Half-Roasted Goose

[markk]

I made reservations at a favorite restaurant for Christmas week, and asked if they'd be having Roast Goose. They said they'd check with the chef, and when they got back to me, the answer was "no, but the chef is going to order two portions and prepare it for you." (Let's just say that they have a very winning attitude that way.)

Now, I was partly joking in the title of the thread - they're definitely going to get uncooked goose - or so they think - and cook it. My question is, can you / can a restaurant buy just two portions of raw goose? Or are they going to be in for a surprise when they go to do it?

(Edited to add:) Has anybody even heard of any prepatations of Goose that are made with a "portion" or let's say a quarter of a raw goose, instead of roasting the goose whole?

Edited December 14, 2006 by markk (log)

[markk]

And I thought I'd report in, having had the goose last night.

The restaurant was beautiful as always.

Several little dishes were sent compliments of the chef to start our meal - a smoked salmon canape with a green onion sauce, and a fresh oyster baked with a wonderful and plentiful lump crabmeat stuffing with a port wine reduction drizzle.

We started with a hot, sauteed foie gras offering, a colossaly large slice of excellent foie gras, seared to perfection, and served with a roasted pineapple condiment and balsamic vinegar reduction - all of which, especially the liver, was simply outstanding.

The goose, which had been slow roasted in portions, was, well, it was a mis-step. It was served with the breast meat sliced and fanned out, aside a whole roasted leg, all of which was cooked just long enough to be dry, not fatty and juicy, but not long enough to be falling off the bone tender. I'm not expert enough in cooking geese to say how it should have been done, I just have enough experience in eating them to know that this was simply a bad choice and bad execution. It was accompanied by a very excellent bread and fruit stuffing, and two kinds of potatoes, and string beans and otherwise, it was an enjoyable and lovely dinner.

We were complimentary to the chef because he had ordered the geese and made them especially for us, something that a lot of chefs and restaurants wouldn't do, and I asked for it because I had had great faith in them to cook it right. So I rewarded their willingness to please a regular customer with praise and gratitude.

Then when the check arrived, and the portions of goose were eighty-dollars each.

[budrichard]

I'd say the you are possibly enamored of the Chef and Restaurant because you were complementary to the Chef and it appears the Chef was trying to accomodate you. It also appears that you enjoy dining at the particular restaurant. I find this very often where individuals become very comfortable with the suroundings and staff and when I go with them to thier favorite restaurant, it is much less than what i was led to believe.

Roasting a domestic goose properly, involves about 3-4 hours of 325F to render the fat layer and frequent removal of the grease. I roasted a fresh domestic whole goose yesterday and got a large mason jar full of grease. Whether your chef roasted the goose whole or choose to cook the breat seperately, I don't know. But it is very difficult to hit a reservation time, when the goose is at 165F at the joint and rested about 20 min for a 14# goose, it is ready to go whether the restaurant or the diners are ready for it. Since you had appetizers, I would venture a guess that the goose, whole or in parts was prepared ahead of time and held which dried the goose? The goose should have been very moist and rich and not falling off the bone tender. A confit or other slow prepartion is the only way to get a domestic goose falling off the bone.

I prepare a domestic duck by boning out the breasts and leg/thighs. The breasts are seared and served rare with the leg/thighs slow braised. The carcass makes a stock and the skin is rendered for cracklings and grease(makes great fries). I have toyed with the idea of doing a goose that way but I think the breast would be tougher than a domestic duck. Aged Magret ducks breasts are the best.

In any event, other than the goose, it appears you enjoyed the meal!-Dick

Edited December 26, 2006 by budrichard (log)

[Reefpimp]

For what it's worth:

My first experience with goose was when I was about 13. Let me tell you, there are few things that will build character like lying in the middle of a frozen, cut-over cornfield, covered in wisps of corn straw and alfalfa and blowing snow, cradling a shotgun wrapped in burlap, all in the hopes that when the geese come circling in, your hands will not be frozen solid and you can pull the trigger when the time comes. But these are wild birds, they move around and swim and fly, and they don't have a lot of fat on them (outside their livers; my first experience with foie gras was from these geese, and good as the commercial product is, it cannot compare with the wild, free-range version).

Imagine my surprise when I'd been out of the house a few years and decided to cook a goose for my roomates and our girlfriends for a holiday meal. The techniques learned at my mother's heel were useless to me: With the wild birds, fat and moisture are rarities, hoarded and guarded jealously. I ended up with a greasy, soggy mess. We all stared at each other when I put the plates down, prodded the goose (Douglas Sirk would have been pleased) a few times, and made a mutual agreement to fill up on potatoes and bread and spinach.

