When Is It OK To Send Food Back? With Kenji López-Alt (Reheat)

This week we have a Reheat double-header. First up, from way down in the crevices of that deep freezer: a throwdown over proper buffet priorities, in which we also cover seat selection, line etiquette, and how far one should go to win the age-old battle against the Buffet Master. Next up: Should you send a dish back to the kitchen simply because you don't love it?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  If you're the kind of person who plans vacations around where you're gonna eat, Scottsdale belongs on your list. And look, whenever I go somewhere, my priority is on eating things that are the specialties of that region, eating things that I can't get at home. So when I'm in that area, I'm looking for the specialties of the region, like authentic southwestern and Native American flavors, modern Mexican cuisine, and as basic as it sounds, homemade, fresh flour tortillas. There's nothing like it, and you can't get them like that in the Northeast. And there is such a farm-to-table culture in Scottsdale, inspired by the Sonoran Desert. Everything is so fresh, the peppers, the spices. It is so vibrant. And Scottsdale's just got a great vibe. It's one of those places where breakfast becomes brunch, happy hour turns into dinner, and every patio

• 0:43Dan Pashman?

  has another amazing view. And explore old-town Scottsdale between meals, or relax at a spa after brunch. From award-winning and James Beard-recognized chefs to neighborhood gems and nationally acclaimed restaurants, every meal in Scottsdale tells a story. So come hungry and leave with new favorite restaurants. Start planning your next culinary getaway at experiencescottsdale.com.

• 1:06Dan Pashman?

  I grew up on Lando Lake's cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lake's American cheese. And now, Lando Lake's cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lake's cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lake's has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 1:46Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone. Dan here, and this week's Friday Reheat is a doubleheader. Yes, two episodes for the price of one, and by price, I mean zero. It's free. You're welcome. Now, the first of these two episodes comes by request.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Hi, Dan. This is Lizzie.

• 2:00Dan Pashman?

  And Nick.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  From Connecticut. We'd love to hear a reheat of your buffet techniques episode so we can compare notes. It's one of the first episodes we heard about, and we wanted to listen to it, but it's been in the deep freezer since we started listening. Thanks.

• 2:14Dan Pashman?

  Well, Lizzie and Nick, your wish is my command. This buffet strategy showdown episode was surprisingly heated. I went head-to-head with my old friend Mark Garrison, who was a co-host of this show in the very early days, and it got a little intense. And let me tell you, buffet strategy is an intense topic. It's very serious. I take it very seriously here on The Sporkful. I've taught my kids about it. These are lessons that I plan to pass down to my grandchildren. And so I hope that whatever you can learn from this episode is something that you can pass on to your heirs. Then, after buffet strategy, in the second half of the show, I'm gonna welcome back our old friend, food writer Kenji Lopez, to open up the phone lines and take your calls. We'll speak with a father-daughter duo who are not seeing eye to eye about when it's okay to send food back at a restaurant. Now, remember, you too can be like Lizzie and Nick in Connecticut. There's an episode

• 2:58Dan Pashman?

  you want us to reheat? Let us know. Drop me a line at [email protected]. Thanks and enjoy.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  This is The Sporkful.

• 3:21Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman, along with Mark Garrison.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Hey, Dan.

• 3:27Dan Pashman?

  And we're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you, because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely, and because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases. Mark Garrison, how are you, sir?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  I am good, and I am fully prepared to have this discussion, because I just had some fried rice. It's pretty much my favorite way to utilize leftover rice. All you need is the rice, sesame oil, and then, you know, maybe some veggies, whatever you have around, then an egg. Mix it all together in a skillet, and you're good. It's a great way to start.

• 3:55Dan Pashman?

  Regular sesame oil or toasted sesame oil?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Whatever I have. I don't know what's in there right now. My girlfriend Sarah bought it, but so like, a little bit of sesame oil, and then the rest of it olive oil, because sesame oil tends to pop a lot.

• 4:07Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, I think the toasted is way better, although I made the mistake of buying the regular more recently, so I gotta work through that giant bottle of it that I bought.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  It takes a while. You don't use that stuff in quantity.

• 4:15Dan Pashman?

  Now, let's go ahead and jump into today's topic for rumination and mastication, which is buffet strategy.

• 4:24Dan Pashman?

  Now, this show will focus on all-you-can-eat restaurant buffets, not wedding and function buffets where you're eating for free. That'll be a separate show down the road. Now, Mark Garrison, you have worked in a restaurant where there was an all-you-can-eat buffet. You have helped to set up that buffet, and you claim to have insider knowledge about some of the tricks of the trade, the way that the people who make a buffet will get you.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  They are laying mines for you, trying to detonate your goals.

• 4:49Dan Pashman?

  And these mines are basically so they can make more money?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yes, because you have to think of like, understanding your goals. My goal as an eater, I want to eat as much of the best food as possible, because again, I'm paying a fixed price, and then, once I get in, I can only take advantage of that if I maximize my experience. The restaurant's goal is to present an appealing buffet with lots of good food, so you'll be a repeat customer, but then compose the buffet and steer the eater so they eat as little as possible of the best, most expensive stuff. You need to understand the weapons of the buffet master, and a common weapon across every type of buffet is the starch. We're talking about rice, bread, potatoes, pasta. This is all cheap filler, designed to fill you up and minimize the room you have for more expensive, meaty, delicious

• 5:34Speaker 02

  things. That's why you will always find these up front, right next to the plates, basically.

• 5:38Dan Pashman?

  What are some of the most expensive items that you want to get your hands on, and how do they make it hard for you to get them?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Well, they do that by kind of the composition of the buffet. Quality things are the proteins. Not always. I mean, there is some cheap fish. Chicken can be pretty cheap out there like that, but they're trying to keep you away from the protein. So they will often put the proteins at a kind of a weird place where the line will stack up, so they'll try and kind of wear you down. You'll see like, there's a long line at the carving station. Maybe I'll just skip it. Oh, I'll come back later, but you probably won't, because you're gonna be so full of potatoes and rice. The other thing they will do is they will always aggressively refill your drinks, because the more liquid you have, the less room you have for delicious things. And liquid costs them very little or nothing. Food costs them a lot.

• 6:18Dan Pashman?

  You know, in general, that's why I never drink soda with meals or carbonated beverages. Maybe I'll have a Jack and Coke or a gin and tonic, but that has very little carbonation in it, because that carbonation will get into your belly. It will fill your belly with air. You'll think that you're full, and then you'll stop eating, and then you'll leave, and 20 minutes later, you'll burp, and it turns out you were still hungry.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  All right, let's talk about strategy. One thing I will say is to avoid the first and the last hours of the buffet. A lot of people make the mistake, oh, if you go early, it's gonna be fresh. Generally, at the buffet, the first hour are the leftovers of the previous buffet, or whatever somebody didn't eat at the restaurant that night. So skip that. Also, skip the last hour, because that's the hour when, if something runs out, they may not make it again. And if something is an unusual dish, that maybe people, it hasn't been a hit with the crowd, it's gonna have been sitting there for the entire time the thing has been open.

• 7:09Dan Pashman?

  That's a good tip. I think it's also important, you know, part of my strategy is, and this is something you can find, you do a little research into competitive eating, as I have, you don't want a totally empty stomach. Don't starve yourself before a buffet. You want to eat something. If your buffet's a lunch or dinner buffet, you want to eat something in the morning. One of the things a lot of the competitive eaters do is they'll drink a gallon of water to fill their stomach. Now, you don't need to go quite that far.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  We're not saying for extremes, but we do, you know, we can use some of their methodology to maximize, you know, cost efficiency at the buffet.

• 7:37Dan Pashman?

  Right. But you don't want to starve yourself. Now, once you get there, you want to choose a good seat. Now, it's very important, and this is a lot like my strategy for past orderers. Past orderers, you want to find the source. Same thing here. You want to be able to see the buffet and see the kitchen, so that you can see what is coming in and out of the kitchen. Is that right?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Having that viewpoint is so important, because a lot of people will get obsessed with being close to the buffet, which is good. It's good to be close. That's gonna mean shorter trips. More trips can be made in a shorter amount of time. But the sightlines, I find more important than actual proximity to the buffet, because you want to have, keep your eyes open as you eat, because if you see like, a brand-new prime rib come to the carving station, you want to move, and you want to be the first person to see it and get your choice slice or slices out of that. We can talk carving strategy a little bit more later.

• 8:21Dan Pashman?

  Now, once you got your seat, and you're ready to attack this buffet, I think one of the first rules, and some people on Facebook said this, my mother taught me this rule when I was a small child, you must survey the entire buffet before you take food. Mark just explained it to people. They're gonna put stuff at the beginning of the buffet that's a bunch of crap, trying to get you to fill up on bread. You must survey the entire buffet. Now, once you have surveyed the entire buffet, here's my strategy, Mark. I'm gonna go back after the survey and take a tiny bit of everything that I want, just a couple bites, so that I end up with five, six, seven, eight different items on my plate, just a couple bites of each. And I sample. That reduces waste, because if I turn that I don't like something, I don't have a giant pile of it. Then, I pick the highlights from

• 9:05Dan Pashman?

  that sampling plate, and then I go back, and my second round is really where I am boring into the center. That is where you strike the death blow into the buffet.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'm disturbed to hear that you've kind of bought into one of the real tricks of the buffet master, because you said you like to reduce waste. And so it's almost like the buffet master has kind of taken the hold of your mind. You're like some kind of Manchurian candidate buffet eater. You must feel no guilt about not finishing something that you take. Buffet master is the master of the buffet, but don't let the buffet master you.

• 9:39Dan Pashman?

  Mark, just because you don't waste food does not mean that the buffet master wins.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  But why allow any bit of your stomach to take in something that you've determined is not very good?

• 9:50Dan Pashman?

