Have It Your Way

Somewhere along the line the average person decided “have it your way” applied not only to McDonalds, but to any culinary experience. I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t even occur to me to ask for some of the things that folks ask us for at Ferry Plaza Seafood. The other side of the coin is that I have always approached food as an experience. I don’t approach it with the idea that I will eat out as I do at home. For example, I am one of those folks that put everything but the kitchen sink in my salad at home. When I go out, I don’t ask to have the same salad or to change a salad on the menu to mimic what I have at home because I am looking for something other than what I usually eat.

The other day, a woman came in and asked to taste our salad dressings. Seriously? Could you imagine asking a restaurant to taste their salad dressings? Usually if someone has difficulty finding dressing they like or don’t like they just say dressing on the side please. After all I already wrote about a woman who took out a bottle of her own salad dressing from her purse. I have since learned that Patti Labelle actually carries around her favorite hot sauce in her purse. Perhaps that’s not as unusual as I once thought. In any case they certainly don’t ask to have a salad dressing taste testing. Of course, we said sorry, we don’t do salad dressing tastings. So what happened? She left because we wouldn’t let her taste the salad dressing.

Last Saturday, a table of 4 came into the restaurant. 1 person ordered our Mussels, but the other 3 people all ordered our Crab Caesar Salad. This is the funny part: 1 wanted the crab on the side of the salad, 1 wanted the dressing on the side, 1 asked for light on the dressing. When you work in a restaurant in San Francisco, I believe that most people work in the restaurants they work in because they stand behind the food they serve. In our case, we are in the Ferry Building which is all about “good, sustainable food.” Why don’t people trust us to get our flavors and proportions right? Having said that, many people do trust us and love our food, but some people, I guess, have been scared in the past by bad food so they have developed a laundry list of “special requests.” To finish this little story, the one with the light dressing asked us for more dressing. Of course.

Beyond the “have it your way” bargaining for food seems to also come to our restaurant. A woman came in and ordered a Shrimp Louie Salad, but she wanted extra egg, extra cucumber extra tomato etc, but she didn’t want the shrimp on it. The server said that it would be $10.50, the same as a regular with Shrimp, since there were so many extras. The woman said how about $8.50 so the server said “excuse me?” The woman repeated herself. The server said, I’m sorry Miss, but it’s $10.50. She ended up ordering a regular shrimp salad, but simply giving her shrimp to her friend. Couldn't she have just done this from the get go?

At this point, I feel compelled to explain the world of substitutions to all of you who are not familiar with the inner workings of a restaurant. Anytime you have to substitute something, the server needs to “modify” the order on the computer and hand type in anything other than the most basic request like “dry” which is just a tap on the screen vs. “light dressing” which one has to type in separately. Once the order goes through, the “Expo” needs to make certain the special instruction isn’t missed by the line (folks in the kitchen) and finally when it comes out, the “Expo” needs to make certain that the one Crab Caesar with “light dressing” gets to your table and doesn’t go to another table because you can’t really tell it’s the one with “light dressing.” In the case of the extra’s on the salad in lieu of the shrimp, by the time all those steps are taken and the person on salads pulls all the “extras” it would have been easier to just make the standard shrimp salad.

Finally please all of you out there that order a seared Ahi Salad please please stop asking us to “cook it to medium.” It’s a seared, slim piece of fish it’s going to taste like cardboard on top of mixed greens. The intent of the salad is to have a fresh piece of seared fish “raw in the middle” so fresh that it barely needs much but perhaps a wee bit of salt. Trust us, we know what we are doing and we want you to love us for that!