When Chicago executives Dick and Elizabeth Sanderson eat out–which they do almost every night–he says they often ask for “dark green leaf lettuces because they’re much better for you” in their salad. They also ask to have dishes prepared without garlic.
And if there’s a soapy odor coming from their wine glasses, they ask for replacements.
“We eat out so much, I just like to have things exactly the way I like them,” said Dick Sanderson, who heads an advertising agency in Chicago.
Dick, meet Lincoln Park’s Joe Prior, who was creating his own stir-fry one recent afternoon at the Flat Top Grill on North Avenue because, as he pointed out, “it’s all to your own taste.”
Prior doesn’t limit customizing his meal to such create-your-own places. When he eats elsewhere and there’s an element of a dish he doesn’t like, “more often than not, I find I switch something,” said the University of Dayton student. “I always say, ‘Can I get something else?’ “
In America, it seems, choice in restaurants has become an inalienable right. Long gone is the attitude captured in 1970’s “Five Easy Pieces,” when Jack Nicholson bulldozed his way past a rigid waitress to get a slice of toast.
“One of the reasons we have really gone totally to the other side, bending over backwards to do whatever the customer says, is because competition today is more fierce than ever,” said Isidore Kharasch, president of Hospitality Works, a Deerfield-based restaurant consulting firm. “In today’s market, what differentiates one restaurant from everybody else is a willingness to go a step beyond anything that anyone else would do for a customer.”
That willingness means more than being able to customize a sandwich at the local Subway–yes to olives but hold those pickles. Customers at chic eateries are cutting and pasting their way through menus, choosing a sauce from this menu item, a vegetable from that one.
“When I see people deconstruct the menu, I’m not fazed by it anymore,” said chef Erwin Drechsler, who puts his spin on American fare at erwin on Halsted. “They will want to have the main course but want it with the asparagus that comes with another course and the couscous that comes with still another course and the relish that comes with a third course.”
At Naha, a sleek River North restaurant, a line on the menu reads: “Please advise server of any food allergies.”
Because of that, said chef Carrie Nahabedian, “We get a lot of people who have dietary and health restrictions–which is perfect. [But] there are also a lot of people who make requests like, `Can I have the potatoes fondant from the duck on my steak?'”
Besides making changes because of dietary issues–a shellfish allergy or a calorie-reduction program–others do so because of environmental and social concerns. Many make changes simply because of personal preference.
Samantha Cohen, a North Side mother of two who eats out several times a week with her husband and children, might have olives taken out of sauces, tomatoes added to salads and dressings served on the side. And sometimes, if a restaurant uses too much oil, Cohen asks the kitchen to go light.
Some requests “are preparation-based. Sometimes I just like to add or delete an ingredient,” Cohen said. “I get more pleasure out of [a meal] if there’s not an ingredient in it that I don’t like.”
Glenn Keefer estimates that 80 percent of substitutions at the River North restaurant Keefer’s, where he is managing partner, are because of personal preference. “I think there’s a little bit of dietary, a little bit of allergy and probably there’s a lot more personal preference.”
The Washington, D.C.-based National Restaurant Association figures 70 percent of Americans customize their food choices.
Fried isn’t fashionable
This penchant for customizing one’s meal doesn’t surprise Mary Pat Knight of Flat Top Grill, an Oak Park-based chain offering create-your-own stir-fries.
“If you take a look at the market we were primarily attracting at the beginning,” Knight said of the 7-year-old chain, “there was a sense of immediacy and there’s a sense of knowing `what I want and when I want it.'”
What drives such preferences can be as diverse as the diners who make them. Sometimes, Keefer said, the choice “has a lot to do with image. . . . `Am I eating fried foods? It’s not very fashionable to eat fried foods.'”
And Drechsler wonders about customers who change something every time they come in. “From a business point of view, it’s OK,” he said. “But from a psychological point, you wonder, `Why do you also need to be in control when you come into the restaurant and have dinner?’
“Whatever happened to the attitude of, `Boy, isn’t it nice to go out once a week to a nice restaurant and be served great food and just kind of put it in the hands of the chef,’ ” he added. “It’s a privilege that I think people have lost sight of.”
For whatever reason someone decides to customize a meal, most restaurateurs are there to deliver, all but erasing that “no substitutions” phrase from their menus.
“What we’re finding is that the guest is more knowledgeable about food and wants more say in their food,” said Ezra Eichelberger, professor of menu development at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
Which isn’t a bad thing, Eichelberger noted, if a customer truly understands food. That’s not always the case.
“They’ll say they want the cheese ravioli but then ask, `Can you make that low-salt and low-fat?'” he said. “It’s the ones who think they know about the food and don’t–it’s that little bit of knowledge that’s dangerous.”
Do customized meals wreak havoc on restaurant kitchens? Not necessarily, if flexibility, fairness and common sense are part of the equation.
Take flexibility. An eatery with a 50-item menu of sandwiches, salads and omelets may be more flexible than a high-end restaurant where the menu features a dozen carefully constructed entrees. Obstinate servers–like the guy at a chic West Division Street restaurant who argued with a customer who asked to have the french fries from one entree served with his fish–and obstinate customers can make life miserable.
What separates the saints from the sourpusses?
“If it’s on the menu, if the items are there, we can deal with it,” said Drechsler, who has one customer who always requests snow peas instead of french fries. “If it doesn’t appear on the menu, then I’d say, don’t go there.”
