Boy, you and Faye sure are tough!! BTW, Beth, are you the one that started that phrase, "mind your own business"? Just wondering because you say that a lot. Nothing really wrong with the phrase, but many today just don't want to do that. IOW, if a Chef seen me with a bottle of steak sauce, getting ready to pour onto the steak he just made me, and he/she said "I wouldn't do that if I were you", I'd say "ok, no problem". Then, I'd ask for a To Go Box, take it home and pour on the sauce.
There is no way that I would let a chef bully me into not eating my food any way I wanted to ! Take it home and then eat a cold steak……not a chance of that for sure ! If I thought what the chef suggested had merit, then I would try a bite of the food and see if i liked it the way the chef thought it should be eaten, and I would then decide how I was going to eat the food. If I want to drown my food in ketchup, that is my business, I am paying for the food. On topic, I also prefer the little owner-ran diners to a chain food establishment. Sadly, we don’t have anything like that close to where we live, so we are stuck with the Chinese place (horrible food), or going to IHOP, or a drive through. I miss the days when i could travel and try little adventure cafes along the way.
While traveling, if left to my druthers (to use a colloquialism I've never actually used before), I would travel the backroads and eat in rural or small neighborhood cafes all along the way, while spending nights in independent hotels, although, on that last part, I might yield to the free nights you can get with a chain hotel's rewards programs. There aren't a whole lot of independent hotels or motels anymore, anyhow. In rural cafes, it's a crap shoot. You might not like what you get, but it's unlikely to kill you, and the chances are better that you'll be served good food in an atmosphere that far exceeds the chains. Unfortunately, most neighborhood city cafes, these days, are operated by transplants who deal in faux authenticity, catering to tourists and local snowflakes. That's not so much the case with rural cafes. My wife, however, prefers tollways, chain hotels, and chain restaurants where you know what you're going to get, although she's given some space to the restaurants in recent years, given that some of the chains really suck, now, and because we've had some pretty good luck with independent restaurants.
No, I didn't start that phrase but I believe in it. Why don't you try it sometime? You'd have a lot less stress and we'd have a lot less of your repetitive complaints to read. I've been eating steak since I got teeth as a toddler and I know how I like it. A chef is welcome to make suggestions and I am free to ignore those suggestions. I certainly would not let a chef or anyone else bully me into taking my food in a to go box. Though if I was irritated enough I might walk out leaving the food (and the unpaid tab) on the table.
Well, Yvonne, I was only kidding on part of my last reply (#18). Guess you didn't catch that, but that's ok. Without a doubt, a Chef would never approach a customer and say that, that is, if he wanted to keep his job.
Well, Beth, there are just those, and there just happen to be many, many of them, that simply don't believe in that statement. If everybody did, just think of how much crap everyone would get away with.
I had a friend who whence went to a new restaurant insisted on tour of the kitchen...If she couldn't see kitchen or it was dirty she left
Some restaurants today, along with some fast-food places, a customer wouldn't want to see the prep area. In going thru a Arby's Drive-Thru, I looked inside the window at the roast cutting machine area. There was a pile of roast beef on the floor by it and nobody would clean it up. But, then again, there are those that don't care what the back area of a restaurant, or even cafe, looks like. Heck, they don't even care how the dining room floor looks. I've seen many bus people wipe a table off and right onto the floor. Some do use a bus pan, in higher end restaurants, but some others.........nope. Within a lot of owner/operated cafe's, the employees really take pride in their cooking, serving and cleaning. The "big boys" should take a lesson from them.
I've told this story before but, while I was the health inspector of a city in Texas, my favorite restaurant was not the one that scored the highest on my inspections. There's no place on a health inspection checklist for taste, ambiance, or customer service. I didn't try to inspect all of the restaurants in one day so, unless I was there in response to a complaint, I would tell them that I was there for the annual inspection, but order something to eat first, to give them time to put things in order in the back room, and I would never do annual inspections during the rush period. I spent a lot of time in restaurants, although usually the same one, but nobody needs enemies in a small town.
There is a Mom & Pop place near me that serves the best cat's head biscuits ever. They are as big as a cat's head, crispy and light, and filled with a huge serving of tenderloin and hoop cheese. Y'all know where Cat's head is, don't you?