Restaurant "Don'ts" for 2016

Nice, somewhat humorous article written by Jay Rayner of The Guardian. Can’t say I disagree with any of it–especially the part about lighting. I’m tired of having to read the menu with the flashlight feature on my phone. And I’m not the only one doing so.

I agree with pretty much all of this, especially the following, which is a major pet peeve of mine lately:

All restaurants must install big enough tables to accommodate their small-plate-sharing menus. The small plates menu was your idea, not mine. Most tables can’t manage more than four dishes, and you want us to order seven.

Yes, please just have salt and pepper on the table. It seems like auch a small thing. I get with changing the linens it is two more things to move around and that if they are in open cups there is a risk of spilling but still. It’s so basic. Everyone coming to your restaurant has salt and pepper on their table and they know exactly how they want their food seasoned anyway. It’s not an insult to the chef if I drop a few flakes of Maldon on my food.

Absolutely. There is no such thing as a “perfectly seasoned” that is being served to anyone other than the person who seasoned it, because different people have different taste sensitivities. Well-seasoned means that it shouldn’t be significantly under- or over-seasoned to the typical guest. I’m sure it is annoying to see patrons blindly grabbing the salt and pepper shakers before even taking a bite, but I don’t accept that I should be inconvenienced because of the stupid dining habits of others.

fascinating. I hate having salt and pepper on the table. Self seasoning is not for fine dining, imho. for a variety of reasons:

  • it’s unsanitary. I have no idea how deep the previous person who touched it picked their nose or wiped their butt.
  • it kills me when people salt their food before they’ve even tasted it. what if it’s perfectly seasoned already and they just ruined a good meal?
  • a chef’s job is to appropriately season food for the way it is tasting right now. maybe the carrots come in more bitter this week and they need a pinch more salt and sugar, maybe less, that’s the chef’s job, not the diners. Salt added after cooking tastes and behaves far different than salt used for cooking. Salt on the table is just as bad as that gross slurry of wasabi and soy people dip their sushi in.

I prefer to eat at restaurants that properly season the food they serve. If it isn’t properly seasoned, it means that no one in the kitchen tasted it. Why would any restaurant kitchen serve a dish that hadn’t been tasted first?

That gross slurry of wasabi and soy is for dipping nigiri, rice down, right?

that’s what they do with it, right. but sushi is just like western food you describe: each bite should be properly seasoned by the chef. with nigiri, that’s typically wasabi under the fish, seasoned rice and a sweetened soy on top of the fish.

My #1 freaking peav!!! Do not start serving my meal until I have a wine at the proper temperature in my glass!!! I am so tired of ordering wines that can’t be found or are not at the right temperature.

I went to a 3 star michelin restaurant recently and told my server and the somm please do not start the meal until I have sorted out the wine. I was on course 3 before the wine I ordered was chilled properly and in my glass.

I agree. on the other end, a freezing cold white btg is a pain.

How is it possible to appropriately season food for every diner? My girlfriend likes things saltier than I do. We could order the same exact thing and her opinion of its seasoning could be different than mine. It’s arrogant to presume the food is perfectly seasoned and that adjusting to an individual diner’s taste is bastardizing the dish. The diners’ are paying for the food, they should do with a dish’s seasoning as they please.

Totally agree with Robert. I HATE it when food service starts before wine is served and at temp. Some places are guilty of starting before wine is even ordered! It is one of the numerous service related reasons I will never return to Le Bernardin. A restaurant that serves great food, but couldn’t give a f*ck about whether their patrons have a good experience. What do they care? Their tables are filled every night.

While I hear you about wine that’s too cold, I would far rather have too cold than too warm, as the wine will naturally warm in the glass whereas I have no hope of cooling a wine unless I request an ice bucket etc.

You’re doing it wrong. Next time pour it out over your nigiri like you’re eating maple syrup with pancakes.

[snort.gif]

We need a sarcasm emoji.

I was taught by a sushi man 35 years ago that the soy dish was for sashimi and that he dressed each piece of nigiri with soy on top of the fish. He advised me to turn the sushi over and lightly dip the fish (never the rice) at ‘American’ restaurants that don’t properly serve sushi. And never to add wasabi to the soy, except for sashimi.

Few things irritated Yama-san more than people who filled their soy dishes to the brim, added chunks of wasabi (and, god forbid, ginger), and then dunked his carefully crafted nigiri rice-aide down into the whole mess.

Jim,

Maybe think about it from a winemaking perspective: you might add acid in response to the vintage but not each costumer’s taste. There’s an ideal level of acid for your style of wine in that vintage and it would be weird from me to acidify your wine after I open it just because I like acidic wines.

That’s not really comparable. If you don’t like the glass of wine you have you can get another, not drink it, get a beer, etc. Also tartaric acid is not likely readily available. Putting salt on food is a wildly common and accepted practice. If I find my food under-salted for my taste there is an easy answer. Not eating it or ordering a whole other dish in hopes it is nicely seasoned or simply eating it as is are irrational responses to a situation to which there is a simple answer. I prefer not waiting for a server to come around, especially in a busy restaurant, to ask for something that seems de rigeuer.

Most fine dining restaurants to me are OvER salting dishes if anything. I really don’t need a salt shaker at a fine dining place. I expect it to come out tasting great.

For casual diners. Yah gimme salt and pepper.

I just hate when wine service is so clearly an afterthought or overtly usurious. I’m going out to be offended? I can go to any meeting for that!

Not putting salt and pepper on a table is (IMO) another example of restaurants needing to get over themselves. The health aspect that Paul brings up has some very small merit, but IMO isn’t the reason they don’t and really not much of a factor in my book.

I question the validity of saying that even a fine restaurant salts their food ideally. First off, even the higher-end restaurants don’t seem to get everything right when it comes to detail. But more importantly, and somewhat related, is that different people like different levels of salt in their food and even perceive saltiness differently. So the preparers idea of ideal saltiness just isn’t going to be seen as ideal. If I dine with my wife and my sister, typically I find a lower level of salt ideal, my wife is in the middle, and my sister likes things salty. That isn’t because any of us fail to understand how the food might taste best or haven’t given different salt levels a chance.

The wine analogy misses the mark. Most of us don’t possess the agents needed to acidify a wine even if we wanted to. Secondly, even if we had it, there isn’t much confidence level that we could do it correctly and not have some unintended effect. Sprinkling salt on food is both simple and understood by all of us. I am a pretty good cook, my wife is even better. When we have guests over we put salt on the table. We’re not taken aback when a guest, WHO ISN’T PAYING, elects to sprinkle some salt on their food. In fact we’d prefer that they enjoy the food just as they’d like.

One of our pet peeves is that the majority of restaurants that serve dishes to be shared, fail to put a serving utensil in each dish. I like my friends, but not enough to share spit from their utensils.

Don’t clear my plate while my wife is still eating!

I agree with many/most of the points in the article, although they were also things not to do in 2015, 2014, 2013, etc.

I’ll add one more thing–turn the f**king music down (it’s a restaurant and not a club), and put in enough sound-absorbing materials so that the dining room doesn’t sound like a sports stadium. When I go out to a nice restaurant for dinner, I want to be able to have a pleasant conversation that doesn’t involve me constantly yelling “WHAT???” to others at the table. Get off my lawn!!!

Bruce