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Don't want to think about other people's, strangers', smushy, uneaten food on their plate.
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Welcome to Dish From Chicago Magazine. I'm Amy Cavanaugh, Chicago magazine's dining editor.
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I'm John Kessler, Chicago magazine's dining critic.
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Today we're talking about our dining pet peeves, those little things that annoy us but that do impact our experiences in restaurants.
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Plus, we're going to talk about the best thing we've eaten lately, which includes a cool steakhouse side dish.
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John, you and I both dine out a lot. We experience all kinds of restaurants. I think that I'm a fairly forgiving diner, and I know that, you know, I can count on one hand the number of times I've sent a dish or cocktail back. I don't like to complain, I don't like to whine, but I feel like lately I've noticed a lot of small things that are small, like they aren't, you know, they're little things, but they really do impact my experience in a restaurant. And so we wanted to talk about some of them today, because I know that you share some, and you have your own as well. What is one of your pet peeves?
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I know, this is a fun topic, and I just feel like, you know, it is the little things that just make you kind of curdle a little bit like you just don't want to be a grumpy diner. But then, oh, these things happen, and you're like, man, just get it together. Okay, so let me start. One thing that always bothers me is when a busser comes by my table, holding a dirty plate from another table. Like I just don't want to think about other strangers', like, schmutzies.
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Let me start again. I don't want to think, don't want to think about other people's, strangers', schmushy, uneaten food on their plate. I just think that if a table is to be cleared, you do them one at a time.
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I know, it's so gross, the half-eaten plate. Yes.
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And it happens in nice restaurants all the time.
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This is, we're not just talking about, you know, you know, corner cafe diner, we're, I'm talking about some very expensive restaurants I've been to where I've seen that happen.
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All right, so that's gripe No.
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1. Amy, how about you?
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One of my biggest complaints is only getting one cocktail menu when I'm dining with a guest.
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My God.
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I know that it's probably to save money on printing. I'm sure that is what it is. But I'm sure anyone who listens to this podcast knows that I'm a very avid cocktail drinker. I'm a real, real snob about it, and the person I dine with most frequently, Kenny, is also a very avid cocktail drinker. So the two of us want to come in, sit down, spend 15 minutes reading the cocktail list individually and then decide what we're gonna get. And so if we only get one cocktail menu, it means, typically one of us is, like, taking a photo of every page so we can sit there and then, like, read through the menu on our phone so we can decide what to get. It is so much easier to simply just bring us both a cocktail menu. It happened again last night when you and I were dining out, and thankfully, you beat me there and had time to, you know, pick out your drink. But I don't know, I I'm not sure when this kind of started, but I wish that, you know, one cocktail menu per person. You give us both food menus. So I don't know why one cocktail menu is kind of the direction everyone's going in.
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Places where, yeah, I've been to places where there'll be, you know, one cocktail menu for four or six people at a table. It's just nuts. I mean, you've got to pass it around the table. And then, you know, there's always one person in your group who's going, like, Huh? What? What is byrrh quinquina? I don't know what that is. And you're like, oh, for fuck sake, just give me the list.
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What's another pet peeve of yours?
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I don't like it when you get the spiel about,"All our plates are meant for sharing," but then this plate that's meant for sharing contains exactly three fried shrimp or three pieces of hamachi crudo or something, and there are four of you at the table, and they refuse to scale it up or down. I feel like, if the food is actually meant for sharing, then it should be shareable. And I always feel like I'll be the nice person who will take it and just cut off a little corner of the three things and say, Oh, I'm fine.
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You all. You all enjoy it. So that is another one.
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I know, and it's not simply like pieces, though.
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I agree with that, but some of it is other dishes are truly not
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Things with broth.
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No.
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You know, if it's a brothy dish, you need to bring us little bowls to, you know, dispense ourselves a portion of the soup. But like, a lot of dishes are just not easy to share, and so many restaurants are insistent that all this food is shareable, and it's like, Man, this is not shareable. This is this is an entree for me. You need to either reimagine the dish or reimagine your menu. You know, the way you kind of present some of these things. So definitely annoying.
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If you're gonna say, this is for sharing, then why do you plate it with one baby turnip cut in half and then a little, you know, swish of sauce with the white space going through the middle of it? I mean, that's just not shareable food. That is plated food meant to be put in front of a person.
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Yes, and
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building on that, I have one more complaint about sharing food, which is: The frequency with which I have to ask for serving spoons is way too high. Like you're bringing these plates, they're beautiful. I cannot wait to dig in and eat them, but I'm in a group of four, and I don't want to stick my fork that I ate the previous course with into the dish to start cutting off a piece for myself. If dishes are shareable, you must provide serving spoons.
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Yep.
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must
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I agree 100 percent. I mean, you know, if I'm eating like with my family, of course we will stick our forks into something together.
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But a lot of times you're out like enjoying a meal with, you know, acquaintances — we're getting, we're getting riled up.
