I was scanning the menu at an Indian restaurant, and a plate on its way to another table caught my eye. It looked like nothing I had seen before and smelled amazing, so I asked the server to point to the description on my menu so I could find out what it was.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he replied. “That is only on the menu that we give our Indian clientele.”
I immediately asked for the owner, because I wanted to know why I wasn’t allowed to order the good stuff. He heard me out, sighed, and responded.
“Let me explain something to you, please,” he said. “When we opened I had many regional items on the menu. Customers who didn’t know what things were kept my servers at every table for 15 minutes asking questions, and then they ordered chicken curry because they came here for chicken curry.”
After he put it that way I couldn’t really argue with him, and it started me thinking about the advantages and perils of breaking a cuisine into a new market. One advantage is obvious: Once your cultural community finds that you serve items they can’t get elsewhere, you have instant fans who will keep coming back as long as you’re doing it right. With that customer base you can then start figuring out how to reach a broader clientele.
Though this may seem counterintuitive, that task can be more difficult if the cuisine being offered is a regional variation on something that’s already popular. Consider an item from Italian cuisine that is within the American mainstream. If you order lasagna in Sicily you’ll get thick noodles in a beefy red sauce with olives and both mozzarella and ricotta; in Venice the same item is prepared with thin crepe-like noodles, carrots, sausage and a white sauce with no cheese. In Bologna they make it with an egg pasta with bechamel sauce and just a dusting of Parmesan. (I’m not even going to get into all the other regional styles, of which there are many, or the carb and garlic bombs from New Jersey and adjacent locales.)
So you order lasagna in an Italian restaurant expecting the style you know and not only does something almost completely different come out, you didn’t know there were other styles until right now. Your first thought is that they made it wrong — not different — wrong. Whatever you grew up with is right and this isn’t it. You may not complain to the manager so you are unlikely to get an explanation but you may not come back to that restaurant.
Would you have enjoyed that dish if it had an entirely different name, so you judged it on its own merits? Very probably, because the problem wasn’t the dish but your expectations of it.
So why doesn’t the menu explain this difference before you order, or why doesn’t your server when you do order? The menu can’t because there isn’t space for a thoughtful explanation of regional cooking. If there was space, there is no guarantee that whoever was available to write it is both fluent in English and adept at explaining flavors. I have been writing about food for 30 years and sometimes still have to think about how to convey the effect of different seasonings. There’s also the problem that you know your expectations and other people don’t. The chef or owner may be great at cooking, but that doesn’t mean they know how what they’re serving is different from your Platonic ideal of lasagna.
The communication problem is even greater for the people who take your order. Whoever writes the menu does so uninterrupted and at their own pace, while at every moment that a server is explaining something to you, someone at another table is waiting for their food, water or to order dessert. Add into this the fact that your server may not speak English as a first language or even a second.
Here, let me help you visualize what that is like. Right now, using what you can remember of your high school Spanish, explain the difference between coleslaw and sauerkraut. Be sure to use the proper terms for all spices and preparation methods. Ready? Go.
That went well, didn’t it? You had the luxury of doing that without any interruptions and without the need to listen for that little bell that means another order is up in the kitchen. I’m sure you did just fine.
Sarcasm aside, what can restaurateurs do to let you know that they have an unusual regional specialty, and what can you do to make sure you know what you’re ordering? From their side, they can provide as full of a description of each item as they are capable of, and can try to encourage their staff to interact with customers as much as possible without compromising the service. Customers can be proactive and patient, and use their phones or tablets to look up any items they don’t know. Even more importantly, they can be open-minded when they are served something slightly different from what they expected. If a customer really wants to improve the situation, they might suggest to the owner and server how the item might be described to prepare dinners for a different experience than usual.
Our world isn’t going to get any less multicultural and complex, no matter what nativist elements of society might wish. We might as well enjoy and adapt to cuisines that are expressions of other cultures, teaching and learning as well as we can.