Restaurants Chefs F&W Pro Forward This to Your Friend Who Apparently Doesn't Know How Menus Work No, you don't get a discount just because you asked them to leave the tomato off the BLT. By Darron Cardosa Darron Cardosa Darron Cardosa, also known as the Bitchy Waiter, is the voice of restaurant servers. His decades-long career in the restaurant industry and his very active social media presence have made him an expert on all things service related. He says out loud what other servers wish they could say.Expertise: food service, restaurant industry, waiting tables.Experience: Darron Cardosa is a food service professional with over 30 years of restaurant experience. He has waited tables in diners, pubs, chain restaurants, neighborhood bistros, clubs, and had a short stint in a celebrity-owned restaurant before he was fired for blogging about his experience.Over the last 15 years, he has written more than 1,500 articles and blog posts, each and every one about the food service industry. He has written for Food & Wine, Plate, the Washington Post, and others. Darron has been seen on NBC's the Today show and CBS Sunday Morning discussing the service industry. His book, The Bitchy Waiter, was published in 2016, and his years as a professional actor eventually led to the creation of his one-man show, The Bitchy Waiter Show, which tours around the country. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Published on June 28, 2023 Trending Videos Photo: Image Source / Getty Images A menu is an instruction manual for your time in a restaurant. It can be a full briefing that’s pages long like the booklet that comes with a new kitchen appliance or it might just be mostly pictures on a piece of paper like when you buy a cabinet at IKEA. It’s chock full of information that you should absorb and you should never ignore the fine print. Most questions can be answered by the menu and it is literally handed to you upon arrival (or called up on your phone by QR code, but hopefully not for much longer). Still, there are a few menu misconceptions that need to be cleared up. You Are Not Too Good to Eat at a Chain Restaurant The server is just the messenger Your server didn’t write the menu. If it isn’t to your liking, remember that the server is there to serve. They were not involved in recipe development or determining the food cost ratio to set the prices. Their responsibility with the menu to is to be familiar with it and to wipe it down when you’re done with it. The "secret menu" does not exist at 99.99% of restaurants If it’s not on the menu, the restaurant doesn’t have it. You’re not at Burger King where you can order a King’s Surf and Turf from the secret menu and end up with a Whopper that has a fish patty added to it. If you know of something that used to be on the menu, well, the key words there are "used to be." Let it remain a fond memory and please don’t ask your server to check with the kitchen to see if it can still be made. Your server doesn’t want to risk the ire of a chef for asking a question knowing full well that the answer is a resounding no. The menu is not a shopping list The items listed on the menu are not mere suggestions of what you can build upon; it’s not an ingredient list or a pantry. The penne for one entree and the fresh vegetables for another does not a pasta primavera make. Your options are quite clearly printed before you. See above. Want Bread? Extra Lemon Wedges? Drink Refills? You Should Pay for Them Nor is the menu a starting point for negotiations If you leave something off an entree, don’t expect a credit. You can’t order chicken and cheese quesadillas as a vegan and then be surprised to pay full price for a grilled tortilla with sparse red peppers. Restaurant ordering systems are set up to add costs, not deduct them. They might be willing to substitute beans for the chicken, but if the menu says no substitutions, accept it. And there is no restaurant that will let you leave off the tomato on a BLT and add extra bacon instead without charging you for it. The menu isn't written in code Pay attention to the words of the food description. If the entree has the name chicken in it, but chicken isn’t in the description, rest assured it will still have chicken. Also, please know that it’s soup OR salad, not soup AND salad. Your omelet will come with home fries OR french fries, not both. Conjunction junction has a function: hooking up words and phrases and clauses. Wait, Are We Really Supposed to Tip 25% Everywhere Now? No, seriously, it's all right there What the menu says, goes. It’s almost a contract of terms. If it says at the bottom of the menu in the teensiest of fonts that the gratuity will be added to a party of six or more, you have no leg to stand on when asking for it to be removed. If it says “cash only,” go find an ATM. If it says Market Price next to the lemon-stuffed grilled branzino, ask what the cost is before ordering it. The menu is like a traffic light Lastly, your menu can be used as a signal of communication between you and your server. As long as it is opened and you are looking at it, your server is going to assume you are not ready to place your order. An attentive server is waiting for the visual clue of you closing the menu so they can approach your table and begin to take your order. Using a menu is a two-way street, but the restaurant will usually have the right of way. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit