The Shoyu Restoration

Further to my last post on the Basmati Rice Experience, last week, came the Shoyu Restoration. Basically, 2 customers came in and ordered our beef dish, which is a duo of a pan-seared tenderloin, and pieces of braised shoulder beef. The thing was, they did not want the sauce on it. Which is fairly common since some people may want to add as many or as little sauce as they want. What's not common was that they didn't want any sauce at all! They wanted their beef with soy sauce, which the captain has to fetch from the Chinese restaurant next door.

And the beef were sent out and consumed this way.

Now comes the question, we all know that hospitality is about pleasing your customers and they are the ones paying your salaries. So yes, in a way we want to cater to our customers' wishes. However, personally, I find there needs to be some integrity in the food that you send out, the food that you designed and crafted with so much pride and thought. I can't say that you need to storm out of the kitchen and give the customers a lashing for so much as to think of such an idea of putting shoyu on your beef. But how much more backwards are you going to bend to please your customers? What if one day, your food no longer resembles what you cook? There has to be certain respect for the cuisine, and for the chef's creativity as well.

I'm sure there're other fusion cuisine restaurants or more casual restaurants where you can do the above, but I just find it hard to believe a (yet to be graded in Singapore) 2 or 3* restaurant will discount on its cuisine.

On a personal level, I've had sliced pan seared beef with shoyu dressing before, it's called Beef Tataki, I made it myself, and it tastes excellent. But it's not what's on the menu of a French cuisine restaurant, and it wasn't what the customers asked for.

As I left Garde Manger to the fish station, this past month, the fish station got a whole lot busier, with the addition of a scallop carpaccio dish, a chestnut dish, and 1-2 specials for the week fired from the fish station, on top of the regular menu. Luckily the white truffle risotto is now fired from the meat station, otherwise we got a whole lot more on our hands.

Twice this week, customers strolled in (no reservations) at 10.50pm- 11pm, and despite having already cleaned and scrubbed up, we had to fire a few orders last minute, and left about midnite- and half past. I think there'd been an absence of a communication since Day One, along the lines of 'Hey guys, I know the last order is 10.30pm, but it doesn't count, because we take in orders anytime. And really, don't bother cleaning up at 10.30pm to go home, despite that hey, if there had been no customers, we'll be saying why you guys are so slow in cleaning up, don't you want to go home?' Maybe it would've been easier to swallow that way. I'm not the only one cursing, the others share it with me too, just that I am the only one putting this into words.

So, I've decided this week to put action to my words, and tendered my resignation.