And throwing in unnecessary french words is just as off putting to my sensibilities (but can be forgiven, given their name). So is omitting dollar signs. Or unnecessary italics. I could go on. My point is they absolutely are trying to put out a perception of quality food/atmosphere with their menu design, just in a different way and with fewer items than they Cheesecake Factory version. They're just doing the humble brag version of the same thing.
Atlantic and Pacific (spiny) lobster (not really a lobster) are quite different though and it would otherwise be ambiguous.
Maine (well New England) lobsters are different from langoustines which are often referred to as lobsters in English. Though personally when eating the tail I can't tell the difference. Perhaps I'm a philistine and some can. This is up there with the "Spanish" capers..I know you can tell the difference.
"French Laundry garden" cabbage..."grown in our garden" is good enough for me. "Sacramento Delta asparagus" ... not as good as Half Moon Bay? "local" would be fine.
A "King Richard" leeks actually is a specific breed of leek. Oh but wait, it's the plain old leek you'd find in any grocery store. Sure glad they let me know.
For true prevention let's switch to the nouns, shall we? It's OK to use a foreign word that has no, or only a distant, English relative. But "Streusel" is called "strudel" in English. The Saboyon doesn't exist in English but the French word is for a sweet dessert which I really doubt is used in an oyster dish. etc.
With all those adjectives someone should do a "truth in advertising" sting on those restaurants. It'd make great TV
But you’re eating at French laundry. The grow spot shouldn’t make any difference for a restaurant where A) they are supposed to prepare excellent dishes and B) you have so few choices.
“Well we finally got into French Laundry but decided to leave when we saw the menu and found they were serving garlic from Gilroy instead of garlic from Morgan Hill.”
I think you’re confusing two things. Strudel seems to be strudel as well in English, while Streusel is a kind of crumble, it’s not a dish by itself.
Strudel is a bigger (generous 1 portion or more) piece of pastry (usually puff pastry, but plain pastry dough is also not unusual) with fruit filling, commonly apples and raisins. Often served with vanilla sauce.
Of those, I've usually seen strudel to have the original German meaning while streusel in english is usually used to mean Streuselkuchen with fruit.
It isn't good or bad, it's just the current fashion that dictates how things are done. 20 years in the future, this will have changed.
As chains adopt the simple and local style the high end will move on to something else.
I think the big changes happen in terms of generations of chefs and guests, so around a 30year timeline. Caveat: everything is just my observation, no statistics or anything to prove it.
You don’t go to the French Laundry for a meal, you go for an experience.
Another place we never even got a menu - the food just started appearing, much to our confusion! Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get - the server had assumed we knew. The food was fabulous, but it took three hours longer than we had planned to spend.
I find this unfathomable. What if you have allergies? I guess just don't eat there. But the server assumed you knew? Wild.
My brother and I went to Eleven Madison Park back in 2016 and mentioned my allergies ahead of time. Not only did they plan alternatives for me, they even included them in the printed out menu that they give to each diner as they leave as a memento of the meal.
That said, it's entirely possible they're unable/unwilling to accommodate every allergy and/or preference. There are well regarded restaurants near me that only do prix fixe tasting menus that I don't dine at as I know based on what they tend to serve that the likelihood of me being served things I won't want is high, and at that price point it's not worth it to me.
"All hospitality establishments in Europe are now required to declare ingredients contained in their foods that may induce allergies or food intolerances."
https://www.wko.at/branchen/tourismus-freizeitwirtschaft/gas...
But we spoke with the server, and she found me a dish from the prix fixe arrangement that I could eat, and spent the night just making sure there was always some of that dish on the table.
Everything went better than expected. Sure, I don't have to be worried about death from being exposed to food I won't eat, but I could've called ahead, and would've, if the stakes were that high.
I guess all that's to say: good restaurants are pretty accommodating, even when they aren't doing the normal menu thing. It's really not that crazy.
I'm a very similar way as you wrt food, but not the social pressure part. I don't like eating in professional settings (eating is messy, for one), so I will usually eat alone beforehand and then only order something very small and light (or even just beverages) at the meeting meal. The social pressure thing I find to be easily deflected.
Same goes at bar/drinking events. I don't like drinking alcohol but everyone seems to report perceived pressure to drink alcohol at such things. I haven't found drinking nonalcoholic things to be the big hassle others claim it to be.
I think people build up the expectations more than they actually are in reality. Most other people don't really care that much what you're eating or drinking, if they are eating or drinking what they like.
WRT drinking, it can take a lot longer to build trust without the shared alcohol experiences. You’re correct that there isn’t direct social pressure, but you end up getting left out of “after-event” drinks as well.
I noticed these things when I had to go on a strict diet with no alcohol for about a year. You might argue that nothing important happens during non-formal events, but that’s a big mistake.
Yes! Because [they are signalling that] they update it and print it each day.
According to what is available fresh, from the market, on that day.
Not just signaling. Probably 20-30% of tables do get personalized menus due to dietary restrictions or preferences.
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I finally found a place and poked my head in. A bunch of old bearded Somali men in skullcaps all turned and stared at me and Al Jazeera was on in the corner.
No menu was visible so I approached the counter and asked the man behind it what was for lunch. He responded, “Goat.”
I replied, “Can you be more specific?”
He replied again “Goat.” but added “$8”
Most good restaurants I’ve been to don’t actually have a menu you choose from - you get what’s seasonal and what the kitchen has planned for. The only real inputs are how much you are going to eat and how drunk you want to be at the end of it.
I’ve been to one restaurant in the lower price range that also adopted this concept, though with a twist. There’s not really a menu to choose from, you get what you get, but the waiter will update the blackboard with “what you get if you order now”.
The reason I prefer this is because it tends to focus on what’s seasonal and what is the chef good at.
You don't have to spend $250, although you probably have to spend $125 (based on my experiences in Europe).
I don't think of it as "a meal", at all, eating a meal usually doesn't take me three hours. It's more in the category of an event like a concert or the opera or a theme park visit.
The food descriptions are sufficient but sparse also
Middle tier, chain restaurants (like the cheescake factory) will have heavy menus with elaborate food descriptions and departments of people who work on optimizing them.
But then at the very high end, it actually wraps back around. The nicest restaurants I've been to will often have a paper menu, with a very, very small selection of things on it.
My personal opinion is that some of these things are actually a counter-indicator. If you obviously put a lot of thought into your menu, bought an obnoxious folder for it, have lavish descriptions, etc. it's because you are leaning into the perception of your food/atmosphere, rather than the reality of it.
To make my point: here is the menu for the french laundry: https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-...