Ingredients of a fine dining restaurant – Part 2 of 6 – The Food

We did originally describe this as being about whether the menu matched the food. At the risk of sounding obvious, the food needs to follow from the menu. Upto the point of the food being presented to the guest, expectation is building.

At the fine dining level, establishments should be aiming at honesty and integrity in their delivery. A few questions you need to ask, just to make it clear:

1 Are the ingredients what they say they are?
Local sourcing does not mean that you can tell a fib and get the produce from the generic wholesaler down the next street.

2 Is the cooking technique as described?
Veal cooked sous vide is not boil in the bag. It should be gentle and soft.

3 Do you make the produce or buy it in?
Homemade can be thrown out of the window if a guest recognises the taste of mass produced gravy masqerading as a “jus”.

Some of the harshest critics can be the people who are at the start of the supply chain. I realised this when a gentleman commented on how nice his lamb cutlets were. He should know, they came from his farm.

A great menu should sell great honest food. One of the comments made by Marco Pierre White about his time at La Gavroche was that it was the most honest place he had worked. The Roux brothers made sure that if an ingredient was listed on the menu, it was the same thing that was sent out to the guest.