A La Carte to the Max

Tonight we went out to dinner to a place where everything was a la carte. For me as a person who wants to control what tempts me it was perfect. Don’t want to eat starch, no problem none is put on the plate unless you order it. Even bread and butter were not automatic. It was easy to withstand the breadbasket when it was advertised as gluten free at $6.

The only problem with this way of selling food is that the portions of what you do order are large. Russ and I got the turf and surf special to split and we still brought half the steak home. I ordered the Brussels sprouts and it really was big enough for three, although I ate most of them myself.

I can see the next wave of food service going even further by being an order by the bite plan. I think I would like six bites of steak, nine of salad and seven of green beans. The real winner in a by the bite plan is that I then might order one bite of rice and one bite of dessert if I was guaranteed to only get that much.

Despite my leaving half a steak uneaten tonight I am normally I’m not good at leaving food on my plate, even if I am full. If you put the food on my plate, I usually am going to eat it. Given the opportunity to order exactly the amount I should have I am much more likely to eat it all and be perfectly happy, even if it was only half as much food as I could have eaten.

Hooray for charging customers for bread. We all know bread and butter are not free, but once it has been put down on a table the leftovers must be thrown away even if the basket was not touched. That’s the food service law of the land, until Thom Tillis gets his hands on it. I like having the option to decide if I want you to tempt me with bread or not.

So go on and a la Carte everything, except for napkins and utensils. I don’t want to get to the point that people are forgoing wiping their hands because it costs fifty cents. This isn’t China after all.