benchmark dishes

[M2d]

the numerous food threads here and some inane continuous improvement meetings at work got me to thinking about my restaurant habits. for certain cuisines, i have benchmark dishes that i order the first time i go to a restaurant.

as an example, for japanese, i'll order chicken katsu (chicken cutlets breaded with panko and fried) or tonkatsu (pork cutlets with the same treatment). if that's satisfactory and i return a second time, i'll go for the tempura. if that's good, i'll go with teriyaki beef the third time.

my reasoning is that katsu is fairly simple for a decent cook to make, so, if they screw that up (breading too thick, breading falling off, meat over cooked, breading soggy, etc) there's no point ordering anything else on their menu.

the second visit determines the real skill of the cook once the pretenders are weeded out. good tempura is light and not greasy. the shrimp or veggies are cooked perfectly (overcooking is a major flaw in many tempuras) and the batter has a nice golden color. Once past the second step, the restaurant's golden in my book and i'll probably return regardless of the result of the third test.

that one is mainly for informational purposes only and to fix a ranking in my mind. i'm not a huge fan of any teriyaki that i don't make myself, but i'll eat it to test it out. to me, good teriyaki sauce is light but not runny and not too sweet with a nice but not overpowering vinegar kick. also, if they use pineapple in it, they fail.

obviously, if you go to a new restaurant in a group, it's fairly simple to do these tests all at once, but the first two are pretty much dealbreakers for me anyway.

what are good benchmark dishes for other cuisines?