Can you take a hint?

When we were children, we didn’t understand the concept of sarcasm, body language, or even non-verbal communication. Because you don’t understand what’s right and wrong, your parents might tell you “now son, ladies don’t like it when you grab their breasts and call them ‘baby’”. What, noone else had this said to them?

Even as grown-ups, sometimes it’s difficult to determine what can be taken as non-verbal communication. Since this is a restaurant blog and not a life coaching blog, I’m here to enlighten you on the verbal and non-verbal hints your waiter will give you when he or she wants something from you.

The Peek

The Description: This generally will entail your waiter either strolling by your table and smiling at you, or peeking at your table from around a corner.

When It’s Used: It’s probably the most common thing we as waiters do. Generally we do it when we’re waiting for you to finish doing something, whether it’s looking at the menu, eating, or if you’re camping at the table, we do it to check to see if you’ve left yet.

The Open Hand

The Description: When your waiter extends his open hand next  to a dish, it generally means we want to take the plate.

When It’s Used: I use it all the time when I want to take something from a customer, but occasionally I’ll add in a phrase like “may I take this for you?”

Check, Re-check, and Check Again

The Description: When you notice your waiter is coming to your table every 2-5 minutes, asking if everything is okay.

When It’s Used: There is really only one time your waiter will perform this non-verbal communication: when you’re camping. If you’ve paid your bill, you are sitting and chatting, and you notice your waiter comes to your table and asks you a question such as “are you guys doing ok”, “do you want some more water”, or even “are you sure you don’t want to stay for dessert and coffee” then it’s probably your waiter telling you that you are taking too long and he or she wants you to leave because you’re keeping them longer than they want to be there.

The “I’m Not Bothering You, But I’m Staying In Your Line Of Sight”

The Description: When your waiter will stand somewhere away from your table, but stay in your line of sight doing nothing.

When It’s Used: Usually used in conjunction with the “Check, Re-Check, and Check Again” when customers are camping. Because a lot of restaurants won’t let their waiters leave until all of their tables have gone, your waiter is there as long as you are. So, it is our hope that you will see us and say to yourself “oh, he must be waiting for us to leave. Let’s go and let him go home”. Unfortunately, this almost never works.

Cropdusting

The Description: I honestly would rather not tell you this definition if you don’t know what it is, because it’s rather disgusting. However, it’s something that I’d imagine every waiter does even if they don’t want to admit it. If you really have a desire to find out what this word means and how it relates to the service industry, click here. (I know you’re going to click it anyway, so go ahead)

When It’s Used: If your waiter doesn’t like you, or if you are camping, you might be a victim of “cropdusting”. However, you might also just be collateral damage in your waiter’s day. I will not confirm, nor deny that I do this, I’ll just say that I know that it happens. Come on, people, it’s biological and bound to happen. You can’t tell me you’ve never let one loose and failed to claim it when people start complaining.

I’m sorry if this information comes at a bit of a shock, but it’s the complete openness that my readers expect. And so, I shall deliver.

Leave your comments below.

It’s the little victories that count.

“You may have won the battle, but I have won the war”

That’s a very common phrase, I think, and just about everyone has heard it. It’s a phrase commonly associated with the little guy winning the small victories, but ultimately walks away defeated. Organizations all over the world use this kind of thought when they plan their attention-getting events to either force a change or make themselves feel a little better. They know that they won’t be able to force change, but as long as they get the attention they desire and the satisfaction of winning just a small battle, it’s a win.

In the restaurant industry, we get these little victories, too. These are the things that when we get the opportunity to do them, it will brighten our day as we have successfully “stuck it to the man”. If the adage “the customer is always right” was 100% true, I think there would be a higher suicide rate among waiters and retailers than food “batchmakers” and physicians. Imagine if you could return an item after the 30 day return policy, retail stores would go out of business if a customer was alway right and was able to return an item at any time. In the restaurant if the customer is always right, why have a set menu? Why not just let the customer come in and say “I would like this and this and this”. I think it would ultimately be mind-fracturing and the restaurant industry as a whole would crumble under the Atlas-like overhead costs. Therefore, it’s important for the employee or restaurant to be right sometimes too.

