We were at a restaurant over the weekend with a group of friends and as we were trying to decipher the menu, with the waiter waiting anxiously (rather impatiently) for us to place the order, my friend blurted out the most dreadful question one can at a restaurant “So, what would you recommend?”. I was shocked, rather scared. Scared because, the question was not addressed to me or either of us at the table, but was addressed to the waiter. My mind was like ‘Oh no, no no no no no… what have you done!! How could you do this to us?’

I hate impatient waiters. What I don’t understand is that how can someone who’s called a ‘waiter’ not like to wait. Well anyways, that’s a completely separate issue altogether, let me come back to the mess my dear friend had got us into. To begin with how can you ask a complete stranger, who had no idea about your taste in food, to recommend you something? It’s as bad as asking a chemist a second opinion on your doctor’s prescriptions (I have seen many people doing that too). Well so now the waiter starts recommending you certain dishes and your mind start wondering if he is trying to sell you leftovers from previous day. You start thinking if he recommending them only because the chef really wants to get rid of those dishes? So when the guy says “Why don’t you try the Chicken Mughlai” I hear him saying “Why don’t you help us finish the Chicken Mughlai. It’s been lying in the kitchen for a week now. Nobody’s eating that. Please eat it for us”

So now the waiter has put forth his recommendations, putting you in a real dilemma. I mean how safe is it to reject a waiter’s recommendation? Once the waiter has recommend the Chicken Mughlai, is it OK to say “nah, we don’t want Chicken Moughlai, get us Mutton Roganjosh instead”? Would he take that as an offence and if he does would he actually take revenge? As revenge would he just overcharge you, or would go to the extent of tampering with your food too? You never know what actually happens back in restaurant kitchens. It’s always behind closed doors. But I have seen dreadful things happen back there in movies where they show all sorts of food adulteration tricks, not to mention the ever classic ‘spit in food’ kind of revenge.

Thankfully this time we were a fairly large group, and we ordered a few dishes as per the waiter’s recommendation, and a few others that were our as per our choice - thus arriving at what I believe was a win-win situation. The food was good. I enjoyed the dinner. Nevertheless all through dinner I was still trying to taste ‘staleness’ in the waiter recommended dishes and ‘tampering’ in the dishes we chose -:)