Honest Menus

   Restaurant menus.  What are we really looking at when they have been presented to us.  Some are straight forward while others are thick as bibles.  I tend to find most menus that I read a bit misleading.  The authors have taken quite a few liberties with artistic license in an effort to impress the public and show off food which may not be worthy of the descriptors.   Farm to table, artisanal cheese, locally sourced, confit, gastrique, aioli, coulis, gorgonzola cheese, free-range chicken, Faro island salmon, Hudson Valley foie gras, Olympic Peninsula steelhead trout, Benton's bacon, Grainger County tomatoes, dry aged steak,  she crab soup, crab cakes, fresh fish are just a few of menu claims I have been suspicious of, doubted or know for a fact were false.

  My wife calls me the jaded chef.  This probably describes many an old cook or chef.  If you have spent any time working in a restaurant, you understand a bit about smoke and mirrors and bait and switch that can go on.  You also understand the multitude of tasks that need to be accomplished to run a decent restaurant.   Therefore, because of my lengthy experience toiling in both the back and front of the house, I think I might have a more discerning eye than most.  I see things most don't.  I call it restaurant vision.  It is almost like a super power. One that my wife probably wishes I didn't possess.   It can turn what should be a perfectly lovely evening into an exercise in criticism and sarcasm.  I just can't seem to help myself.

  It starts from the moment I walk in the joint.  Are we welcomed with a smile?  Were we seated quickly, and shown to a clean table?   Or, are we waiting around while the hostess is polishing her nails, updating her Instagram and flirting with the bartender?  Is the waiter dressed in some kind of clean, well-kept uniform even t-shirt, so I know he/she is a waiter?  Or do they look like they just got out of bed in their wrinkled hipster garb, skinny jeans, and messy man bun?  Do they greet us right away with a drink order, and inform us about tonight's features?  Or are we scanning the scene, trying to decide which non-uniformed, hipster to ask for a menu and ice tea?   Do they use a pen and pad while taking the order or believe they can remember the varied requests of a six top?   Are the silverware and menu clean, are their napkins on the table?  Did the condiments get refilled, and the crust cleaned off ketchup bottles?  Are they using generic or branded sugars and sweeteners?  Is their background music playing? (one of my pet peeves)  Or is the place funeral home quiet?  Worse yet, is their network news or Dr. Phil blaring from some unseen television.?

   I take notice of all of these things and more before I have even looked at a menu.  Most are accomplished with some degree of effectiveness in successful venues.  It is easy to spot a struggling restaurant by the lack of attention to details that matter.   I have learned to forgive many front of the house transgressions if the food is good enough and the staff courteous.  The exceptions to that forgiveness, are the aforementioned ambiance and a lazy, presumptuous, ill-designed and lying menu.

  What I mean by a lazy menu is a lack of thought or research.  It's a copy cat of what has worked in another popular place.  It is an unoriginal, uninspired work of plagiarism from the Shrimp Vera Cruz and farm to table catfish to the .99 included in all the pricing.

  What I mean by presumptuous is two-fold.  The first part of it is that the restaurant owner fails to recognize their demographic and presumes that potential customers will be happy with high standards that don't allow tomatoes being served unless they are in season.  They don't recognize the risk they take of losing an embarrassed and pissed off customer who felt chided by the server because they asked for a slice of tomato to go on their sandwich.  The server, not only seemed to scorn them for ignorance but also because of the thought that they would actually eat a tomato in December.  The second part of the presumption is when they use words like confit or the trendy sous vide in dish descriptions, but never educate the staff on what that term really means, or how the chef may have tweaked the classic method possibly ignoring it altogether in their execution of said dish.  It may only be on the menu because it sounds good!

   Ill-designed menu flaws can range from organization and placement to spelling errors or just an overabundance of food choices.   It is really hard to produce an extensive and varied menu and do it well.  Recently I was scanning a four-page menu for what seemed like 15 minutes.  I was already getting irritated by the potato(e) au gratin, tomato(e) salad, and could not find soup anywhere on the menu so I ordered their classic Caesar which was spelled Ceasar.  Then a few minutes later imagine my surprise when I see the gentlemen in the booth across from me enjoying a bowl of what looked like delicious clam chowder.  To make it worse, I had asked the waiter about soup, but pretty much received a blank stare and shoulder shrug.  I guess sometimes yelp reviews can be useful.

  Now some of this may sound like nitpicking and I am actually pretty patient and forgiving having been there myself, but where I draw the line and start the sarcasm is the blatantly false claims made on menus.  I know if I were to walk in the back of most any kitchen claiming to serve San Marzano tomatoes, I would find ordinary plums.  If Gorgonzola is the description for the bleu cheese on the salad, it almost assuredly came crumbled in a 5lb bag with the purveyor's name and not from Northern Italy.  The Apalachicola oyster appetizer may have come from Florida, or North Carolina, or Georgia.  The menu might go as far to describe any Atlantic salmon it offers as Chilean, Scottish or even Faro Island salmon and is most often farm-raised and not wild. Did the crab cake taste overly sweet like it could be cut with surimi (fake crab)?  I have even seen a menu entry of Krab cake, which meant no real crab may be present in the recipe.  A b.l.t featuring the revered Grainger County tomato and Benton's bacon might actually be using neither. She-crab soup most likely uses tomato instead of roe (which can be impossible to come by) and I have seen countless remoulades that have no resemblance with the classic or each other.   These misrepresentations are just the tip of the iceberg and I'm not talking about the lettuce. 

   Does any of this really make a difference?  Well to some it obviously doesn't.  Many places are banking on the public not knowing how to tell apart, $4 a pound farm raised tilapia and $18 a pound fresh grouper.  I mean they are both white and flaky, and a restaurant may even purchase fish that verified as grouper, but not a type of grouper you and I would be familiar with.   They are hoping you have never eaten a properly dry aged steak.  If not how could you possibly tell whether your ribeye of choice, is a select or choice grade, much less the prime advertised? If you ever questioned that your steak was really center or hand cut, you were probably right to do so.  It also might be hard to believe that so many different ingredients on the menu can come from so many places.  Most often they may not.  When ingredients play a small part in a dish, then a chef might decide to embellish a bit, like referring to a poblano pepper as a Calabrian pepper when describing it.  Often, the way a dish is described and presented has a lot to do with how much you might enjoy it.  It's all kind of, mind over matter.  If you don't mind, it don't matter.

  The truth is, it might not matter.  As long as you have enjoyed the food and had a good dining experience, the restaurant and even, you the customer, may think, what's the harm?  Plus you might have gotten a kick, oohing an awing, over the glorious sounding descriptions of selections presented.  To me, though, I want my restaurant to be honest with me.  I look for truth in my menu.   If you look long enough,  you will find more than a few that are truly great at that.

   We have a local Italian restaurant we enjoy. They make their own pasta, craft their own sauces, butcher their own meats, partner with local farms when they can and stand by their ingredients.  It is a fairly simple menu, straightforward in its approach and consistent on its delivery. The chef will text me if he has lamb, visits the table when we dine and has at different times, invited me to tour the kitchen and see what he's preparing.  He is proud of what he does, and it shows with the food he produces.  We eat there almost weekly and I am making my way through the menu.  I have a few favorites like the Shrimp with polenta, Pork Saltimbocca and Lamb ravioli, which was run as a feature.  Like all the menu items they are presented beautifully and are delicious without being overwhelming.  The thing that I like best about our local pastaria, the chef, his features and the menu are the same reasons we keep going back.  It's that they are honest.