Go fly a kite

There are a few things that will put a smile on my face if I’m having a terrible shift. One of these delightful little events is the phrase “I’m sorry, but we’re closed”. These five words (okay, four words and a contraction) is most joyous if you should happen to be one of the closing waiters on the floor. The ability to turn away customers, in spite of the restaurant, is most certainly an occasion you remember. I bet any waiter reading this will immediately remember that one time they got to tell a customer to “piss off” in much nicer terms. However, should you get those customers that think they can sneak in and be served 10 minutes before the restaurant is closing, the phrase “our kitchen is closing” is just as good, but unfortunately not 100% effective. Sometimes you will get those toss-hats that will say “oh, great! We made it!”

God, I love forcing you to pay

By far, the thing that puts a smile on my face more than anything in the restaurant is by far the greatest invention in the history of the restaurant industry. The unfortunate thing is that not all restaurants have it, although they should. I am, of course, talking about the “auto-grat”. Auto-grat – automatic gratuity – is the Normandy of victories: you may have run me ragged, but I get to stick it to you in the end. Many restaurants implement an 18-20% automatic gratuity for larger parties of anywhere from six to eight or more. Some will even auto-grat a table with split checks. But, my favorite instances are those “celebrity” tables that want me to be their personal slave and walk away knowing they are going to leave me a poor tip. I just love watching their faces as I drop the bill and they see their $450 bill has been permanently attached with an $81 tip. I can’t tell you how beautiful it is to see jaws hit the floor, and how excited I am to explain to them that it says on the menu that parties of six or more will be assessed an automatic gratiuty of 18%. The cherry on top is the fact that I know that they think they will just change the bill when I run their credit card and leave me with an even worse tip than they planned to leave. What they don’t know is that I can permanently add the tip to the bill making it impossible to change. I’ve made the mistake thinking that I could forgo the auto-grat and let the customer leave me more, but I closely follow the phrase “a bird in the hand…” I’d rather have the 18% that I’m guaranteed than chance it for a few extra percent. The auto-grat is one of the few things that my manager will stand behind me on, simply because it’s listed on the menu.

Every industry has those little victories that matter to them. I may just be your server, but sometimes I get to be your master. Now, say my name and call me “daddy”.

I wonder if they’ll ever find Jeff Goldblum

There are two kinds of really bad days in the restaurant: the ones that you know are coming up and you end up dreading all week and the ones management tells you about that night that end up making you so filled with rage that you want to throw a wine glass into the ice maker. “Bug Night” fits into the latter category.

Every restaurant I have ever worked in has had a “Bug Night” at least once a month. For those who are not privy to the workings of the restaurant, Bug Night entails everyone on the staff staying until close, removing every plate, cup, bowl, hood, glass, and every other knick-knack found in the kitchen or around the line and moving it to a secluded part of the restaurant, usually out in what the lay-person would call “BFE” (look it up). Also, every wait-station or other important areas of the restaurant are usually covered by cellophane or trash bags to keep those areas free from insect repellant. This is a tedius, tiresome enterprise that I’m sure management gets a little tickle watching their drones remove every item in the kitchen knowing that it all has to go back the following morning. The benefits of Bug Night is that the amount of fruit flies or other “unwanted guests” are drastically reduced…hopefully.

One would have to imagine that the same job could be done by household insect repellant, but for some reason they like to bring in a professional to pump his canister and spray his little gun into all of the nooks and crannies around the restaurant. That last sentence did start to sound a little dirty, didn’t it? I realize that it’s necessary to the restaurant to have a Bug Night, but I wish management would inform us when these nights will be, so I can make sure to get a co-worker to pick up my shift. For me, Bug Night was tonight of all days. There’s a fortunate outcome and an unfortunate outcome of tonight’s events. Unfortunately, management decided that my section was to be used as the temporary kitchen storage closet, so I was without any tables for the entire night, making any opportunity for me to make any money nil and void. The fortunate turn of events was that after realizing that he had screwed me over, I got to go home early and save the ice machine from almost certainly being filled with broken glass (not that I would really do that).

