Originally Posted by GadgetFreak

If obviously depends on the restaurant and the server a lot. I often ask for suggestions but I almost always give them two or three to choose among rather than the entire menu.

We had dinner tonight at a very good Japanese restaurant at which we are regulars. Excellent fish. We each ordered an appetizer. The manager and sushi chefs picked everything else, all sashimi, based on what they had available today. Back when Honmura An was in New York we were regulars, and even now when I have visited them in Tokyo I typically would pick at most one small dish, tell them which type soba to finish with and ask the owner to pick the rest of the meal. It obviously helps for them to know you when you give them that kind of latitude.