I just heard about this chef who refuses to sell tuna cooked past medium rare. He also won't give patrons ketchup for their steak, nor will he make substitutions like kale for spinach. This sounds like my kind of place.
As a piece of tuna goes from being cooked medium-rare to well-done, its texture moves towards resembling a can of StarKist. Chefs declining to wreck tuna like this are often called arrogant and elitist, but they choose their profession because of their passion for food, not to please every customer. Ruining a piece of expensive fish (fish isn’t supposed to be cooked dry) just to please a customer who should choose another fish goes against all their training and experience in the kitchen.
As for the ketchup refusal, if a fine-dining chef doesn't want ketchup in their restaurant, that's their prerogative. Not wanting to dumb down a cut of beef with ketchup makes perfect sense to me, especially if the chef has gone to the trouble of creating a sauce for it. To customers whining about this, I'd tell them to go to Golden Corral to get a kiddie steak, and get it well-done, like a seven-year-old. Refusing to substitute spinach for kale—or any of the other annoying substitutions finicky, self-centered customers commonly request, thereby messing up a kitchen's rhythm—that's fine with me too. Some overgrown brats behave as if they're at Chipotle, where they can customize all the ingredients in a burrito.
Fine-dining restaurants, however, don't operate on the “build-your-own” model. Substitutions (“mods,” in restaurant parlance) confuse the servers and piss off the kitchen. Customer entitlement has long been an issue in the hospitality industry, but restaurant people report that the pandemic has pushed customers over the edge when it comes to being impatient, name-calling, frustration over menu options, etc. I’m at the other end of the spectrum. The restaurants that refuse to cater to the customer’s whims are exactly the places where I want to eat. On a practical level, such places aren’t bogged down in the kitchen catering like wusses to their fussbudget customers, so my food comes out faster. Moreover, their assertiveness in standing their ground shows commitment to their cuisine, and their confidence in it. They’ve worked to develop a menu, and know exactly how their dishes should be served.
My attraction to these stubborn places doesn't waver if a restaurant refuses to serve a classic dish the way I've always wanted it. I'd love to dine at Louis' Lunch (est.1985), the legendary burger joint in New Haven, Connecticut, even though they won't put ketchup on their “sandwich.” The place that bills itself as the “birthplace of the hamburger sandwich” uses a “proprietary blend” of five cuts of meat, ground fresh daily, and they serve it on white toast, with only cheese, onion, and tomato available as garnishes. Ketchup, the proprietors believe, would obscure the meat's true flavor. For a short time, Heinz set up a sidewalk billboard in front of the joint that dispensed ketchup packets. It would've been disrespectful to have taken one into the restaurant—like taking a camera into the Sistine Chapel.
Ketchup is a divisive condiment in the restaurant industry, especially in Chicago where anti-ketchup signs can be seen in the windows of hotdog-serving restaurants around town. You can beg for Heinz at a bunch of places in Chicago, but they'll tell you to take a hike. I respect the commitment, because among those customers who're not always right are those who insist on ketchup on their hot dogs. No less an authority than The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council has issued a decree expressing its disapproval of adults using ketchup on hot dogs, because it's for kids, just like on a steak. As council president Janet Riley (a.k.a. “the Queen of Wien”) put it, “You have to grow up sometime.” She’s referring to the sweetness of ketchup. Tube steaks require the sharpness and acidity of mustard, which doesn't smother the flavor of the dog.
I’m disappointed that I never got to visit chef Kuzanori Nozawa’s Nozawa Sushi in L.A. before it closed in 2012. His rules were strict: no cell phones or texting, no loud talking, no asking other patrons to switch seats, no telling Mr. Nozawa what you wanted, because he doesn't customize. The New York Times built an article around him: “Beware the Samurai Sushi Chef,” suggesting that some chefs take on a combative persona in a misguided attempt to create an authentic dining experience. Misguided? Is that why there was generally over a two-hour wait at the place? Authentic? Nozawa didn't care about being authentic. He needed to concentrate, which he couldn't do by tolerating the usual L.A. self-indulgent foolishness. Nozawa asserted himself as the boss in his place, an attitude our mostly timid restaurants need more of.
The business dictum that the customer is always right, a concept rooted in the American service sector, is at the core of the current restaurant problem. Once a given just among hospitality professionals, it has now become axiomatic among customers themselves, and it's turned some of them into bullies. When diners are taught that there are no boundaries, they take advantage. No boundaries is no way to run any business, just like it doesn't work in life in general. And then there are restaurants telling their staff that the goal is to “awe and delight” the customer. That's like saying every dinner service is like the Super Bowl. It's unsustainable as a goal. A staff can only bend over so far backwards and maintain its dignity.
The antidote to customer arrogance and assertion of dominance over the staff is to tell them no sometimes. A restaurant doesn't need every single type of customer. Serve solid, consistent food and the occasional outburst on social media won't mean a thing.