I’m sure you, as a customer would wish that I had never mentioned this once-a-month event to you, but I’m also sure that you’re happy that I did. I know that somewhere in the back of your mind, you have to wonder how clean a restaurant’s kitchen really is and if there are bugs crawling around it. Trust me, some things are just better left unsaid. You’ll thank me later.

And So It Begins…

Just to let my readers know, I will be featured in an upcoming article in Reader’s Digest titled “50 Things Your Waiter Won’t Tell You”. Look for it in the next few months. They will plug “You’re My Shadow Today”, providing a web address to the site.

If I end up getting big and writing a book because of this blog, you can tell your friends that you “knew the guy before he was famous”.

Well, Isn’t That Special?

I’ve always hated that word, “special” when speaking about food. Why couldn’t there be a better, fancier way of saying that a dish has be specifically prepared for that evening? How about “Chef’s Delight” or “Mastication Creation”? Anything is better than “special”. When I hear “special” I think of those Airstream-looking restaurants you see in movies with the words “DINER” flashing in neon signs above it, where my waitress is a 40-something year old grandmother, smacking her gum and scratching her head with her two-inch long nails.

For those of you who don’t know what a “special” is, it’s a dish that the chef prepares either weekly or daily that isn’t on the regular menu. It’s considered an off-the-menu item, and is generally more expensive that half the things the restaurant sells. That is, unless you eat at the diner. I’m lucky to work in a restaurant that does well enough, and has chefs with the culinary talent to create different specials each shift. That’s pretty amazing if you think about it: we’re open all day every day, two shifts a day which calculates to 21 entree specials each week (we two specials at night). That’s not including the occasional appetizer special that might include Fois Gras or rabbit. When it comes down to it, I have A LOT of things to memorize each shift.

Quite often enough, I’ll have customers ask me if I would recommend them choosing some entree off the menu or one of the specials and my answer is always the same: anywhere you go if you have this dilemma, always order the special. The reason being is that if you happen to return to that restaurant and you don’t like the special on that evening, order the other dish you were thinking about that’s on the menu. Our “mastication creations” are generally pretty creative, always combining meat – usually filet, lamb, or venison – with some kind of seafood, usually set in something, topped with something else, and finished with something even more creative. Who knew that a coconut-pineapple cream would be phenominal on top of a filet?

My only problem with people who order the special is that occasionally they will modify it some way or separate the protein, removing the meat or fish from the complimenting ingredients. Come on, people! You ordered it because you thought all those ingredients sounded great together. It’s primal intuiton that when you hear words like “Romesco” or “Gastrique” you’re supposed to go “oooh” and “aaaah”. When you remove those ingredients, you’re messing with your primal intution and that’s not good. You know what happens when you mess with your primal intuition? Bad things. Bad things happen. Just ask the venison you’re eating.

Oh, and you get bonus points if you can name the SNL reference to the title of this post. G’gnite.

Loaded like a baked potato. Or is that potatoe?

I love it when customers ask me loaded questions. When I say “love it” I actually mean “hate it”, and by “loaded question”, I mean questions that I obviously cannot answer truthfully without losing my job.

These questions customers might ask because they’re sincerely curious, or they’re just ignorant and want me to lie to them. I suppose I could start the answer with “do you want me to be honest?” but how cliche is that saying? You almost expect the customer to reply with “what, does that mean you’ve been lying to me all this time? Are you not glad we’re dining with you tonight? Is your $40 special not absolutely delicious?” But, I digress.

I’m more talking about questions like, “Do you mind if we sit here for a while? We have some business papers to go through.” This question coming when it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and the entire restaurant is empty and closed until 5:00.  Or worse, when the question comes when they’re done with their dinner and it’s 7:30 during the busiest rush in the history of the restaurant. This particular question goes back to my loathing of campers. Link I can’t exactly answer this question truthfully. What am I going to say, “yes, actually, I do mind. It’s 2:30 and I’d like to have a break before I blow my brains out from the boredom of watching you two keep me here unwillingly while my co-workers enjoy some nice mid-shift margarita’s as the Mexican restaurant next door” or “sorry, but I have to lie to you and say ‘no, I don’t mind’ because any other answer would lead to me being fired and I need my job”?  No, of course I dont say that. I say “sure, no problem” with a big smile and walk away while cursing you under my breath.

I know some people think they’re being considerate when they ask questions like that, as if it’s their way of saying that it’s okay if I leave them there unattended, but again, I’d be fired if I did that. They might even ask me another loaded question like, “what time do you get to leave here?” No, unfortunately this question isn’t being asked by some blonde bombshell looking to get a little “afternoon delight”, but it’s usually some 40-somethings who know they’re going to be sitting there a while. It’s just another question I have to lie about and it’s a difficult answer to give. As much as I’d like to say “I have to stay here and watch you until you leave”, I’m forced to say something vague, such as “Not too much longer, I don’t think”. As if my boss is making me stay until 4:00 and you just happen to be so lucky as to have a waiter who’s there for you until four.

Another question that I hate is if a customer asks me if I like something on the menu that I know is crap. Every restaurant has those dishes that are on the menu because the boss thought it would be nice to have, or it was his momma’s special recipe, but tastes like dogmeat. Again, I wish I could be honest and say “don’t eat that. You’ll hate it and blame me for serving it to you and leave me a shitty tip.” Luckily, having worked in the industry for seven years, I’ve canned some material for those kinds of questions. Usually I’ll say something like “It’s okay, but I think this dish is better” mentioning a similar dish. Or, I might lie to my customer and tell them that I am allergic to one of the main ingredients.  Never do I tell a customer that I’ve never had something on the menu.

The best question I can actually be truthful about is when a customer asks what time the restaurant closes. If it’s during the day, I can say that the main dining room closes at 2:00 and reopens at 5:00. If it’s the evening, I can tell them that we closed at 9:00 (an hour and a half ago). Fortunately, at dinner if someone asks that question, they’ll look at their watch and realize they’ve been sitting there forever. Unfortunately them actually asking me what time we close happens as often as a “celebrity” tipping well.

I wish we lived in a society where it was ok to tell people what you really thought without being fired, or considered rude. I’d probably be fired just on principle.

Can I have your autograph, Mr. Celebrity?

I have this friend who calls me a “bigot”. I hate to correct him, but his usage of the word is not proper. I think he should use the word “prejudice” to describe me and the philosophies that I have developed over the course of seven years of being in the restaurant industry.

I’m not necessarily against waiting on any type of clientele, there are just some that I am aware that there will be some problems with. Whether it’s that they are extra demanding, irritable, or just terrible tippers, they act like they are “celebrities”, and I dread the times when I wait on these tables. Now mind you, often enough I will wait on people like this in the course of a night where their terrible tip will balance out with a good tip I got from someone else, but the fact still remains that I don’t have that extra ten or twenty dollars in my pocket because of this one table.

Now, I understand that I’ll probably offend some people from this post and I might even lose some readers, but please do not take it negatively. To reduce the possibility of you, the reader, knowing who I’m talking about, I’ll use the word “celebrities” as stated before.

“Celebrities” are really different people depending on where you are in the country. Everyone’s got that one group of people they hate waiting on – women, old people, teenagers, men, asians, whites, blacks, Mexicans, the French – so, if you are in the restaurant industry, you can’t deny that you dislike waiting on a particular group of people. I know it’s tough for someone to actually call you out on it, but it’s something you have to deal with. Because you don’t know where I’m located, I could easily be talking about Australians, so don’t make assumptions. The fact of the matter is that in any restaurant around the country, there is one or more groups of people that fall into this category.

A “celebrity” to me is someone that doesn’t usually dine out, but has this idea in their head that it should be an honor for me to wait on them, because they came into my restaurant, as if they are someone special. Everything over the course of their dinner should be prepared at lightning-fast speed, it should be cooked perfectly as if they were watching over the chefs preparing the food, they should get something free and not have to leave much of a tip.

Celebrities are usually pretty needy (Christina Aguilera requires “Flinstones” brand vitamins in her dressing room). You can’t walk by their table without them asking you for something whether it be ketchup, A1-steak sauce, more lemons, or the dreaded bread request. The kicker is that they act like these things should have already been on their table or you should have read their mind so they wouldn’t have to be bothered to ask you for these things. And should you decide to talk to a table next to them before addressing the celebrity table, they might just repeat your name over and over until you interrupt yourself and address them.

The neediness also extends to the food they order. 80% of the time, no matter how perfectly their food is cooked, they’ll send it back because either they don’t like it, it’s over/undercooked, or it wasn’t what they expected it to be. This is often the case with any order of tuna. Anyone in the restaurant industry knows that tuna is usually seared rare to medium-rare. I one had a celebrity snip at me “I was under the impression that you were going to cook this fish!” I had to reply “yes sir, the Seared Tuna is seared rare”. So, I took it back and basically burned it like he wanted, giving it the consistency of Chicken of the Sea. A couple nights ago, I had a co-worker get a celebrity table that sent back two different kinds of steak because they were either under/over cooked, or “had too much fat on it”. Once she got the fourth steak she inspected, she promptly said that it was over-cooked but not to worry about it, and requested it be boxed up. By the way, that steak that had too much fat was a Ribeye (if you don’t know, a Ribeye is a well-marbled piece of steak which gives it more flavor because the fat stores the juice and seasoning).

The “steak inspector” my co-worker had ultimately complained that she had to pay for the steak, to which her waiter explained to her in nicer words that we weren’t in the business of giving steak away, so if she wanted to take the steak home, she’d have to pay for it. Which leads me to my last point. Celebrities are cheap. Often celebrities will come into my restaurant for special occasions, usually birthdays. As soon as they walk in, they want to know if we do anything special for birthdays (meaning, what can they get for free). Of course, we give a dessert away with a candle in it. I can’t really complain about this because everyone else does it, too. It wasn’t really even worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning is that they will often inspect the bill and complain about things. On our menu, it states in plain English that split entrees incur a charge. So, when they get that “Split Charge : $3.00″ on their bill, they practically outrage over it. Which leaves me to my last point:

Celebrities are terrible tippers. I had a friend of mine who fell into the category of a celebrity and I talked to him about this situation. I asked him “if you went to a nice restaurant and your bill was $98, and you received amazing service, how much would you tip?” he replied “probably $5″. I had heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Someone actually admitting they’d leave a shitty tip. I had to ask him why and he said “I had already spent $100, why leave a bigger tip than that?” I promptly explained to him how much waiters made, how much they have to tip-out to support staff, and how much his tip would actually translate to for the waiter. I told him that I’d actually owe the restaurant $1.40. His response was that it was my fault for choosing the job, why should he have to pay for his service if my bosses don’t want to pay me more hourly? I wondered if this was how all celebrities felt. It’s even worse if things don’t go perfectly for them, like the “steak inspector” as mentioned earlier, or the people I had who outraged over the split charge. Of course, neither left a tip.

So, call me prejudice if you want, but as the phrase goes “let ye who has not sinned cast the first stone”. If you work in the restaurant industry, thank me for being bold enough to expose this problem for you.

Not really a gift for everyone…

In the past couple years, without fail, news stations every Christmas discuss the rising trend of people giving gift cards as presents, along with the pros and cons of giving gift cards. They usually make the same arguments every year that you should be careful and and people still give them. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with gift cards. I give gift cards as presents on holidays. It’s a fantastic present to get someone for whom you don’t know how to shop. If you know their favorite restaurant, or store, just give them a gift card and they can go spend it however they like. Of course, if you don’t know their favorite places, then you might want to ask or at least pay attention because that’s really what friends do, right? Imagine giving a co-worker a gift card to Home Depot, when they spend most of their time shopping at Yankee Candle. If you had been an observant friend, then you wouldn’t piss them off. Really, can you imagine someone giving you a gift card to a store you don’t shop at? It’s annoying.

Restaurants love gift cards. Well, let me be more specific: restaurant owners love gift cards. It’s automatic money. It’s basically saying “I’m going to MAKE my friend come to your restaurant and use this gift card, because I’ve already given you $50 (or $100).” The best thing about it is that when people have a $50 gift card, they’re more inclined to spend a little more money. We’ll see a pretty large influx of gift cards in the first three months of the year (if you don’t know why this is, think about it for a few minutes then read on – I’ll wait). I, along with every other waiter in the business, hate seeing gift cards. Why, you ask? Well, if I gave you a nice easy answer, this would be a short blog post and you wouldn’t get the full effect.

People giving gift cards to friends and family for holidays will often bring in the “wrong clientele” to our fine dining restaurant; someone who normally would never eat there because it’s so expensive. So, a gift card gives them an opportunity to dine at a restaurant that’s well above their budget. Generally, these riffraff are easy to spot because of the clothes they wear, their obvious lack of experience dining at a fine restaurant, and the usual deer-caught-in-headlights look they get when you try to explain the specials for the evening. Of course, this “holiday-benefiting” clientele will spend every dollar of that gift card and often no more. I’ve had a co-worker get a couple of this kind of clientele come in with a $100 gift card, order $98.90 worth of food and leave her the gift card on the table and walk out. I’m sorry, but this is completely unacceptable.

As I’ve said before, everything a waiter does is so that you tip more. We’ll upsell you a salad, dessert or coffee for the purpose of raising your ticket prices so that you’ll be inclined to tip more. The problem with the gift cards for us (and a good thing for you) is that it’s a huge deduction in what is charged to your credit card. Now, this is different if say, your gift card is $100 and you only spend $40. What that means is that when you go to sign your check and your original bill is $120 and you paid with a credit card and a $100 gift card, the only thing that will come back on your credit card slip is $20. Customers will often see that $20 on their credit card slip and think a four dollar tip is sufficient, but not when your bill was originally $120! Especially when we go through the extra effort of upselling you and taking extra care of you because your ticket was so high. Ultimately, we only received a four dollar tip on a $120 bill, which isn’t even CLOSE to being enough, especially with needing to tip-out the support staff. If you, as a customer come into a restaurant with a gift card, make sure that you pay attention to the original total of the bill before giving your tip. I know it might look strange to tip $24 when your credit card is only charged $20, but remember your original bill was $120 and we did $120 worth of work.

The worst atrocity of this kind of instance happened to a co-worker of mine a couple months ago and was one of the reasons he quit. He had a table of “wrong clientele” come in one night and order the most expensive items on the menu. Steak and Lobsters, mixed drinks, frozen margaritas, desserts, the whole nine yards. Between three people, their bill ended up being somewhere above $320. They were running my co-worker ragged, back and forth from the kitchen, etc. When he drops the bill, they give him four gift cards. They tell him that two of them are $100, and two are $50. He goes to the bartender to give her the gift cards to ring up, and one of the $50 gift cards is actually empty! He brings the check back, with $70 left to be paid. These people complained, calling my co-worker a liar saying that they knew the money was on the card, and even going to talk to the bartender themselves. Apparently, they explained that they had bought the $50 gift card from some thug on the street for $20. They continued to complain, and finally paid the $70 or so left on the ticket, and left a tip of a whopping SIX dollars. That’s SIX dollars on a $320 check. That’s a 1.8% tip.

So, they can be good for you, but remember, more often than not they’re bad for us. It’s just saddening that this happens a lot more than it should.

BLASPHEMY!!!!

There are some phrases that I absolutely LOVE to hear my customers say. Of course, I’m being very sarcastic. In fact, these couple phrases sink my heart to the very bottom when I hear them. So, here are a few:

“We’re going to be here for a while/We’re just visiting” – this usually means that my customers are knowingly going to be taking a long time at the table. So, a lunch that normally would be 30-45 minutes, they’re now going to be taking 2-3 hours, occupying my table and limiting my ability to turn the table for more customers.

“This steak is overcooked” – Of course, either the kitchen messed up or I accidentally entered the wrong temperature for the steak. The result of this is a complete do-over on the steak. This is much harder to hear than someone saying that the steak is undercooked. At least we can cook the same steak a bit more.

“What does gratuity mean?” – People who regularly eat out understand the meaning of this word as being a more proper name for “tip”. Only two reasons a customer would say this and neither of them are good: either they don’t understand the concept of tipping, or they’re illiterate.

“Which of these wines is your best White Zinfandel?” – I’ve already spoken of my abhorring of White Zinfandel, being that it’s basically alcoholic Kool-Aid. I generally laugh on the inside when I hear this question.

“I’ll have the Pasta Alfredo” - This one may not seem so bad…if you worked in an Italian restaurant. I do not. When someone orders this dish, it tells me two things: they aren’t interested in trying new things and they don’t eat out much. Restaurants put this dish on their menu because it’s “safe”. People know what this tastes like, so if they see big words on their menu that they don’t understand like “Bernaise”, they see “alfredo” and go “ooh! I know what that is!”

“Let me see your manager” – Pretty self-explainatory. 99% of the time, this is not a good thing to hear your customer say.

“I didn’t like it.” - Most often than not, this is actually followed by a self-pleasing chuckle by someone who thinks they’re being original and funny by handing me an empty plate and being blatantly sarcastic.  This joke is old. Please stop using it.

Please, feel free to add your own favorite phrases.

It’s My Menu! Not Yours, Mine! Get Your Own!

Every restaurant has a set menu. Well, 99% of them do. Even the restaurants in Los Angeles where you can bring your dog and let them sit on the chair with you have menus. Dogs have menus people. Dogs. Are you a dog? I hope so, because if you were a dog and you were reading this, that would be awesome. But seriously, a restaurant has a menu for reasons.

Generally the menu defines what the restaurant is all about. You can easily pick up any menu from any restaurant and immediately know what kind of restaurant it is without even stepping foot inside a building. See hamburgers, baked beans and chicken wings? It’s probably American-style, or pub. See fois gras, boeuf a la provencal, and sweetbreads, it’s probably going to be French. Every now and then you’ll get a blend of different style: a couple different things that the owner/chef knows how to make, or a hip new infusion-style restaurant. One of my favorite restaurants to visit when I’m in Chicago is this place called Avec. http://www.avecrestaurant.com/ It’s a bit of a Mediterranean-style place with different foods from Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. The type of menu they have, like everyone else’s, identifies to everyone what kind of restaurant it is.

To the trained eye, the menu will also tell what sorts of things the kitchen has in stock. The kitchen manager will generally order portions of food that the current menu needs. Most of the time any restaurant in a higher quality than your local McDonald’s will have specials that will run for anywhere from being a daily special, to a seasonal special lasting two-to-three months. The specials are a completely different monster of their own. On occasion the executive chef will decide to special order a certain kind of meat, cheese, or vegetable and make the special out of that. Whether or not that special is going to be successful is a different story. If it doesn’t go well, they’ll extend the special until that product runs out or goes bad. But, usually the special consists of produce that the kitchen already has in stock and wants to make something different.

But let me tell you, unless you don’t see an ingredient anywhere on the menu in other dishes, there’s a slim chance that the kitchen is going to have it in stock.

Now, what all this means is, ladies and gentlemen, order from the damn menu. If you go into a restaurant and complain that they don’t have buffalo wings when the sign read above you when you walked through the front door “Olive Garden”, you’re going to look pretty damn foolish.