A matter of timing
When you make a special request can be as important as what you ask for.
Say a customer is requesting baby carrots instead of mashed potatoes. It’s early in the evening and only four tables are full. Bruce Sherman, chef and partner at North Pond in Lincoln Park, said, “I’m much more likely to be understanding and able to substitute things on a plate when it won’t affect the other tables.”
It’s another story on a jam-packed Saturday night.
“When the restaurant’s full and I’ve got 10 or 12 tickets in the window–each with multiple items on it requiring all sorts of thought and work on the part of the staff–I can’t easily substitute without affecting the whole machinery,” he added. “We try to be as flexible as we can, [but] it’s not always as flexible as some people are looking for.”
So should everyone be stressing out?
“Rather than putting yourself through a trying time–and your server and the restaurant–by showing up and all of a sudden asking for these things at the table,” Kharasch said, “you should call a day ahead of time or two days ahead of time and ask the questions: Do you broil fish? Someone in my party’s vegetarian, can you do something for them?
“Most restaurants are going to say, `Absolutely. We would love to accommodate you,'” he added.
Even if customers don’t call ahead, Sherman suggested that early on, perhaps when they sit down or when they’re at the hostess stand, customers let the restaurant know if there are any special considerations. “The more notice we get, the better.”
Cohen said she “can’t think of a time someone’s had a negative attitude” toward her requests, whether it’s splitting orders in the kitchen or coming up with smaller portions for her young children.
“I think if you ask in a nice way and you’re reasonable [asking only for] things that are easy to do,” it isn’t a problem, she said.
Be prepared for a charge
That means realizing that getting a morel mushroom sauce with fish, instead of hollandaise, might incur a charge because, Kharasch said, “there is a substantial difference between the ingredients that make hollandaise–which is just eggs, essentially–versus what goes into morel mushrooms, which are seasonal, $25 a pound,” he said.
Sanderson, in fact, has found that restaurateurs “really bend over backwards to take care of us once we build a nice relationship with them,” he said, recalling the time he wanted cottage cheese and fruit with a steak burger and Keefer didn’t have any cottage cheese.
“But he sent one of his guys out to a store to go get it,” Sanderson recalled.
And if a restaurateur says no to a request?
“We just order something else,” he said.
No temper tantrum?
“Absolutely not. Life is too short.”
How to avoid a bad rep
DON’T tell the waiter you are highly allergic to caffeine then insist–several times–on decaffeinated coffee with your chocolate (a source of caffeine) mousse.
DO ask the kitchen to leave off a calorie-rich sauce–like hollandaise–if you’re dieting.
DON’T skip a dish you have a taste for simply because you don’t like the side dish. Ask what’s available as a substitute.
DON’T be clueless when you ask for a change. For instance, don’t order pasta puttanesca then ask for it made without capers–those tangy little flower buds are a key ingredient in this dish.
DON’T wait until you’ve polished off a dish to complain about it–you’ll come across as a boor. And trust us, restaurateurs have seen such stunts before.
DO ask to adjust cooked-to-order dishes. For example, trout amandine can be cooked in olive oil rather than butter if you’re watching your fat intake.
DON’T arrive at a restaurant on a tight schedule and expect the wait staff to make up for your leisurely ordering or time-consuming substitutions. Kids, can you say “Be nice”?
–J.H.
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When dining goes bad
Need role models for high-maintenance diners and inflexible servers? Head to the movies:
“Bad Company” (2002)
A not-clear-on-the-concept customer, such as Jake Hayes (Chris Rock), can make restaurateurs nuts.
Jake: “Is this fish?”
Nicole: “Yeah, of course. You love fish.”
Jake: “That’s right. I love fish, but that’s before I became a vegetarian. Oh, waiter! I can’t eat this. Can you get me something else? How about a steak, medium well, please.”
“Grosse Pointe Blank” (1997)
The trials of ordering, as experienced by Martin Blank (John Cusack).
Waitress: “What do you want in your omelet, sir?”
Marty: “Nothing in the omelet, nothing at all.”
Waitress: “Well, that’s not technically an omelet.”
Marty: “Look, I don’t want to get into a semantic argument, I just want the protein.”
“L.A. Story” (1991)
When Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) orders coffee, he’d make the ultra-specific customers at Starbucks proud.
Harris K. Telemacher: “I’ll have a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon.”
“When Harry Met Sally. . . ” (1989)
Sally (Meg Ryan) wants apple pie. It’s how she wants it that drives the waitress batty.
Sally: “I’d like the chef salad, please, with the oil and vinegar on the side, and the apple pie a la mode.”
Waitress: “Chef and apple pie a la mode.”
Sally: “But I’d like the pie heated, and I don’t want the ice cream on the top, I want it on the side. And I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream–just whipped cream, but only if it’s real. If it’s out of the can, then nothing.”
“Five Easy Pieces” (1970):
Plain toast isn’t on the menu, but that’s what Bobby (Jack Nicholson) wants, prompting this verbal volley.
Waitress: “A No. 2, chicken salad sand. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?”
Bobby: “Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven’t broken any rules.”
Waitress: “You want me to hold the chicken, huh?”
Bobby: “I want you to hold it between your knees.”
Source: Internet Movie DataBase
