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Signature dish: Menus - when to fear changes

Susan Jung

Susan Jung
Susan Jung
Why you can trust SCMP

"The customer is NOT always right", reads the title of a thread on the eGullet website. It's a little mis-leading because the thread is less about whether customers are actually right or wrong and more about whether chefs should be accommodating when customers in their restaurants make requests for their dishes to be changed.

Diners ask for changes for any number of reasons: allergies, a dislike for a particular ingredient, or attempts to follow fad diets that involve eschewing carbohydrates or eating only protein, for example.

Some chefs accommodate requests, refusing only when they are impossible or ridiculous (asking for a mushroom lasagne without mushrooms, for instance); others make it known in advance that they won't consider even the smallest of substitutions because they want to remain true to their vision of the food.

Illustration: Tom Tsang
I'm no longer a chef but I do tend to eat out a lot - and perhaps it's for that reason that I lean more towards the accommodating side in the substitution debate, although I very rarely make requests and when I review a restaurant I prohibit my guests from asking for changes. Some diners seem to believe, however, that the kitchen exists solely to satisfy their whims. Asking for wheat bread to replace the white at a made-to-order sandwich shop seems reasonable; it's less reasonable for a vegetarian to expect that a Japanese restaurant can - without prior notice - make a vegetarian miso soup (many Japanese soups and sauces have katsuobushi - shaved dried bonito - as their base). It would also be ridiculous for a diner to demand in a Korean restaurant that the food be made without garlic, or to request a tomato-free bolognese in an Italian place.

As with so many things, it's all about respecting others. A chef should be willing to accommodate a customer's request for substitutions or changes so long as they're reasonable, he has the ingredients to do so, it doesn't change the quality of the dish and doesn't slow down the kitchen. The customer, meanwhile, should make reasonable requests: asking for salad dressing to be served on the side is fine, but if you avoid alcohol, don't ask for coq au vin to be made without the wine. Instead, ask the server which dishes on the menu are made without alcohol and order one of those.

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