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Random Food Questions Thread

foodguy

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+1 granted, it was a hanging curve, but mordy knocked it right out of the park.
 
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Full of crap customers are an occupational hazard for chefs. The reality is there are so few of them that it doesn't warrant imposing a policy that penalizes customers who need special treatment.

I never understand why any diner would ever be on the side of the chef in these arguments. Unless of course the diner in question was being extra-unreasonable. Back in the 1980's I was having dinner at the French bisto Raoul's on Prince Street. I ordered sea scallops and they came out translucent in the center and I wanted them fully cooked through. I asked the waiter to take them back to the kitchen to have them cooked longer. Two minutes later he brought them back untouched and said "this is the way the chef likes to serve them (which is a variation on the art argument.") Eventually he relented when I told him that if he didn't bring them back to the kitchen I would. For the life of me, who would ever be on the restaurant's side in that disagreement?
 
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foodguy

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and who would be on the side of the customer in the oysters and pearls example you cited?
 
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and who would be on the side of the customer in the oysters and pearls example you cited?

Thomas Keller would because he wouldn't care why a customer was asking for change. His only concern would be to make the customer happy within reason.
 

foodguy

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Rambo

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Douglas

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IMO there is a strange sort of schizophrenia w/r/t food and eating in American culture, stemming from the fact that there really is not a natural, homegrown culture of food here. Maybe I'm buying in to too many stereotypes here, but the American dinner is by and large an inconvenience. It has been for at least a generation. Hence the focus on fast food, faster food, the microwave oven, the drive-through, prepared foods, TV dinners. So many Americans were raised on meals where everyone got the Stouffer's of their choice, or the cheeseburger they wanted. Even today it's endless pasta combinations or heading to Applebee's where everyone orders exactly what they want. It's almost pre-programmed into us that we eat what we want, when we want it, and fast. Your way, right away, now.

This isn't totally universal, obviously, but I'll use myself as a contrast. I come from (well, half come from) a culture where you eat together every night. Mom prepares the food. There's a near-ritual to it. You come home, something's cooking, you smell it. What's cooking? Maybe you give a hand. Maybe you learn how to, I dunno, peel potatoes or chop onions or see that you have to, perhaps, soak your salt cod overnight. The other half of it is that you eat what is served. It's impolite to ask for something else. It's slower, it's more collaborative, it's more... social. Everyone eats the same thing, more or less. Even as a child, you eat what everyone else is eating, and you learn to enjoy it. Of course, mom is great, and once a week she makes something you love, but on Fridays she keeps Dad happy, even though you never really got to love chicken gizzards. You eat them anyways. This is not the average American cultural food experience.

So some portion of Americans walk into a fancy restaurant, with really no context of what good food is, how it gets to be good food, with a near-total ignorance of cooking techniques. They lack adventurousness. They only know the broad variety of things they don't like, as a result of the narrow upbringing. What they expect is to be waited on, hand and foot. If BK can hold the onions, so can you, TK. Add in a sprinkle of our horribly misguided dietary guidelines (NO FAT! NO SALT! SOUTH BEACH!) and what you have is a recipe for disaster. I have these friends. They say, give me this, but subtract this, and add this instead, and I don't like fish so add shrimp instead, and I don't like that side I want this side. They genuinely do think this is what eating out is all about.

At least partially to their credit, and no doubt spurred by the growing popularity of food blogs, cooking shows, political/cultural backlash against Food Inc, and the good old fashioned American desire to show off, another group has run off in the other direction. Unfortunately, it is a movement largely without context. You go to Alinea like you go to the Eiffel Tower. You take a picture, you tell your friends, you post on Facebook (or StyleForvm) or your blog. Many people learn the facts, they go to cooking class, but it is an artificial conceit. It's a fad for poseurs. Tick Momofuku off the list, post it on Foursquare, plant the flag, talk about how great it was. Nevermind having a good conversation during dinner. Nevermind really understanding what you ate, why you ate it, how we got here, why we came.

I've obviously exaggerated the extremes, but they're very loud extremes, IMO.

The end result is that many customers don't really understand how to relate to the restaurant, and the chefs don't understand how to relate to the clientele. The food is lost (trapped?) somewhere in the middle. Maybe some chefs (like this Burger baron) think they're educating a lost public. Maybe they're just pretentious assholes. I think, at least partially, they don't really understand the food either.

My mom would bring me the burger with the blue cheese. She'd make me try it. At least a few times. But tomorrow, she'd make me something I like. I'd probably come to appreciate it, but if I really couldn't stand it, she'd make me something else. All without anyone being an asshole to anyone else.
 
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itsstillmatt

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That is what I meant, Doug. I was honestly shocked when I found out my friends as a kid didn't eat together and eat what their mom's had cooked.
 
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Piobaire

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Interesting. As generally ****** a parent as my mother was she did cook (badly) and we did always eat dinner together. What I was never exposed to growing up was non-home cooked food. I can remember the first time we had Chinese carry out (which came from the small town, 15 miles from our village) when I was about 14 or 15. It was your usual Americanized (Canadianized in this case) Chinese food but it was a mind blowing experience for me.
 
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Rambo

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Dinner at Casa de young Rambo:

Shake n' Bake chicken, canned corn, Kraft Macaroni and cheez,

Boiled hot dogs and Kraft Macaroni and cheez

Burger King takeout - large sandwich + large fries + large onion rings

Occasional dinner out at Sizzler, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, or ****** local Italian joint.

That's all that my memory's left for me. And people wonder why I was morbidly obese.
 
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Growing up in a kosher home is pretty terrible in terms of learning how to be a diner. Not that being kosher is an automatic guarantee of food tasting bad - I found the kosher food in Israel to be quite tasty - it's the way kashruth is practiced in America. For some reason that escapes me, Jews want kosher food to mimic non-kosher food so they create silly things like beef fry for bacon, scallops made out of white fish and soy whip cream to put on non-dairy ice cream for dessert. Nothing can be more liberating for a young Jewish man more than Veal Parmigian or a cheese burger.
 

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