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All right, so I'm going to go on to my next one, which is when the tasting menu spiels are like these long, involved, either stories or laundry lists of ingredients, like I remember, I don't know, hearing somebody go on about and our sauce is a strawberry kosho, and then it's covered with this, and then we have this, and I'm like, okay, like, I get it. I know what kosho is. I know it's a Japanese spice paste, and it's not usually made with strawberry, but a lot of times you just go and you get this long list of ingredients that I only know about 90% of what they are. And I feel like, if that's the case, the average diner is just like, oh, okay, yeah, that's fancy stuff. All right. Yeah, it tastes good. So I just feel like, give the information that the people seem like they can actually absorb and change the spiel to match the diner. I think good service is understanding who — it's modulating the service to the diner, particularly when you're spending a lot of money in a tasting menu.
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Completely, yes, yeah, really, kind of watching what diners are looking for and having a read on the table is just so important.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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All right. Well, all right, what's our next gripe?
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So I know that this is something that people gripe about a lot, but I never leave the house without a big purse, and I do not like putting my purse on the ground, on the floor. So you got to have hooks.
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You need hooks at bars. You need hooks at the table. You need hooks in bathrooms. The frequency with which I get to a bathroom and there's nowhere to put it, and I'm like, trying to hang my bag, like, on the door handle, or, like, wedge it somewhere so I don't have to put on the gross floor — too high, too high.
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Yep.
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I actually have a little portable hook that Kenny bought me as a gift, because this is so annoying to me that I can do that myself. So now I have a hook that if there is no option at the table, I can use that. So you can, like, really tell when restaurants have no women involved in discussing the design, because if there are no hooks, so often you have chairs with rounded backs that you cannot hang anything on. You have to give people somewhere to put their purses. And I don't understand how this is not a thing that every single new restaurant and bar is thinking about. It's definitely, I think it's definitely getting better, and I'm also increasingly seeing more places add chargers, which is honestly super nice. So that is a really good thing that I'd love to see more of too. But yes, hooks, somewhere to put your bags. Vitally important.
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It's interesting.
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When I was in Mexico a couple of months ago, I noticed that all the restaurants had like these purse trees that they would bring over to your table, so there would be like a stand that every table had one, and everybody could hang their bags from the stand by the table.
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They were lightweight, made out of wood. Some of them were nicely, you know, sort of decorative and rustic looking, but that seemed to be a great option. Also I'm going to add one more thing, which is no place to hang your coat, particularly when you're being asked to cram into a little booth. In Chicago, I went with some friends recently to Crying Tiger, and it was a very cold night, and we all had puffy jackets on. Four of us were in a pretty tight booth, and I was like, any place I can put my coat? And they're like, oh, no, sorry, we don't do that. But there is, like, between the booths, you can see there's a little shelf there where, you know, someone else's coats were already crammed in, and they said you can stick it on top there. So that felt like a design flaw.
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Absolutely.
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I all right, I have a couple more.
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Yeah, nice to see you, you know, you know, get your you know—
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I've clearly been holding a lot of this in.
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Right. No, this is therapeutic, Amy, I think you need this.
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I do not like being messy, and there are a couple things that I feel like immediately make me run to the restroom to wash my hands. One, making me pack up my own doggy bag. Don't do that. Please, don't. Please don't. It's, I like, my heart. I often bring home food. I don't like food waste. I love leftovers, so I really bring home food quite a bit. I do not like having to pack up my own food.
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Yeah
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It takes me longer. It's messy, it's gross, nothing like, I don't know. I think it's like a very inelegant way to end the meal, like I've had this lovely meal, and then here come these black and, you know, plastic containers to do it myself. Please stop making us do that. And then the other thing is a very
cocktail-specific complaint: Please stop putting garnishes on the side of your glass, like where one would hold the glass.
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Because that's, this is a new trend in cocktails where we are, like putting garnishes down the side of a glass. And yes, it looks very cool. I know why we're doing this, but you can still achieve that same flavor by doing a rim, a salted rim, or sugared rim, or whatever we're doing. Please do not put my garnishes all over the side of the glass, because then it ends up all over my hands, and then I have to go the bathroom, wash my hands. Stop it.
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So QR codes. I feel like when they came out during the pandemic, yes, great, I could stay in my sanitary electronic bubble and not have to actually touch any potentially life-threatening menu. But they still do them, and sometimes the QR codes are like etched onto little wooden blocks that your phone can't quite capture. And I just feel like a paper menu is just a basic diner's right. If you want a paper menu that you can actually read, that is actually 11 and a half by 8 inches. Or what is it? That is actually 11 by 8 and a half inches — that is your right to have one. So please stop it with the QR codes as your only source of information.
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I know, they're so annoying. I also have a list of things that diners do that annoys me. Not to, you know, make this all about things restaurants are doing, too. I know diners are annoying, too, and so some of it also bothers me as a diner when I'm experiencing this as well. When did everyone stop excusing themselves to take a phone call or engage in polite behavior surrounding the phone? The frequency with which people are having phone conversations, like on speaker or they're—
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They're on speaker! Yeah.
