SC - OT Israel

[Marian Deborah Rosenberg]

Rayne asked:

>Do you ever check to see what food is returned un-eaten to the kitchen?  Do
>you make any correlations?  Do you peek into trash cans?  Do you ask...and
>hope to get a honest response?    Just wondering what follow-up do you do?

There's no one particular answer to your question. Yes to all of them in
varying degrees is closer, but there are a lot of other factors that will
dictate the success of dishes. And success of a dish is not necessarily
tied to the amount or lack thereof that is tossed in the trash. It could
just be that you had WAY too much food. I personally believe that the more
food thrown away earlier in the feast, the less people liked it. The more
food thrown away later in the feast, the more people had to eat and were
thus unable to consume. That having been said, I think there are at
least these things to consider...

First and foremost, I'm not a cooking expert. Amateur at best. Now...

Some cooks will rely only on what they actually like. If they don't like
it, they don't cook it. Dangerous, but one easy way to eliminate the
unsuccessful dish. (Personal aside: I cooked a dish I hated last year
and was utterly stunned to find that NONE was returned to the kitchen
none was thrown away, and people thanked me for the dish. I really
really really hated it and almost didn't send it out, even at serving
time. I'm glad my staff duct taped me to a chair on that one.)

Many people conduct test feasts. Some believe that if the dishes were
successful at a test feast, no more than cursory followup is needed.
Sometimes dishes are tested across a wider range of people, say,
at pot luck dinners or "Hey, I brought something for us to nosh on"
gatherings of friends. And again, some believe that this is testing
enough.

The kitchen and site you work in may make it difficult for either a
check of the garbage cans or a poll of the populace. Location of
garbage cans and kitchen may indeed dictate how much of any one
item you see coming back. If the garbage isn't near where you are
your cleanup crew may well be the only people to see what ends
up there. If your kitchen isn't in the same place where your chief
expeditor is working, then any dishes returning for use later in
a feast may not be seen by you and also may not be seen by them
in the rush to get those dishes washed and available for the next
course they're used in.

People may be scared to tell you the truth. For a variety of reasons
there's no easy way around this. It takes a lot of guts to tell people
you want their honesty and be able to stand up to it, and it takes a
lot of guts to be able to answer someone who's asked for an honest
opinion (but may not be able to handle the negative answer you
give them).

Probably not the kind of answer you were looking for, eh? :)
My musings nonetheless.

Jasmine
Iasmin de Cordoba, gwalli at infoengine.com