Dear Restaurants,
I want my food on a plate and I think everyone else does too. So often these days, I order something and the food arrives to the table on something that is most definitely not a plate. I don’t need my food served on a piece of slate or a giant leaf and for god’s sake, just put the bread in a basket and not a some vintage fucking can you found at the Brooklyn Flea. It just happened a few days ago when I went to a Times Square restaurant and ordered a hamburger. That bitch showed up on a cutting board. I didn’t order cheese and crackers and I have no plans to slice some zucchini, so why the hell did you bring my hamburger on a cutting board? Is there some chef or manager that thought it would look edgy and cool? Or did someone from corporate come up with the idea in an attempt to be more hipster-like? I don’t want to eat off a cutting board.
Number one: The food falls off of it because there is no raised edges on a fucking cutting board. When I sliced my burger in half, the delicious juices came pouring out of it and quickly ran over the edge while too many of my chips fell off the cutting board and landed on the placemat that that the bartender had given me. (That’s another thing: do those placemats at the bar ever get washed?) Oh, how I longed for a plate with a nice simple raised edge so my food didn’t keep tumbling off like it was a kamikaze sweet potato chip. It’s annoying so stop it.
Number two: I know those wooden cutting boards cannot go through a dishwasher and get sterilized, so how, exactly, are they washed? Is there a dishwasher back there who has to scrub them clean? Well, that’s disgusting, because I know what he’s using to scrub them clean and it’s the same skanky brush that he uses to scrape food off of other plates. When something goes through a dishwasher, the water temperature is at about 150°. When a person is washing it by hand, the water temperature is whatever is coming out of the tap. Gross. Stop it.
Number 3: It’s a pain in the ass for the server. I watched when he set it down in front of me and again when he removed it. It’s awkward because there is no way to get your fingers underneath it so the only option is to tilt the cutting board as it gets placed resulting in food sliding off. Why? Because there is no raised edge on a non-sterilized cutting board! Watching that server handle that cutting board gave me flashbacks to when I was doing a catering gig at Burton in Soho and we had to serve the food off of skateboards. C’mon!
I get that restaurants are always trying to come up with new and innovative ways to present food, but plates have been around since cavemen were eating boneless buffalo pterodactyl wings so I think the plates are working out. No need to try to reinvent the wheel, chefs and restaurant owners. Save the cutting boards for cutting and give me my hamburger on a simple, yet functional, plate.
Mustard and mayo.
The Bitchy Waiter
johnny culver
Either the West End Grill or the Times Square Diner?
Bryna Levin
Get the cutting board thing…. now please, never eat anything in times square again…. if you need recommendations in the neighborhood, you only have to ask.
Mike McGrady
Kudos to the justified plate complaint. It IS annoying. Byron Levin, I work in Times Square, and I often recommend Virgil’s and/or Carmine’s to folks. Other than that, though . . .
Mike McGrady
Sorry–Bryna Levin . . .
The Bitchy Waiter
I know, I know. We were in a pinch and had tix to a show. We were actually at a place on 49th and Eighth so not totally Times Square…
Kristi
Sometimes you go eat where you’re invited.
Trish
Why are my French fries in a mini fryer basket or a tin can or a bamboo basket?? Just put the dam things on a PLATE next to my burger please.
Tipsykit
I HATE when they jam the fries into a cup or some crap like that so they can steam and the bottom ones get all soggy. No thank you, if you bring me that I will promptly dump that shit out to try and salvage a little bit of crispness. Also those cutesy containers are just a way to disguise how embarrassingly tiny the portion is.
Cameron Grey Rose
have you seen slates? completely flat lipless slates that contain PANCAKES! I had to build a retaining wall of napkins to keep the syrup from dripping into my lap.
April
Oh I hate those places that try to be fancy. Give me a plate, napkins and silverware. That is all I need. I went to a place recently that did plates, but instead of being round or square, the plate was a long rectangle. Like 2 feet long.