I love flavour in food, who doesn’t? Seasoning food whilst cooking it is how it should be. Getting the flavour right and serving it, maybe with a sprig of parsley on the side.
However, in recent years we’ve found that restaurants are choosing to decide what seasoning you may want on top of your food too. On Monday we went out to the cinema and grabbed a quick dinner beforehand. On ordering Tomato and Mozzarella salad I was given a plate with a couple of slices of tomatoes and mozzarella, plus rocket drenched in olive oil, some garlic dough balls and some olives. So a little different to what was on the menu! Most of it was fine (not really liking olives!) however it was all completely covered in cracked black pepper! So the first five minutes were spent scraping the pepper off the tomato and mozzarella, and I didn’t bother with the rocket as I couldn’t get rid of the pepper. In a previous meal (from the same place) I once ordered a main meal and instead of the sprig of parsley on the side it was chopped up and thrown all over it.
This isn’t just happening in one restaurant however, I’ve had it in several different ones now. I really don’t understand why chefs have suddenly taken to adding their own seasoning on top of the meal. Within the food, fine, but this additional seasoning on top is just not essential for serving. We should be allowed to add our own seasoning to our own taste! Assuming what our tastes are when it comes to seasoning just isn’t a wise move. I like salt and vinegar on my chips, my Mum doesn’t, David likes plenty of pepper on his food, I don’t want any pepper on mine (except for a little smidgen on eggs!), in other words we all have different tastes so why try and second guess the seasoning we want?!
It’s frustrating as it doesn’t cross my mind to say ‘please don’t cover in seasoning’, simply because you don’t expect to have to say that! Yes you could send it back and ask it for just what you’ve ordered without the extra seasoning (which isn’t mentioned on the menu) but that usually means more waiting and the hassle of having to complain and send the food back.
Why is this suddenly becoming more and more frequent though? Is it just a ploy to try and disguise the food below the seasoning? Or do chef’s and restaurants honestly think that they know what we want? Regardless of the reason they do need to start realising that people have different tastes and adding unnecessary seasoning is just that, unnecessary!
