ottawa foodies

Now that I've got some chops in a restaurant kitchen, I've been amazed by the amount of substitutions and omissions that people request off the normal menu. Now, admittigly, I myself also make substitution at restaurants such as "no onions" or "add mushrooms to that burger", but some of them get me scratching my head.
- A woman today ordered the salad special, which was a cold dill-poached salmon on greens with a dill-honey yogurt dressing - but she gave instructions that she didn't like dill! If you don't like the main ingredient or flavour in a dish, then don't order it for crying out loud! There are plenty of other dishes on the menu, including a different salmon one that does NOT feature dill.
- People order our house salad, which is basically a pile of spring greens with some sprouts and cherry tomatoes and citrus dressing, but ordered with NO DRESSING. Like, I can understand if you want dressing on the SIDE so you can control the amount you put on, but do they understand they are just basically ordering a pile of lettuce? Why wouldn't you just go to the grocery store?
- A few women ordered a chicken pasta, with special instructions to cook the chicken "well done" - do they know what this means? They REALLY want a pile of totally dried out chicken on their plates? Bizarre.
- One man always asks for no carrots - then orders something that has a julienne veg mix, so we sit there in the kitchen picking carrot slivers out of the prepped vegetable mix - this is NOT an allergy (we have asked of course to make sure we would not be poisoning him or anything by just picking out the carrots), it is just his PREFERENCE. If it is an issue of preference, can you not just push the offending vegetable to the side of your plate yourself?
- One man came in and declared that he did not want what we had for a pasta special, he wanted something with a tomato sauce. We use tomato sauce in other dishes so it wasn't a problem to do this, however he then requested that we add meatballs and SCALLOPS - what a combination! We were like, dude, this is not the "create your own entree" show, if you don't like what's on the menu eat somewhere else, you can't just make up whatever you want and have us cook it for you.

Anyway, that's my little rant; I'm not trying to offend "substituters", like I said, I do it myself, and in most cases it's not a big deal for the kitchen to make small adjustments and we really don't mind, but I'm curious how much substitutions play into some poor reviews; we read people all the time saying that food was bland or disappointing - well, if you order a salad and tell them to hold everything but the lettuce what did you expect you would get? I wonder if the "meatball and scallops" man was later disappointed that his pasta's flavours didn't really mesh and then blamed the kitchen? Is the man that requests his carrots get picked out upset when his meal isn't served as quickly as he'd like? Will the well-done chicken ladies complain later that they were served hard, dry, flavourless chicken?

The most I ever do for a sub is to swap out something major from another dish on the menu - typically a starch. So I may ask for rice instead of potatoes or vice-versa. But I always ask for something that is a "same thing" on a different item on the menu. And normally I'll even say "can I have the X from this item, instead?" and point to that item.

The carrot man and meatball boy are hilarious! Some people!

Thanks, that was really an interesting read! The "well-done chicken ladies" made me snicker too. You need to start a blog like waiterrant.net !

I rarely make special requests when I order. The most recent was asking for the bread to be toasted in my hot chicken sandwich at the Village Terrace (Cindy's). When I got it I couldn't tell the difference! LOL

That was really funny. I'm not sure which was worse: meatball guy or the chicken ladies.

The only substitutions I ever make are due to allergies. And obviously, if I'm allergic to the key ingredient, I won't order the dish. ;) But if a dish has lots of other things in it, and the item I'm allergic to is easy to replace, I might ask. For example, the Thai noodle bowl at The Black Tomato usually comes with shrimp and scallops. I'm allergic to scallops, so I ask if I can just have shrimp instead. They're happy to make that change.

My most egregrious common request was asking the cook to prepare food that I brought with me. Ok, it was in a cafe where I was quite the regular, and they seemed amused by my request (I once got invited to their staff xmas party!) I would buy croissants at the French Baker, and then ask for my egg florentine to be served with/on them. (They served it sans croissant, which I thought a crime at the time). I wonder if the carrot guy is just pushing buttons and seeing how far he can go? Otherwise, perhaps his mother used to pick all the julienned carrots out of his salad for him?

Oh yeah, I've also asked for McDonalds to give me a Double Cheeseburger, but with only 1 burger patty. This is for those rare times when the sale DC is cheaper than a regular cheeseburger... Uh oh.. I said the rude word.. McDonalds....

The julienned carrot guy most likely doesn't realize how a professional kitchen works. He's assuming that after he orders his meal, the chef goes to the fridge, takes carrots and other veggies out of the veggie drawer, peels them, washes them, and then finely juliennes them with a knife. So just skip the carrots!

Now if he took the time to really think about it he'd realize this isn't true, but since he doesn't he just assumes the kitchen works like Momma's did...

For sure these people have never worked in a kitchen...or a restaurant for that matter! I've worked in kitchens before and yeah, did we ever shake our heads at some people....the chicken ladies are hilarious! So FIH, did you end up cooking their chicken until it was bone dry?? LOL...

So has anyone caught on to FIH's workplace yet?? I hope this doesn't deter her but maybe with one of her descriptions some day on this site, one of us will have been there for said lunch or dinner and be like, "Hey!! I got it!" ;)

i was thinking of going to eat there and asking for something totally ridiculous, just to see if i could make it in a post on here ;)

Maybe asking for a salad, but without lettuce, just the veggies?
:)

I have a guess as to where she works, but I'm not telling! ;)

Thanks Candice! We'll wait until FiH is ready to tell us herself. :-)

Exactly what I intended by 'I'm not telling'. :)