Let’s say I decide to go to a nice restaurant for a meal. The dish comes out, and I ask for a salt shaker before I even taste it (I never have, btw). That is normally considered an insult to the chef or you are pegged as a neanderthal diner.
Why, then, is it normal for a waiter to offer you grinds of pepper all over your plate before you have even had your first bite?
Because whether the chef will be insulted or not (They won’t) - everyone has different tastes and some people love a dash of pepper on things.
Yep, like me. I normally like my food spicy, and can usually tell whether a dish needs pepper or not.
Also, at the nicer restaurants, the waiter offering it to you is part of the tradition and experience. It can be seen as the restaurant being attentive to the diner. It’s not just pepper, they may offer to grate cheese as well, and I guess customers have come to expect such service as those restaurants.
Even though this happened over 20 years ago, I will never forget the experience I once had of a waiter grinding all the pepper into my lap instead. It was an upmarket restaurant, but I think perhaps he was on something.
Doesn’t matter what level of culinary experience you are partaking in, the kitchen is probably partaking in something.
To the point where it’s actually a huge issue and there are organisations to deal with the drug abuse and depression experienced by chefs and other hospitality workers.
My employment is in tandem to the hospitality industry and we sponsor some of these charities, among others.
I guess that’s not surprising, based on the people I used to know in hospitality. One person who was a chef changed field and retrained after one too many hostile workplaces.
That charity sounds good.
I can’t stop laughing. Did you tell him, or did he just sit there grinding more and more pepper into your lap?
My wife and I went to an Italian restaurant in Vegas a few years ago. The waiter asked if we wanted Parmesan, pulled the tiniest cube of cheese out and held it up like a magician, and then never broke eye contact while he grated it. It was unnerving.
I didn’t tell him, just sat there in shock getting my lap peppered.
If it happened to me now I would say something, but I was young and not that assertive, so was probably like a rabbit in the headlights!