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#1
02-01-2007, 01:35 AM
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benchmark dishes
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? 
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#2
02-01-2007, 01:51 AM
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Re: benchmark dishes
It seems like a fairly simple idea at first, but I like the levels of thought you've put into it, which brings me to the question: what are good benchmark dishes for an Italian restaurant?
I feel like the "classic" Italian dishes, spaghetti marinara and bolognese, don't qualify because I'll usually have those at home and not a restaurant (in contrast to say, pad thai for a Thai restaurant). I nominate chicken parmigiana and lasagna. I feel that each of these dishes tests the ability of the Italian restaurant to combine cheese, sauce, and either pasta or breaded chicken, and I'm definitely motivated to reach for the parmesan as a first instinct at an Italian restaurant just because it strikes me as a complete meal. I would definitely like to hear what others' first choices are at Italian restaurants. As a bonus: my first choice for lowbrow American/pub food is a patty melt. Discuss.
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#4
02-01-2007, 01:53 PM
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Re: benchmark dishes
[ QUOTE ]
Italian: I'm thinking gnocchi. [/ QUOTE ] ed - I'm not sure if this is an ironclad choice. I frequent one Italian place that makes great everything else, but their gnocchi was really dense and altogether unpleasant.
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#5
02-01-2007, 02:02 PM
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Re: benchmark dishes
never even heard of gnocchi before this thread.
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#7
02-01-2007, 03:07 AM
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Re: benchmark dishes
[ QUOTE ]
As a bonus: my first choice for lowbrow American/pub food is a patty melt. Discuss. [/ QUOTE ] chicken friend steak w/ eggs.
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#9
02-01-2007, 01:50 PM
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Re: benchmark dishes
I think, for diners, you can get some clues before you even step foot in the joint. when I was in oregon we used to hit up two particular places near campus for breakfasts when the dorm food wasn't cutting it. One was a down home place that we went to when it was just guys and the other a nicer place when girls wanted to come along too. the guys only place opened at oh-dark-thirty and (especially in the fall), its parking lot was usually filled before dawn with pickup trucks sporting gun racks. if you came in a bit later, the same trucks were there, but some of them had antlers and deer legs sticking up out of the truck bed.
the other place was where the sorority chicks would go. it was more towards the downtown area and had little shops next door. guess which one had better hashbrowns.
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#10
02-01-2007, 03:14 AM
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Re: benchmark dishes
Zen
Chicken Parm is an excellent indicator of an Italian restaurant because if it is made well, it's amazing, and if it is sub-par, well it's still ok. Lasagna might be too high a bar to start with. I've had some really bad lasagna in my lifetime. Ed, Gnocchi is my favourite Italian dish, but it is too easy to mess up to keep in line with the OP's intentions.
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