Food High End Restaurants and Small Portions

I have a couple of questions, if it's allowed...

I watch a lot of cooking shows, and notice the chefs like to put small servings on the plate, but they charge a huge price for them in their high-end restaurants.
Why do they serve such small portions?

Also, I've been noticing a lot lately something called "Wedge Salad". It's basically a quarter of a head of iceberg lettuce with a few toppings and dressing on top, served on a salad plate.
Wtf? How lazy is that? Chefs really call that a salad?

 

Freman, no chef calls that a salad, corporate restaurants call that a salad. That's a lazy way of putting a "new" salad on the menu and it screams inexperience/lazy.

As for your other question, that's a threadjack in it's self. I'll come back later for that one. One thing tho, Cooking shows do not equal all high end restaurants.

 

Ok, but why would Gordon Ramsay have it on Hell's Kitchen week after week? Isn't he supposed to be a Michelin award winner?

 

'Cause Gordon Ramsay isn't a chef. He was once a chef and trained to be one by one of the greatest chefs to ever walk this earth, but he is a TV Star. He appears on tv shows, yells at people, and collects a check. He has cookwear in walmart and a show where he tells people how to run their businesses. Not A Chef.

As CSI (TV Show) is to real life crime scene investigation, Cooking shows are the same way with real kitchens. It's TV and hardly ever translates into real life.

Plus, Gorden Ramsay is a goddamn wanker that cries in the corner when yelled at. Him and Rachel Ray should carpool off a cliff together.

 

HAHA - funny post Lordeden!

 

I completely disagree. The Wedge Salad is a staple at Chicago steakhouses. It's been described - accurately, I think - as a blue cheese delivery system. Good ones have a few tomatoes, blue cheese dressing and blue cheese crumbles, and might hold the dressing. It's a good precursor to a good steak.

 

I've served this salad at the different restaurants and steakhouses I've worked at. It seems to be an american staple salad at a steakhouse, I just don't see it's appeal. From the management standpoint, it saves on labor and fools the customer in thinking they are getting a larger salad than they are (height = MORE). It's low cost to produce (iceberg lettuce compared to mixed greens/bibb/spinach/other "high end" salad base) and it's an easy "new" salad using the same ingredients they have laying around.

It was once brought up during spring menu planning because the owner "had one and it was sooooooooooo good". It was shot down hard and fast. My chef said that something like that was lazy and "so corporate it screamed foot costs" (instead we put on a spinach salad with walnuts, feta cheese, and champagne vinaigrette).

Kitchens aside, I don't get it. It's a wedge of lettuce. You are basically paying to cut your own salad up. If i'm paying for a salad, I want the damn thing cut before it gets to the table. Granted, in the south, people fucking LOVE them. "Give me one them wedge things and put some bacon on it. Oh and get me an extre' side of that cheese." It's the lowest end of the lettuce world and covered in ranch w/ blue cheese blue cheese dressing. I'm all for heart-attack-on-a-plate as the next guy, but that is not for me.

 

Disagreed.

I've been to plenty fine dining establishments all over the world and a rough estimate would be that just under 20% of those I visited had small, pretentious portions.

Notably the Aria restaurant next to the Opera House in Sydney, and Gordon Ramsay's in Tokyo.

The only difference for me? I just order more sides than usual.

Most other places have an adequate amount of food on the plate per serving and fill you up nicely.

Can't talk for North America, though.

FYI, I have a standard 3-course meal every time I visit one of those places. Except in Japan, because I never liked the desserts they come up with. Earl grey green tea parfait? Fuck that. (Not a fan of tea.)

 

The Wedge Salad still seems the height of laziness on the restaurant's part, though.
Unless it's sold as a Golfer's Special, or something.

As for the small portions, the point of eating is to get nourishment, and if you have to get more food after you leave the restaurant, then you're making the wrong choice in eating establishments.

Business and romantic dinners are the exceptions.

 

Honestly, who on earth eats a bloody salad when dining outside?

Females excepted from my question.

 

But..but..I want to be right!

Ok, good point. I'll quit beating this dead horse.


/now wonders what a horse tastes like

 

Me. But I probably eat out a lot more than you do.

 

I'll have to contest that belief.

 

Do you eat in upper-midrange to high end restaurants 4+ times a week? I do. I've dined in every top-end Chicago restaurant in the last year at least once, sometimes more. My expense account routinely runs $3k/month for entertainment.

And that's why I eat salads at times. It's far too easy to get fat off of good food when you don't have time to exercise.

 

I will concede, that wile I have been living in Afghanistan, my dinners out in a higher-priced establishment runs at once every 1-2 weeks. There are indeed some very good restaurants in Kabul, but it's more of a security attribute everyone has to deal with.

However, outside of Afghanistan - be it Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Frankfurt, München, Singapore, Istanbul, Sydney, Melbourne or Tokyo - I spend literally 5 out of 7 nights in the mentioned range of restaurants. And far beyond that.

I very regularly take business partners out for lunch/dinner, followed by cafés/bars/lobbies in the relevant cities. When in one of those cities for pleasure, I like to do food safaris and visit more then 3 establishments per day for 3-4 consecutive days.

Prior to Afghanistan, my expenses for food and entertainment ran from US$7k to 15k per month. It can be considered as excess, and it very likely is, but I have a particular way of maintaining relations.

Agreed on salads when visiting many restaurants and unable to work out and no healthy, tasty alternatives are available on the menus.

 

I will certainly make a wedge salad next time. I'm amazed I never thought of it.

Portions: When eating out, I like to be the one who chooses when I have had enough, and am resentful if I feel I have to order something else in order not to leave feeling hungry.

 

this is an oxymoron. Good and blue cheese don't go together - bleeech!