"Le Menu Surprise"

[robert brown]

A couple of times in France during the past several months, I have dined in restaurants in which the order-taker offered me a "menu surprise" in which I wouldn't know what I would be eating until someone put it in front of me. Since I almost never order fixed or tasting menus, I would certainly never put myself down for a surprise menu. I thought a fixed menu in a no-choice or limited choice restaurant was the ultimate height of parsimony and cost cutting. The "menu surprise", however, seems to take them to its ultimate, though maybe one day soon there will be "le menu left-over" in which you get at a rock-bottom price food that the chef would otherwise have to throw out. I have yet to meet up with a "menu surprise" in Italy or even the USA, though I wouldn't be surprised if it already has come to these shores.

Edited by John Talbott Sunday August 28th.

Edited August 28, 2005 by John Talbott (log)

[mikeycook]

I take it that these were lower-quality restaurants? I know that when I order a tasting menu (usually in the U.S.), I often don't know what is coming, but it depends on the restaurant (some publish the tasting menu and some don't). Even if the tasting menu is printed, you usually get things not listed in addition. If you press them, they will usually tell you what's coming, however. They don't speak of it as specificially being "a surprise". Personally, I would try the surprise. If I didn't like it, I am sure I wouldn't go back.

Edited August 26, 2005 by mikeycook (log)

[pedro]

Hmmm. I don't think I totally agree with you on this, Robert. To me, a menu surprise is no different than when the waiter tells me in the States "tonight, the chef would like to cook for you."

In Spain, at least two of the best restaurants in the country, Can Roca and Can Fabes, have that kind of offering.

[John Whiting]

I'm not sure whether you're distinguishing between a menu surpise and a menu degustation in which the content is unspecified. One of our favorite restaurants for years has been Restaurant Le Mas in the Hotel de Lorraine, Longuyon, where Gérard Tisserant, in addition to a full carte, offers a menu consisting of a series of small courses based on what the market yielded that day. We once stayed there for a weekend and had the menu on two successive days; the content was totally different, and neither day included a course we didn't like enormously.

Since there are virtually no foods that I inherently dislike, I have never had a problem with no-choice restaurants, starting thirty years ago with Chez Panisse. It bothers me no more than going to someone's house and having to eat what's put in front of me. The most important factor is being able to choose, not the courses, but the cook! There are some whose output I would gobble up no matter what they served, others that I wouldn't trust with a potato salad. If a chef is dishonest, then the greater the selection, the more different ways he can cheat you!

[Jonathan Day]

Le menu surprise: dining as entertainment. See a related exchange about Borough Market.

We've often been in tiny restaurants in Italian villages where there is no menu; the owner comes out of the kitchen and tells you what you'll be eating that day. It's almost always good. Is this the same thing as a menu surprise?

[SuzySushi]

Fine Japanese sushi bars often have an omikase menu where the chef decides what foods to put in front of you. It's acceptable to request that the chef omit some particular fish that you don't like, but otherwise the choice is entirely up to him.

[Jonathan Day]

Of course there's le menu self where the customers have to go into the kitchen and cook their own food. And le menu plongeur, where you get to wash the dishes afterwards.

The possibilities are endless...

[John Talbott]

A couple of times in France during the past several months, I have dined in restaurants in which the order-taker offered me a "menu surprise" in which I wouldn't know what I would be eating until someone put it in front of me.

←

Well, while not quite equivalent, at Le Comptoir one does know what one will be served, Yves Camdebord's meal is essentially a "menu surprise" and I've heard no one on eGullet complain; come to think of it, neither do they about Alice Waters' place where I took several French friends for what I advertised as a meal they wouldn't have in the US or France - that night it was steak/frites.

[Carlsbad]

I'll bet it was pretty good steak/frites though.

Wasn't L'Astrance one of the sources of the menu surprise concept?

[fiftydollars]

...The most important factor is being able to choose, not the courses, but the cook!...

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John, that is an excellent point.

[John Whiting]

Wasn't L'Astrance one of the sources of the menu surprise concept?

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Yes, but at the upper end of the scale. It goes back to the old Italian restaurant joke: Pollo sorpresa--the surprise is, there's no chicken.

[Bux]

. . .  The most important factor is being able to choose, not the courses, but the cook!  . . .

←

I rather agree and after having chosen the cook, I find there's a best way to appreciate his talents. It isn't always a tasting menu or a surprise menu, but it often is one or both. I am most thrilled to be in a restaurant where the chef wants to cook for me, and most willing to let him surprise me. Some of this is tied to my pleasure in being surprised and delight in finding new tastes, but some is simply that it seems so relaxing. In the U.S a host is likely to offer a guess a choice of what seem like hundreds of choices for a drink. In Japan I was struck by how I was generally welcomed with a cup of green tea, or some other beverage without being asked if I wanted a drink or being a choice. Once it was a cold glass of Coca-Cola and at the time, I hadn't had a Coke in maybe ten years. I not only found it thoroughly enjoying, but absolutely relaxing not to be making decisions. Not asking a guest to make decisions is apparently considered good hospitality in Japan.

There are times when I go to a restaurant for a special course and times when I want something I see on the carte, but there are many times when I'm in the mood for whatever the chef has to suggest. Some chefs are better than others at creating this kind of menu. I find this can work just as well at the lower price range as at the top. "Parsimony" connotes cheap, a negative characteristic to me, while "cost cutting" is simply frugal. The latter I quality I greatly respect. It's always hard to be sure the savings is passed on to the diner, but I don't begrudge a good profit to any chef whose food pleases me. At C'Amelot, in Paris, I recall having a choice of dishes for two of our three courses. It was more than I expected when I accepted the invitation to dine there, and it was more than I needed. Each possible combination of dishes would have pleased me at the price.

My first experience with the concept of surprise menu may have been in NY after becoming known to the executive chef and owner of a four star restaurant. This was back in '95 or '96. We were each served a different dish for each course. It was just a sensational evening for all at the table. Pedro notes that this doesn't seem to be unknown in Spain. I've had such meals there. Jonathan offers us the little places in Italy that just happen to served what's cooking that day. John Whiting, who's earned his curmudgeon stripes, says he's "never had a problem with no-choice restaurants." I'm not surprised to see that most early replies here report of success with the concept. Perhaps, I'm missing something.

Carlsbad, I don't know that l'Astrance was a source of the concept, although perhaps I'm missing the concept that troubles Robert. What l'Astrance did the first time I was there, was have a menu that was not only a surprise, but to ask the diners what was in some of the dishes as well as to guess the grape and region of the French wines served with the surprise menu. This was a break in the formality of service perhaps, and maybe it wasn't done at all tables. I don't know. It may also have been a way to introduce those very inexpensive and unknown wines the restaurant offered when it was new. That, in itself was likely a matter of small capitalization, but the prices to the consumer was also low.

[ludja]

Wasn't L'Astrance one of the sources of the menu surprise concept?

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Yes, but at the upper end of the scale. It goes back to the old Italian restaurant joke: Pollo sorpresa--the surprise is, there's no chicken.

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Very funny. I need to remember this. I think the phrase could be discretely used in many situations among friends to good effect.

[chefzadi]

My professional experience with a surprise menu is a regular or a friend of a regular who calls or comes by and says, "oh just surprise me." The idea is that there is trust in the chef to prepare something delicious. Not a surprise of leftover ingredients.

[robert brown]

Thank you all for replying to my topic. In terms of the “time taken to write a new topic to number of replies” ratio, it was an awfully lot lower than that of my Italy trip reports.

Some of you likened the “menu surprise” to other kinds of no-choice menus. The operative phrase in my post was “in which I didn’t know…”. At the first restaurant, a modest to medium-price restaurant in St. Laurent-du-Var called L’Appart, I asked the waiter what was in the “menu surprise”. As the name implies, he wouldn’t tell me since that would remove the element of surprise. The second restaurant from this summer where we had the possibility of ordering the “menu surprise” was the rather expensive “Le Pirate” in Erbalunga on the Island of Corsica. This tells me that the concept isn’t limited to just cheap restaurants.

Some of the comments that a few of you made are well-taken, but worth rebutting. The notion of someone telling you that the chef would like to cook for you strikes me as disingenuous. Cooking for people is what chefs do, and the more people they can cook for, the better off they are in their livelihood. Even when there are chef’s tasting menus in restaurants as exalted as L’Arpege, the maitre d’hotel will tell you what the menu is comprised of. At the other extreme, say, in the Italian restaurants Jonathan Day talks about, the waiter will often recite the menu, usually with the possibility of your making reasonable changes. In fact, I have never been in a restaurant in Italy where “what you see is what you get” was the modus operandi., although at della Marisa in Venice, we had the same meal as everyone else. However, I wasn’t able to ask in Italian if there could be any changes in my meal. And certainly our waitress would have told me what the dishes would be had I asked. In this particular instance, it was a moot point since every preparation I had (and there was a great variety of them) except dessert was impeccable.

Suzy’s point about Omakasi strikes me as reasonable in the universal context of restaurants. It’s interesting, however, that in my one sushi book, in English and published in Japan, Omakasi doesn’t appear in it. Does anyone know where and when the concept started? Regardless, I have had breakfasts and keiseki dinners in ryokans where you have the dinner in your room. But such meals are composed for reasons that are particular to the Japanese. Furthermore, what goes in Japanese restaurants and sushi bars doesn’t merit consideration in the context of the French practice of “menus surprises”.

I recollect that at Chez Panisse, they post the menu for the entire month, making changes only if the food markets dictate.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned in adhering to the notion that the idea of being gourmand or an experienced diner is to try and excise the maximum from a chef’s abilities and his larder. It always means absorbing the content of the menu and asking question after question. It’s why I never order any kind of “menu” unless I have to at, for instance, el Bulli or the rare instances in which a menu strikes me as providing the preparations and produce that I suspect will give me the sort of meal I am looking for. But mark my word, you’re going to see a continuously increasing number of restaurants offering these surprise menus (most likely at a higher price than a restaurant's other fixed menus) with the result that there will be even more loss of the diner’s autonomy.

[John Whiting]

...As the name implies, he wouldn’t tell me since that would remove the element of surprise.

←

This point is crucial. The moment when the surprise becomes compulsory rather than voluntary is the moment I walk out the door.

[bleudauvergne]

There is only one restaurant where I don't order, and I trust him implicitly. He does not offer a "menu suprise" on the carte. Chefzadi hits the nail on the head when he specifies that the patron is a regular, and the idea of the "menu suprise" mentioned on a carte that Robert's describing seems to me to mean - you wish you had a special relationship with a chef, a priviledged relationship, but you don't, therefore we're going to offer you an "in" on what a real regular might get... But this is a sales pitch, I can't see it as anything more.

When my favorite restaurant suprises me, it's contingent on the fact that he knows what I'd be suprised by. Sometimes to draw my attention to a preparation of a particular game bird, help me to discover a certain sauce, something fresh and in season, some very local dish that I've been asking about, something he's proud of. Often wines get involved. It requires a certain benevolence on his part.

Robert's assertion that a blind "menu suprise" is bogus is completely valid, especially in the month of August in France, I think. I certainly would not order one in a place I'd never been in or from a chef I didn't trust completely.

[noambenami]

I disagree. At a bad restaurant, the food will be bad, at a great one, the food will be good. Its that simple. Case in point - I recently ordered the surprise menu at Lumiere in Vancouver, BC. It was the most expensive of the menus. It was an extraordinary meal, one of the two finest I've had in north america, the other being at Trio under Grant Achatz. Both meals were expensive, and I consider both to have been easily worth the money.

The thing to understand is that one of the core fundamental values of all truly good restaurants is generosity. I've seen this most often in France, where the culture and Michelin guide have resulted in things like multiple amuses, pre-amuses and pre- and post- desserts. Regis Marcon exemplifies that philosophy for me over there.

Another thing to consider is that on the line, we like people who like to dine and will treat them better than people who clearly are not appreciating the food. When someone puts themselves in the hands of the kitchen, that earns them an immediate degree of respect and makes the kitchen happy. Who better to cook for than someone who actually notices and appreciates the food? Much better than sending dish after dish to some wealthy snob who is there to impress his/her clients.

So, given the choice, I will always order the surprise menu at a good place.

[robert brown]

The problem and the challenge in a so-called good restaurant is to avoid a bad meal or to make a good meal even better. Good restaurants are known to serve bad meals. It's the job and the challenge of savy diners to get the most they can from a restaurant. Menus, particularly surprise menus, are no-brainer menus; at best a crutch for neophyte or apathetic diners. Surprise menus level the playing field in this regard, conceived for both idiots and savants. They are made to save labor and money for the restaurant owner more than anything else. They are about as opaque any anything in what is mostly an opaque relationship-that of chef to client. They rob the gourmand of his autonomy and, in fact, are killing off connoisseurship in the culinary domain. Like good design specifically and problem solving in general, the idea is to reduce the possibilities without eliminating the solutions, which is why making a considered selection of a relatively few courses enjoyed in generous portions has been, and still remains, the best way to dine. Were it not, Auguste Escoffier, Fernand Point or Paul Bocuse would have thought to serve several courses of little portions. Generosity is not serving the same little dishes ("free food" for those who follow the Italy Forum) to the entire room, but serving a whole duck in two courses, covering a pasta in Alba white truffles for a 15 euro supplement, and bringing out two or three dozen cheeses in peak condition and charging the same price regardless of how many you want to have. (or even offering cheese to begin with). Surprise menus, along with such other gimmicks as bite menus and multi-course menus are like exiting the theatre after listening to the overture.

[bleudauvergne]

I disagree. At a bad restaurant, the food will be bad, at a great one, the food will be good. Its that simple. Case in point - I recently ordered the surprise menu at Lumiere in Vancouver, BC. It was the most expensive of the menus. It was an extraordinary meal, one of the two finest I've had in north america, the other being at Trio under Grant Achatz. Both meals were expensive, and I consider both to have been easily worth the money.

I take it you had a certain trust in these establishments.

[Bux]

I disagree. At a bad restaurant, the food will be bad, at a great one, the food will be good. Its that simple. Case in point - I recently ordered the surprise menu at Lumiere in Vancouver, BC. It was the most expensive of the menus. It was an extraordinary meal, one of the two finest I've had in north america, the other being at Trio under Grant Achatz. Both meals were expensive, and I consider both to have been easily worth the money.

I take it you had a certain trust in these establishments.

←

Normally, one develops trust in a restaurant over time, but with judicious research and the recommendations of people I know and trust, I frequently enter a restaurant new to me in a foreign land with enough trust to commit myself to a long menu often filled with surprise dishes. The actual dish may be a surprise because it has a fanciful name whose ingredients cannot be deciphered by reading Escoffier, because it is written in a language I don't know or simply because it is meant to be a surprise by chef. The meals are not always overwhelming successes, but they are so successful, and so often successful, that I am encouraged to continue on a more regular basis.

This site is an excellent source of good information in that regard, although it should never be forgotten that taste is very subjective and what pleases one diner may not please another although they are both connoisseurs of good food. Perhaps it can be assumed I am open to a great variety of foods, tastes and styles of cooking and that the potential for a new and excellent food experience surpasses the normal fear of the unknown for me. At one point in my life devoted to good food, I found myself narrowing my focus towards a clear definition of the best way to eat and cook. At some later point, I found my pleasures increased to a greater degree by expanding my horizons. I am less envious of those who have had a meal I haven't or can't have, than I am of those who can better appreciate any meal I have eaten.

Just as I find wisdom in the old response "I need to do more research" in response to the question or whether Burgundy or Bordeaux is the better wine, I find I need to do more research before I can determine the "best way to dine." I trust I have not yet found the best meal of my life.

[robert brown]

The problem is that "the best way to dine" has a habit of disappearing. There is only one way to get the most out of dining these days, which is to choose your restaurants carefully and fight hard to get the most out of them. I like restaurants that give you latitude, which doesn't preclude the possibility of stumbling on a great meal, for example in restaurants as widely divergent as el Bulli and della Marisa where there is essentially no latitude.

I find that the more I go to interesting restaurants, the more I am able to suck more (or the most) out of them. These days the challenge is to avoid half or more of your meal ruined by "filler" dishes, which is almost always the problem in a surprise, chef's tasting, or many-course fixed menu. You almost always have to order off the a la carte menu (if there is one) to avoid this. Every restaurant offers a different challenge since they tend to have different configurations. However, I will offer the recent example of my and my wife's lunch at the Fat Duck. Quite simply, we ordered four savory dishes off the a la carte page, but seeing that the tasting menu offered dishes I had read about, but were not available on the other side of the menu, I asked the maitre d'hotel if we could also have three dishes from the tasting menu. In the end Blumenthal agreed after some pushing, with the result that we coaxed so much out of the restaurant that, given its less-than-dynamic repetoire, we don't need to return in a hurry. Regardless, we left feeling we probably got the maximum from our visit.