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Crazy. When did this start?
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I know I— it's funny. I mean, I always feel like any European friends I have are always like, say to me, oh my God, every time we come to the States, you people are so fucking loud. Why do you all yell at each other? Like, why is it so loud in American restaurants? Why can't you just talk in nice, normal voices? And I feel like the phone thing is just part of that. But you know it is true, because, like, you go, I don't know, you leave this country, and it just feels like, oh yeah. People respect inside voices, and everyone can talk, no matter what the soundproofing is like in the restaurant. And I mean, there's some restaurants that I love, but if I am sitting next to a table of shriekers at John's, I will not have a good meal there, because one of those restaurants where the shriekers, you know, who are just hopped up on their espresso martinis are just, they're just going to reverberate up and down that narrow dining room.
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I know, I know.
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Inside voices. I love, I love inside voices.
Another thing that's annoying is, just, let's please, noPDA in restaurants.
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Like this, you should not have to, like, say this out loud. But I was recently at a, I mean, I know this was a bar, but I have also heard stories about people doing this in very nice places.
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Please do not make out in the booth. There are many other places to do that, like, such as your own apartment. But like, it just makes everyone around you feel incredibly awkward. It impacts people's experience.
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Like, I don't know. I feel like a lot of diners and everyone's kind of bad behavior has come out of the pandemic for some reason, but it just feels like a lot of people don't know how to behave out in the real world. I mean, we weren't home that long, but it seemed like it really impacted a lot of folk. So please, as you're dining out, like be considerate. Think of the diners around you. Be quiet.
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Think about the group, you know? It's just not— people treat their table like their real estate that they, you know, you know they can do whatever they want. And yes, it isn't making out, or I've seen worse. But also this is, I know this is a PG,
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It's family-friendly podcast.
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This is a family-friendly podcast. So I am, if anyone would care to write to me, I can explain some of the things I've seen. I'd prefer to forget them. So, yes.
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Yeah. Another patron thing that's annoying is squatting on laptops. And there's, there are, like, a lot of, like, bakeries, coffee shops, where I'm like, I really want to go, but I know that it's just gonna be full of people on laptops. And I don't really care to do that. I did just see that Milli by Metric implemented strict laptop rules, like, no laptops after 2 on weekdays, no laptops at all on the weekends, which includes Fridays. And so it was like, I love it. I will be, I will see you soon, on a Friday when I can, like, come in and, like, not have to fight for table space. And, you know, can just have lunch and not even have to, you know, be sitting next to someone on a laptop. So, I get it that, you know, so many of us work remotely when we did not before. But yeah, the, the squatting on laptops for like six hours is, you know, impacting other people's experiences too.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, just leaving the laptop there too. I mean, I've seen people just kind of like, grab a table with a laptop and then go over to the couches to take a call, keeping dibs on the laptop on the table. So, yeah, all right.
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Well, it sounds like we have quite a few dining gripes.
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More than I thought!
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Yeah, I know. Once they started coming up, it was like, yeah. It was therapeutic.
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It was good.
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Yeah, I think, I think I got, I got everything off my chest.
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John, what's the best thing you ate lately?
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Well, I did mention John's earlier, so I should say that they have this salad on the current menu that is endive salad with sumo citrus, pistachios, dill, and a sauce that's made from super-tart yogurt and black garlic at the bottom. And it is the most incredibly delicious combinations of flavors and textures I've had in a long time. It was just stunning to look at, incredible to eat. It just had that nice feeling of a little surprise at the bottom when you got down to the sauce at the bottom of the plate. So definitely try that salad. Yeah.
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So that was great. How about you?
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So I recently went to a Stock Mfg. dinner.
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They really do these, they do these cool dinners in their office space, they have a kitchen there, and they invited, you know, top chefs around the city. So I went to the dinner that was put on with Stephen Sandoval of Trino. And I really enjoy Steven's food quite a bit, but I never had this dish before, which he's also serving it as a side dish of Trino. So you can go get this. This wasn't a one-off: duck fat refried beans topped with salsa cruda. I love beans, like just I will always order a bean dish if I see it on a menu. But this was just like, such a good steakhouse side dish. He had it, wasn't with a steak, we had it like with a lamb dish. And it was so good, like, so rich, just so so creamy and delicious. And I was like, I am totally sold.
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Move over, mashed potatoes. Like duck fat refried beans, fantastic.
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I got to try that.
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He is a very talented chef. I mean, I felt like, you know, in its early days, Trino was a pretty good restaurant, and I want to go back at some point. I thought I had a mixed reaction to it as a restaurant, but the dishes that were standouts were pretty great, and I'm very much looking forward to trying that.
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Awesome. Yeah.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Dish From Chicago Magazine. Your hosts are dining editor Amy Cavanaugh and critic John Kessler. Editing by Sarah Steimer and music by Bill Harris. You can find us online at chicagomag.com. Please be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time.