Could it be, Mark, that your chef had cosied up to a hunter friend of his and got a wild Canada goose for your pleasure? Because if a wild bird is cooked according to conventional wisdon, it ends up a lot like you describe.

[Fat Guy]

We were complimentary to the chef because he had ordered the geese and made them especially for us, something that a lot of chefs and restaurants wouldn't do, and I asked for it because I had had great faith in them to cook it right.  So I rewarded their willingness to please a regular customer with praise and gratitude.

←

No question, offering criticism under the circumstances you've described is a challenge. And maybe the chef would have been wounded by it. But you rewarded the restaurant's willingness to please a regular customer with misinformation!

Now what happens when another customer asks for something special, and the chef remembers how much Mr. & Mrs. markk loved that delicious goose preparation and found it well worth $80 a plate?

Honesty would have been the lesser evil, I think. (And you know, there's always a chance an employee at the restaurant is going to read your post, put two and two together, and take it back to the chef . . .)

We used to be regulars at a restaurant that did a lot of nice things for us. The day did come when we were served a lousy dish -- a special preview of a dish that was going on the menu soon -- after having been served about a thousand good dishes over a period of years. We equivocated, but eventually told the chef we thought it sucked -- I mean, we did so politely but we made clear that it was bad. He was a little miffed, I think. He put it on the menu anyway. It didn't do well. By the time he took it off the menu a few weeks later he had regained his sense of humor and was telling us stories about how the cooks had gotten tired of eating all the portions that had been sent back.

[markk]

We were complimentary to the chef because he had ordered the geese and made them especially for us, something that a lot of chefs and restaurants wouldn't do, and I asked for it because I had had great faith in them to cook it right.  So I rewarded their willingness to please a regular customer with praise and gratitude.

←

Now what happens when another customer asks for something special, and the chef remembers how much Mr. & Mrs. markk loved that delicious goose preparation and found it well worth $80 a plate?

Honesty would have been the lesser evil, I think. (And you know, there's always a chance an employee at the restaurant is going to read your post, put two and two together, and take it back to the chef . . .)

Oh, there's no question that you're absolutely right! I just couldn't come up with anything to say. I knew that being honest was the right thing to do, and not just for the reason that you give.

But let me digress a moment. When we got there, the chef told us that the goose was roasted, and he rather nervously, and humbly, and sincerely, said "I hope you like it."

I had spoken with him a few days earlier, and he said that he had gotten in several geese and was going to offer them as a special. When we got there, there was no goose listed on the insert of daily specials. The first thing that came to my mind was that they had gone badly, and that he had decided not to serve them (I've developed a 6th sense about these things over the years with restaurants.)

After it was served (he served it himself), he came back a few minutes later nervously to ask if it was okay. I just didn't know how to tell him it wasn't.

(The other reason I wanted to tell the truth is that any chef worth his stuff knows how good or bad a dish is that he's made. If he knows it's terrible, and the customer actually likes it, he can think things like 'well, that guy obviously doesn't know anything', or 'people, what do they know!'. I always think it's the best thing to tell the truth, and that way at least the chef knows that you know what you're eating.)

I did ask him at that point how come it wasn't on the specials list, and he said he'd been surprised at how few portions he got out of the few geese he had ordered, and that it wasn't nearly enough to offer as a special. That means that for sure they all ate some and knew.

But considering all the trouble I'd put him through, I didn't know what to say. I really am surprised that they served it, and considering that one of the portions went back uneaten, I'm surprised that he charged us eighty dollars each.

But I would be very eager to hear how you would have handled it, and what things you would have said, if you'd be so kind. I actually broke my rule of never lying, something I hate to do. But for perhaps the first time in my life I was at a loss for what to say.

[Fat Guy]

Again, I'm not trying to say it's an easy situation. It isn't. And in a totally superficial situation where some server interrupts your meal to ask how everything is, your best move is probably to say "fine" and move on -- offering a serious critique would be a waste of breath. But when you have a relationship, you're kind of stuck with the truth because anything else eventually comes back to haunt you some day, some way.

So, when it comes time to deliver the bad news, you fall back on general rules of constructive criticism and hope for the best: start with the positives ("This stuffing is awesome!"), try to turn the critique into a discussion ("Have you tasted it? What did you think? I'm wondering what other cooking methods you considered . . . I'm no expert on this product but I'm accustomed to it tasting more like . . ."), move off the uncomfortable subject quickly once you've made your point, follow up with more thanks and praise if needed.

At this point, I'd suggest writing him a note, saying he caught you off guard, you really appreciate how accommodating he was, but that the dish wasn't good. Make sure he understands you're not complaining, not asking for anything, but just giving constructive criticism as a friend of the restaurant because you'd feel bad if he served that dish to anybody else. Conclude enthusiastically with a comment about how excited you are to return soon.