[noambenami]

Generosity is not serving the same little dishes ("free food" for those who follow the Italy Forum) to the entire room, but serving a whole duck in two courses, covering a pasta in Alba white truffles for a 15 euro supplement, and bringing out two or three dozen cheeses in peak condition and charging the same price regardless of how many you want to have. (or even offering cheese to begin with). Surprise menus, along with such other gimmicks as bite menus and multi-course menus are like exiting the theatre after listening to the overture.

This is your opinion and of course this stuff is subjective. I can see how a person who is not themselves in the food industry and who has a more basic, rather than intellectual, interest in food would hold this opinion. And there certainly are times when what I want is something as comforting as a duck or pasta with white truffles.

That said, let me present my own perspective, which is one of a person with a more intellectual interest in food combined with a bit of experience on the fine dining line:

First of all, I think that generosity can come in the form of work. The generosity at Trio and Lumiere and places like Chanteclaire is like that. Perhaps you don't get a whole white truffle as an amuse, but the amount of work and care that goes into each course is staggering. Absolutely perfect brunoise, a lot of ingredients, very careful work. That is still generosity. Furthermore, the spirit of generosity pervaded our meal at Lumiere - the kitchen felt that we should have a drink with our dessert, and so sent us one for free, along with comping our cocktails at the bar and giving us a wonderful free dish while we were there.

Second, as I said, duck and truffles is well and good. But there is an entirely different kind of dining, spearheded by Adria at El Bulli and followed by Achatz and folks like him. While the food at Trio was still undoubtedly at the 2-3 star level in terms of refinement, there is an intellectual interest and sense of play that is missing from "pasta with truffles" and which turns the meal into an experience that satisfies not only the gut but the mind as well. And in the long term, for me, Trio was much more satisfying because of the tremendous number of wonderful ideas that I observed and which influence my much more humble cooking.

That is merely a different style of dining and sometimes my preference goes to it. I find your point of view valid, but too limited for the varied ways in which I like to dine and think about food.

And since I feel like you ignored my statement of before, I'll say it again: At a good restaurant, the fact of someone ordering the surprise menu is a sign that they love food and trust the chef and that responsibility is taken seriously by the kitchen.

Since you enjoyed the fat duck and el bulli, I think that our differences on this are probably not so great. I just feel no need to "fight hard" at restaurants. I go there to put myself in the chef's hands and enjoy myself for a few hours.

[Jonathan Day]

I think the key word here is "trust".

When a genuine trust develops between diner and kitchen, it can be very pleasurable to turn the ordering over to the restaurant, knowing that they will do their best and will not take advantage. When Moby and I went to L'Ambroisie (which, if I recall correctly, has no set menus, only a carte) we asked the restaurant to assemble the meal for us -- and, as noambenami suggests, they responded positively, sending out an additional course, gratis, "to thank you for having trust (confiance) in us."

It's not unlike being invited to a friend's house for dinner -- out of politeness I would refrain from quizzing them, before the meal is cooked, about the ingredients and cooking methods. But beyond that, it's a pleasure to experience the food they set before you as a surprise.

With all that said, I agree with a lot of what Robert has written. The restaurant biz is bigger and more commercial than it once was, and it can be exploitative. I don't know that you have to "fight hard" to be well fed in every restaurant, but there are plenty where your trust won't be rewarded and the more analytical attitude that Robert espouses is the winning way.

I have a few merchants in France (cheese, fruit and veg, meat, wine) where this kind of trust has grown over the years. I'm often happy to take what they recommend as being particularly good on the day. I wouldn't do that at the local Champion or Carrefour supermarket. The key question for me is not whether a "menu surprise" is good or bad, but where I can give this kind of trust, and where I can't.

[John Talbott]

I've been quiet on this one but I must add that some of the best meals in my life have been at places unknown to me where friends have taken me and I've said "just ask the chef to please me." 100% success. 100% surprise.