Serious Eats: Talk

Hell's Kitchen: Waiter, what's this in my salad?

Posted by dbcurrie, March 1, 2009

A Hell's Kitchen diner found "something" unrecognizable in a salad, and it was sent back to the kitchen. All that drama, wait until after the commercial, and what the diner didn't recognize was the core of the lettuce.

Much was made of this. Ramsey said that it would be better to serve an undercooked or overcooked steak, because that could be sent back to the kitchen and cooked correctly, but the diner wouldn't be able to forgive this salad atrocity.

I agree that you don't want to find a lettuce core in your salad, but it's not like finding an eggshell or a toothpick or some other nonfood in there. I think if I found a lettuce core, I'd just push it off to the side and not eat it. I certainly wouldn't need to ask the waiter what it was. I doubt I'd send it back, unless it was the icky and unclean end of the lettuce.

So am I just undersensitive to kitchen errors, or was this a lot of fuss over something wrong but not traumatic?

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