Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Here is what I learned waiting tables: when you ask to hold something, it’s either possible or it’s not (ie, with a soup, it might be fully batch made in the morning, not made to order - all our soups were like this), but if it is possible - it is absolutely NBD.
People ask for stuff held all the time. You click a button, the kitchen keeps it out. Done.
I never asked for modifications before I waited tables because my parents thought it was rude/high maintenance and once I started waiting tables I started asking for stuff to be held all the time. I do limit myself to two modifications per order, as it is a bit annoying once you get to like 5 and your dish is totally different.
What IS annoying: lying about allergies (this triggers a whole protocol! If you don’t like tomatoes just ask to hold the tomatoes!) and recreating something from scratch (“I see you have a chicken Caesar salad and you have a turkey wrap - could you possibly make the chicken Caesar salad into a wrap? Since you have all the ingredients?” - yes people do this and it sucks)
Bottom line: ask to hold the noodles!
I have a severe shell fish allergy that can kill me protocol do they do? I had no idea I just thought they wont use the same spatula in the kitchen.
PP here. This definitely depends on the restaurant. At a bar and grill I worked at, they changed the serving utensils, didn’t include the ingredient and moved forward. If it were a life or death thing, I’d be hesitant to put my life in the hands of our line cooks who were stoned like 50% of the time.
At the fancy place I worked for? The chef had a chef friend who had a patron die at the table from an allergy and he did not mess around. The allergy goes on every single ticket multiple times in all caps (you’ve got a shellfish allergy? The dessert staff will know, and they had their own room! The serving stations were sanitized, everything was wiped down, managers would observe, hands were scrubbed, everyone was informed… I actually would have eaten there with a life threatening allergy.
But either way, even if it’s just changing out serving utensils - don’t freaking lie about it!! No one cares if you don’t like something, just ask for it held! Sometimes we’d go through the whole rigamarole because someone would say they were allergic to eggs or something and then they’d order the soufflé for dessert, which had eggs and when we pointed that out they were like “oh, worth it!”
We hated those people.