressing over romaine, or--god forbid--throw in things like cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, etc that DO NOT BELONG.

I make a point to purposefully NOT eat anything labelled "Low-Carb". Is that fad dead yet or not?

Here's one that I don't think has been mentioned yet--Japanese restaurants with the same old, same old boring menu. Seriously. I think you could go to 9 out of 10 Japanese restaurants, swap their menus randomly, and it wouldn't make a darn bit of difference. I love Japanese food but I am so so sick of the same old monotonous choices of tempura, teriyaki, sukiyaki, etc. There is a LOT more to Japanese cooking than that and I wish more Japanese restaurants (at least here in the states) would embrace that.

Edited July 6, 2005 by sockii (log)

[MaxH]

Seriously. I think you could go to 9 out of 10 Japanese restaurants, swap their menus randomly, and it wouldn't make a darn bit of difference. I love Japanese food but I am so so sick of the same old monotonous choices of tempura, teriyaki, sukiyaki, etc. There is a LOT more to Japanese cooking than that and I wish more Japanese restaurants (at least here in the states) would embrace that.

Is it the restaurants that might embrace diversity, or their customers?

For example, my part of the US has long had many Chinese restaurants, operated by immigrant families. Some of these restaurants in recent decades have been markedly good and innovative, with unusual cuisines or specialties. Yet I have seen many US customers stubbornly closed to these opportunities. They will enter a place known for unique specialties, which most everyone enjoys once tried, and these customers will order the same old lemon chicken filet or hot-and-sour soup that they order in every other Chinese restaurant -- as if it were MacDonald's. I talk about this to proprietors, and they roll their eyes and become animated over it. Being sensible businesspeople they do offer the cliché standard dishes, and it pays the rent; but this is not where they take pride, it is not what they will recommend to customers if asked. I've noticed this for 30 years, and it was even more conspicuous around Central Square in Cambridge, Mass., where a steady volume of MIT students visited the lively local Chinese restaurants and you could almost call out in advance the standard five or six dishes they consistently ordered.

A principle of interesting dining, I’ve always thought, is that if a restaurant is any good, you do not go in and order your favorite dishes. You order the restaurant's favorite dishes. Some of them show relief and respect when they hear such a request.

So (though I don’t know the particular Japanese restaurants cited above) I’m reluctant to attribute cliché menus simply to the restaurants. As in other markets, the businesses may do it because their customers steadily reward them for it.

[jm chen]

Creme brulee.

Please make it stop.

Not that I have anything against it when it's done right; it's just a) utterly, utterly ubiquitous, and b) now there's the chocolate chip toffee banana creme brulee and the caramel apple cobbler creme brulee and the mocha ganache-topped brownie-crusted creme brulee and oh please make it stop.