[markk]

So, when it comes time to deliver the bad news, you fall back on general rules of constructive criticism and hope for the best:...

Thanks. I wish I'd thought of all these.

In retrospect, what we did was offer praise, but because we didn't really mean it, it didn't come out especially enthusiastic or convincing. In fact, I'm positive that it couldn't have been taken as more than polite and politically correct - one of those situations where everybody 'says' the right things and still everybody knows what's really going on.

Now for my next question... Especially since they didn't offer the other geese as specials, I'm sure they tasted them. And on top of that, I'm sure that they knew all that they needed to know from having tried to slice through them to serve them. And as I pointed out, one portion went back virtually uneaten (and since the whole staff made it clear they were aware of the special for us, from the people who greeted us, to all the servers who mentioned it to us,) and I'm sure that the chef who was nervous about it asked for feedback, and I'm sure he saw one uneaten portion... do you think it was strange that they still charged us eighty dollars per portion, which is just about double their most expensive main course?

I should point out here (without giving the name of the restaurant) that a few years ago when we ate there one night, we were served a main course based on shrimp, with shrimp that were really not up to par, and again, my patner barely picked at his dinner and left most of it uneaten. At that time, when the server cleared it, he properly asked "was it not to your liking?" and Richard responded "the shrimp were really not very good"; when the bill arrived that night, there was no charge for his uneaten main course - that's the type of restaurant it is, with everybody being really attentive, noticing problems even when customers don't point them out. Their ability to do this always is one of the things that makes this an espcially pleasant and pampering place to dine.

So, all of this consiered, do you think it was strange that they still charged what they did as if the dish had been a success?

[Fat Guy]

You may never find out exactly what happened, or who was thinking what (if anything). It's hard to know what goes on in a particular restaurant, especially behind the kitchen doors, on a particular night. Restaurants try to project confidence and competence, but behind the scenes things are often a complete mess. It's can be like a movie, where the actors are amazed at the final product -- they have no sense of it while they're in the thick of filming. So, for example, depending on who clears the plates and what's going on at that moment, it's quite possible that the chef will never learn that a portion went back uneaten. Some chefs make more of a point of checking on that sort of thing than others, and the design of the kitchen vis-a-vis the location of the dishwashing area can make a difference too. The thing is, for a restaurant that has had a long relationship with you, the plus or minus $80 is just not a big deal. A restaurant of that caliber is accustomed to taking losses on much more expensive items than that. It's part of the business. They do it for bad customers all the time, so for a good customer they really shouldn't mind.

[budrichard]

We have been patrons at a restaurant that started in the 1930's from 1971. It's an old style Wisconsin road house and the go-withs have never changed. At one time in our careers, we ate there at least once a week for dinner. One of my favorites was whitefish which they seasoned with paprika and pan seared and then roasted. In variably the whitefish was excellent as was everything else. One evening the whitefish had a bad taste, I called the owner over, actually the original owner's son was now in charge and told him about the whitefish. He took the dish in the back and then promtly came back out and said he had thrown all the whitefish away that he just got in. He made me a nice scallop dish but i don't remember if he charged me!. Our long term relationship was not harmed and we still have dinner there about twice a year now.

I think that taking a chef out of his element and comfort zone should be avoided. Frankly I would just forget the whole thing. Life is just too short.-Dick

[markk]

We decided on the spot not to be upset about it.

This was just a curiosity about restaurants.

For what it's worth (and the way everybody in the restaurant, and I do mean everybody, knew about the goose), I'd be willing to bet that the waitress let the chef (in a totally open kitchen, by the way) know that one went uneaten.

It was just the second guessing of the restaurant that intrigued me.

I will tell the story that not too long ago, we went to a favorite local restaurant back at home (NJ). We were as tired as could be, from an exhausting day, and when we arrived looking totally beat, and separately (one of us was trying to find a parking place), the restaurant's owner asked if we were fighting (which we absolutely were not, and before anyone asks, we don't ever do that, and certainly we don't take things like that to a restaurant, so his question wasn't based on any prior experience).

Anyway, after the meal when we asked for the check, we were told that there wasn't one, that we were guests of the house that night at the owner's whim. I know this guy well enough to know that he genuinely thought that maybe we were in bad moods (we were just exhausted), and decided that rather than have us leave the restaurant in a bad mood, he'd comp us dinner and then we'd remember the restaurant fondly no matter what our mood was.

I've seen restaurateurs do similarly interesting things, sometimes incredibly wise things, and I'm always intrigued and sometimes very impressed by them. That's why I was surprised by the charge for the goose, that's all.

[Sneakeater]

Of course, no matter how diplomatic you try to be, you can never be sure your comments will be taken the way you hope: