Don’t trust a restaurant that serves a cherry tomato on top of your Caesar salad (Part 1)

10 things you need to consider before ordering in a restaurant

Ever been to a restaurant, and your Cream of Chicken and Mushroom Soup, came too runny to be called a “creamy” soup and tasted like those ready-made dried powder soups you can buy for 1.5 LE and make at home, with 3 slices of canned mushrooms and they seem to have forgotten to put any chicken in there!

Your Caesar salad has a bad fishy taste and the chicken is tough and tasteless? Or your ordered medium-well steak was overcooked, and had no taste?

Not only your taste buds were not amused and your restaurants database got shorter that day, but you also paid for your dissatisfaction!
In practical words, you were robbed!

To save your money and guarantee satisfaction most of the time, here are some points that you need to consider when picking a restaurant or trying a new one.

1- It all reflects…

The management of the place is reflected on everything. The neatness of the waiters, their hospitality, availability and skills. The cleanliness of the place and the toilets, styling of the plates and furniture. The handling of waiting lists, the waiting time between ordering and getting the food and the separation between smoking and non-smoking areas.
The ambiance, choice of music, volume of music, the presence of TV’s (why?), and if there are TV screens, what is shown on them?... etc.

If a restaurant fails to manage most of these points, how can you trust their kitchen management? Hygiene, freshness, choice of ingredients, quality control...

How would you trust that their kitchen will be able to get you dishes that will please you and not just “fill your stomach”?

2- Don’t get too high on fancy words...

What is the difference between,
“Colorful fresh salad with our secret mouthwatering dressing”

and “Salad”?
And what gives you more information,
“Braised tender duck thigh, glazed with purified sour orange sauce,

served on a bed of caramelized cauliflower”
or “Duck with cauliflower”?

     Font choice, colors, editing and everything visual on the menu affects you before you even know it. Fancy words especially affect you psychologically and sometimes even intimidate you! Yet not all fancy words count. Adjectives can be impressive but do not describe what you will be getting exactly. Cooking methods, animal parts and ingredients however, are a way to imagine what exactly you are ordering.
The more details they give means the more they promise and the more they have to deliver to meet your expectations. Over-promising and under delivering will lead to your dissatisfaction and vice-versa.

     Not describing at all, however, is a sign of nonsense going in the kitchen: they can change anything, get you things that are matter of availability in their kitchen… You are basically their field of experiments. This can be accentuated by calling the waiter and asking, “How is this served?” so he says “I will ask the chef and get back to you!”.

Either they know what they are cooking, how they are cooking it and how they are serving it, or not.

3- Don’t let only your eyes eat...

Pictures are most of the time the greatest mean of deception in a dining experience.

Do not order based on the images you see… Many restaurants will not serve you what you see in the picture because: it is not theirs!
And worse, sometimes it is made by them but they shoot only the "Menu" version  of the dish, while they serve you the "Customer" version of the dish.
When the pictures seem too professional, ask yourself: “Does this restaurant look like it can afford a professional food photographer to shoot their dishes for the menu?” and if they do "Do the customer orders around me, look like anything of what I see in the menu pictures?".
I know a fancy boat with many restaurants in Zamalek that literally steals images from the Internet and claims they are theirs on their official Facebook page. It happens widely!

4- Did they really write that!?...

Believe it or not, I have seen menus with spelling mistakes, in dishes names, ingredients names and cooking styles names. If they do not know what they are talking about, how would they know how to make it good!?

5- Know where you are before ordering...
I do not mind a restaurant with a cosmopolitan menu or chef signature dishes.
However, a restaurant with specific cuisine will most probably be good only in this cuisine’s dishes.
If you are in the mood for pasta with a creamy white sauce, do not go to an oriental grill restaurant to order it! Or if you insist, do not expect it to be as good as that one you love at that French or Italian restaurant.
Do not waste your money ordering wrong dishes in the wrong place.

Continue reading part 2 here...

Special thanks to...
Art work by: Ramz Sabry Samy


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