Deceptive Menu Items
 

Some things are standard, right? We all know what buffalo wings are. There may be different flavors, but we know what the "standard" is -- buffalo sauce. French onion soup, cheeseburger, French dip -- some things should be trustworthy just because of the name, no?

At a fairly nice place (at least, expensive) out in Colorado, Tabernash Tavern near Winter Park ski resort, my wife ordered a Caesar salad. Caesar salad is a specific thing, right? Romaine lettuce. Caesar dressing. With or without anchovies. With or without croutons. Pretty basic.

What she got was...a half head of green leaf lettuce, not romaine. Wilted or blanched or somehow else partially cooked. A salsa-like concoction of black beans, corn and tomatoes on top. Tortilla strips on the side. Some kind of spicy-hot southwestern dressing. How is that a "Caesar salad"?

Can a restaurant just take a standard food label and slap it on something else? "Well, around here our cheeseburgers are served on white bread, and the only ingredients are peanut butter and jelly. Cheeseburger is just what we call it."

Any other experiences like this?

The menu description seems to indicate it's not a normal Caesar salad...

Tequila Flamed Caesar Salad

Watermelon, bbcs, chipotle vinaigrette, pecans, cotija, tortilla rajas, tomatoes, sweet onion and jalapeno relish, anchovy and avocado crema.

http://tabernashtavern.com/dinner/

You need to spend some time reading the comments on various recipe blogs. They're full of things like:

I loved the recipe for Spicy Sausage Lasagna, my entire family raved about it. We find sausage too spicy, so I substituted ground turkey, and making bechamel seemed hard so I used some sour cream and just opened a jar of Ragu instead of starting from scratch. Assembling lasagna is a lot of work, so I just stirred everything together and served it over egg noodles with some pre-grated parmesan on top...Five stars.

Except for the anchovies, nothing about that is a Caesar salad. I agree with the OP...there should at least be some sort of basics.

Short answer... yes.

Long answer... if what you receive is completely different than what was
detailed on the menu or what the staff described to you then there is an
issue with deceptiveness. Sometimes the kitchen does not communicate
effectively with the front of the house.

Must have been the Augustus Caesar as opposed to the Julius Caesar.

I agree that this is a case of abuse of the salad term "Caesar".

I'm not sure about this.

On one hand a cheeseburger should definitely involve a burger patty, cheese and some kind of roll. But the roll, cheese and other fillings could all vary considerably and yet the thing would still reasonably be described as a cheese burger.

I would say that a caeser salad might be made with lettuce other than Romaine and requires grated parmesan in addition to the dressing and croutons. That said, I would agree that the object described above is not a caeser salad - I don't know where the line is, but that is way over it.

In general I think you have to be a bit wary of regional/national differences. If you tell a German and a Brit that something comes with potato salad they will not have the same substance in mind.

And i've never even heard of French dip. However the wikipedia entry for it does suggest there is some variation in how it is served. Sounds good anyway

My wife loves Caesar salad's and is amazed how much variety there is - even at renowned hotels who should know better - the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore had a chef's Caesar salad that had tomato's in it!

In a different hotel, on night 1 she ordered a Caesar salad, wonderful. On night 2 she ordered it again, completely different, when she queried this she was told chef had run out of the ingredients so had improvised. :(

So, in this case the restaurant did a reasonable job of describing its dish. Yes, it's amusing how little this dish has in common with its supposed namesake, but they at least they did document it. It seems the patron who didn't read the menu shares a lot of the blame here.

LOL!!! Thanks for making my day.

I've seen faux caviar passed of as genuine caviar and many experts seem to actually prefer it in taste tests.

I have also seen surimi lobster tails passed off as real lobster when served sliced and out of shell and particularly when "sauced". Sadly they get away with it and few seem to be able to tell the difference. I have even seen the specific description of "Maine Lobster".

Surimi is the same process as crab sticks and turns cheap and by-product fish into other things and Japan is the main producer....



http://www.thalassa-seafoods.com/pic...obstertail.JPG

Millefeuille.

A true millefeuille is a wonderful thing - three layers of pricked, dense puff pastry, two layers of thick creme patissiere and icing with the traditional lattice design on the top.

And I get that there are variations on a theme, much as that may disturb your average maitre patissier, going over to the savoury side, producing some delicious dishes.

However, when I get presented with a so-called millefeuille desert that is three discs of greasy pastry with dollops of whipped cream inbetween - and these are everywhere - it makes me feel very sad.

(See also profiteroles, which should contain ice cream, and be covered with a chocolate sauce. But I fear too many countries are way too far down the road of whipped cream and chocolate icing for me to resist...)

Just now in my work canteen they had a "Thai Pad Thai" which despite the double pointlessness of saying that a dish called Pad Thai and only from Thailand was Thai, it was actually completely different from what you would get in Thailand.

On a happier note, I recently had a taster course which started with a "Pisco Sour" which instead of a cocktail ended up being a nitro-frozen sorbet.

Fancy restaurants often like playing with familiar concepts. Occasionally they are successful, often they are not (especially the whole lazy "deconstruction" concept).

Wonderful!

Heh, my work canteen has a habit of making some odd inventions, and overblowing some other things (not complaining, the quality of food is really good).

Sachertorte = Chocolate Sponge
Arabian Chilli = Chilli con Carne but with butter beans instead of kidney
Salmon Coulibiac = Salmon and Rice Pie

Given the below description, I agree to a point. Unfortunately, I never read the menu item at all (wife ordered it and I did not peruse the salad section) and the menus were gone from the table by the time the food came. So the below description, while fairly accurate, I never read. The one point of disagreement is in calling this a "Caesar" at all....how about a Tabernash Southwestern Salad?

Deceptive Menu Items
 

I've eaten at Tabernash Tavern a few times. It's "meh" at best, but the locals rave about it. The food at Devil's Thumb Ranch is far better, and I bet you can get an actual Caesar salad there!

At the risk of derailing my own thread, this brings to mind another food nomenclature that grates me (it's a US trend) -- the "grilled cheese" craze with all other kinds of crap on it. A "grilled cheese," from my birth until just a few years ago, involves just cheese and bread. The kind of cheese can vary (in our house, of course, it was most often the Kraft sliced "processed cheese food" that isn't cheese at all), and the bread can vary. But once you add anything else to it -- it's not a "grilled cheese" any more.

The proper term, I think, for a grilled sandwich that happens to include melted cheese, is a "melt". As in a tuna melt. Or a patty melt.

When you have a grilled cheese restaurant, and your "grilled cheese" involves free-range chicken and arugula and aioli on an artisan roll, that's not a "grilled cheese sandwich." It's a grilled chicken sandwich with arugula, aioli, and melted cheese, on an artisan roll.

Some might also find it deceptive if the salad isn't prepared tableside, because that is the proper prep.

If the menu is descriptive, nothing to see here, especially when the title was unusual.

Similarly, I order a Cobb salad from a place close to home, and it doesn't resemble anything that Mr. or Mrs. Cobb or any of their offspring would ever recognize. But it is tasty, and the menu lists all the ingredients.

(I don't think this was addressed directly in this thread)

I don't eat crab, but I'm curious about what disclosure is appropriate when dealing with the faux crabs/krabs.

I think here is where "normal" and "proper" part ways. In a lifetime of ordering a Caesar salad, I've only seen it prepared tableside maybe a couple of times.

In other words, experience governs expectations (and therefore possible deception), not propriety.

I will go back and say again that the menu seems to describe the salad appropriately.

There's no deception intended with crab sticks. They aren't shaped like crab and I have never seen them passed off as crab. They do sometimes feature on their own strength in Japanese cuisine.

They happened to be made in the same way as surimo lobster tails. There is deception with those. I memtioned crab sticks simply so people could understand somethfing similar that they may have experienced.

Ugh, end the madness!!! :D

Just check out the item description because as you have discovered
what you actually get may be something slightly or vastly different.

Big deal, I have had grilled cheese with a slice of tomato tucked inside.
It was delicious and I was not about to quibble with the chef about the
menu item name.

Surimi is a pox on the face of the planet. Yuck.

Oh dear ... one of our very favourite sandwiches is chopped up decent quality crab sticks with a marie rose sauce with some crispy lettuce in Hovis. So much nicer than prawns.

I guess this makes us people with no taste.

:D

In a seasoned wooden bowl.

As for deceptively named food, sweetbreads certainly come to mind...

Somebody earlier mentioned sandwiches. I never realized it, but apparently the Club Sandwich can just about consist of anything, IME. I don't think I ever get the same one twice.

I'm going to lump reubens into the same category. It seems like sauerkraut and thousand island dressing are the only requirements in the minds of some menu developers. Rye bread, corned beef and swiss cheese are all dispensible.

Sometimes yellow mustard in lieu of the thousand island.

I have regularly (though perhaps not often) seen krab passed off as crab in kaitenzushi and table-service mass-market sushi places, but usually in the omission rather than the commission. That is, the menu will say crab without clarifying that it's fake crab. If asked, though, they'll 'fess up to the fake stuff, and certainly on appearance at the table (whether from server or belt), it's obviously krab-with-a-k.

Have to agree that it's pretty near to a culinary scourge - I'd say it's scourge-adjacent. "Their own strength in Japanese cuisine" is pretty weak, IMHO.

A former workplace canteen had tandoori soup on the menu.

Technically, should be Russian dressing, no?

Ordering a Reuben is like unto leaping from a high perch into a dark void. You know what you want, but the odds of getting it may be slim. I'll admit that given available supplies of 'kraut, the use of coleslaw may be OK.

Of course, "Club Sandwich" covers sins beyond number, with ham and turkey substituting for bacon and chicken in all too many venues (plus the addition of "American" cheese for which there are a few limited applications, but not in a Club Sandwich.

Burned by experience, I'm unlikely to order a "Monte C(h)rist(h)o"** unless I've seen one brought to another diner, and even then suspicious of potential innards. I actual saw one example which seemed to be a PB&J battered and deep fried.

** Spellings I have seen.

Another mystery dish: The "Hot Brown", often with little genetic connection with the original thereof.

Then there's "Gumbo". Don't get me started on how badly some restaurants go down that road.

"Steak au poivre" is another.

Rarely rising to mediocre: "Crab Cakes", and a once revered dish, now most often snatched from the freezer, "Deviled Crab" (in which a 1000 diners are fed from a handful of crab snatched from oceans far from the Atlantic or Gulf costs).

Latest offense against nature and tradition: Panera Bread's "Broth Bowl" a strange and unsuccessful combination, over-priced, and an embarrassment to even a modest chef in an Asian noodle joint.

Caesar Salads or justly famous for the mystery lurking for diners. Unless I've seen a cart and bowl circulating, I avoid'em.

I'm inclined to give them a pass on that one given the many variations of Russian and Thousand Island and the possible overlap.

I've only had one at a chain, Bennigan's, which came and went from our local mall in less than a year's time. As far as I know it was "authentic" although swiss may not be the official cheese of the original. It did come with a side of raspberry jam but no peanut butter.

Good or bad, I can no longer stomach one. Too fatty, too cheesy and way too sweet for my current crop of taste buds.

Whilst not food, it's still a consumable. I was at Imagery Winery in Sonoma yesterday and they had on tasting a wine they called White Burgundy. It was not White Burgundy and it was not made from Chardonnay. At least it was wine and at least it was white, but the rest was entirely fictional. Also, it was disgusting.

Perhaps we should try to define Chili.

Was the wine at least made from grapes rather than some other fruit, vegetable, honey, etc.?

I have no trouble in defining/describing the dish... (which is a simply unadorned Braised Beef, more "Anglo" than Mexican)

Traditional Version close to that sold by San Antonio's "Chili Queens" in the Mid19th Century

Ancho and other dried chiles, optimally soaked and pulped. "Ground" chiles may be substituted, and even some "Chili Powders" Amount and varieties of chiles adjusted for desired "heat", but original "Chili" seems to have been reasonably mild but with hot chiles on the side for garnish.

Cheap cuts of beef cut into small cubes.

Garlic
Cumin (brought from the Canary Islands by original San Antonians?)
Salt
Chopped onions
Water or beef stock
Masa to thicken

Assembly varies.
Tomatoes are forbidden by Papal Interdict, and the addition of Ketchup is a 3rd degree felony.

Frijoles, Pinto, Anasazi, Salvadorean (but never Kidney or Black) must be served separately.

Leave out most/all of the beef except for some suet and it's "Red Chili Gravy", TexMex enchilada sauce.

Acceptable "Anglo" garnishes include chopped raw onions, grated Cheddar, Tortilla Chips/"Tostados" or the ubiquitous "Fritos", the base for cultural icon "Frito Pie" served "in the sack". Warm corn tortillas work well when a spoon is not available

All else is extraneous, by custom, tradition and precedent to be avoided. Green Chili is from New Mexico. "White Chili"? Less said, best said!

"Chefs. Today we want you to take Caesar salad and reinvent it"
"You have 15 minutes"
"Time starts ...Now!"

BTW, we were told by an old traditional Japanese trained sushi chef that tempura wrapped in rice aka Crunch roll that served in many Japanese restaurants in the US is NOT sushi and should never be listed under sushi on the menu.

It must use high fat content beef so as to render the appropriate bowl of red layer.

A small amount of tomato sauce is needed, along with a pinch of sugar to balance the tomato.