  You don't have to. With my system of taking very small amounts of things first to try them, the most you're gonna leave on your plate is one or two bites. If you leave half a plate of food there, it's, look, I have a problem in general with wasting food. Not to get all high and mighty, but there's enough people out there who don't have enough food that we shouldn't waste food when we have it.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  But again, most of the food on the buffet is either going to be thrown away or recycled into the next buffet. It's not gonna be wasted. I mean, you're not the martyr here.

• 10:17Dan Pashman?

  It's more likely to be eaten if you don't leave it on your plate and get it thrown out. So it's more likely to get put to good use.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  This is a problem, because like, you don't let that guilt direct where you go.

• 10:27Dan Pashman?

  It's not guilt.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Let only your personal satisfaction decide what you eat. If you have one bite of something, and it's not good, you must discard all the rest of it, because if you don't, you've fallen into the trap.

• 10:38Dan Pashman?

  Clearly, things are getting a little heated here. I think it's time for a quick break. But when we return, I continue to press Mark on his vision of the buffet master. Stick around.

• 10:52Dan Pashman?

  When you're cooking, ingredients matter, right? You use higher quality ingredients, you usually get better results. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably the kind of person who puts some thought and effort into your ingredients. But ingredients don't just matter with food, they also matter with laundry detergent. Of course, the cleaning job needs to get done, the odors and stains have to be tackled, and I want to feel good about the detergent and the ingredients in it. Because remember, whatever's in your laundry detergent is essentially in your clothes, and then you're putting those clothes on, you want good stuff in there. And All Free Clear uses only essential ingredients. It's 100% free from dyes, perfumes, parabens, and irritating residues. Check out the label and see for yourself, it lists all the ingredients and what they do. We've been using it in my house, we're very happy with it, and let me tell you, family

• 11:34Dan Pashman?

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• 12:16Dan Pashman?

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• 12:59Dan Pashman?

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• 13:32Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. You ever like go to our show page in your podcasting app and you're scrolling back and you're like, oh, that, that seems like a good episode. Why, how did I miss that? Well, you, you missed it because you're probably not following our show in your podcasting app, and it's really important that you do. So please, do this right now. Go to our show page in your podcasting app of choice. If it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you click follow. Other apps, maybe it's a plus sign, or a heart, or a favorite, or the word subscribe, whatever it is in your app, it's really important that you click it. That way, you won't miss great episodes. It's super quick and easy, you can do it right now. Thank you so much. Now, back to this week's reheat. So would you take a big pile of something that looks really good and take one bite

• 14:16Dan Pashman?

  of it and then leave a whole plate of food because you decided you didn't like it? Absolutely, absolutely. That's wrong. You're saying exactly what the buffet masters want you to say. You've been co-opted. Explain to me what it is about my approach that benefits the buffet master. If you take one bite of something that you don't enjoy, then you're, you're, you're leaving something else that you don't get to have, and you're getting less for your money. That's fine, but you keep saying that. Under my system, I don't take any, any bites of things that I don't enjoy. If I take one bite of something and I don't like it, I stop eating it. But because I've only taken very small amounts, I leave very little. That's fine, but I- So I'm not forcing myself to eat food that I don't want. I'm saying that's okay, but I'm just trying to kind of release you from this guilt, which is your enemy.

• 15:00Dan Pashman?

  I don't feel guilt, you should feel- You have feel guilt. You said reduce waste. You said I'm trying to reduce waste. That's not your job, that's not your job. It's everybody's job. Not here. This is a buffet, all you can eat, where you have paid a cost, and you must recoup and build upon what you have spent. Now, we're getting down to the heart of the matter, Mark. And that is that you are so bent on taking down this mythical buffet master that you've- It's not mythical. I have worked for the buffet master, and so I'm, I'm sharing what I've learned in that den. Oh, he has a den? I picture him like Claw from Inspector Gadget. Is he like petting a cat? Petting a cat with a ring, yes. My top priority when I'm at a buffet is to make myself happy. Of course.

• 15:43Dan Pashman?

  Now, I care about what it costs, and I'm not going to go pay for a buffet if I don't think I'm going to get my money's worth. But if, let's say a buffet costs $30, I would rather eat $35 worth of food and make it food that I love. You, I think, would rather eat $50 worth of food, whether or not it makes you happy. Oh, no, it's going to make me happy. It's going to make you happy because you want to stick it to the man. That's part of it. Not even because you want to eat food that makes you happy. No, but again, all of that underlies like personal food enjoyment. Like, it's going to taste good, and I'm going to have a good experience, and there's going to be a lot of variety, lots of different things to try. But again, I want to do that in a way that I win, that I win. You cannot even separate your palate. You don't know the difference between the taste of prime rib and the taste of victory. I can taste them both at the same time, not the buffet.

• 16:28Dan Pashman?

  If I just want to taste prime rib, and there's plenty of great steak places, I can get that à la carte and pay just the prime rib rate. But if I'm trying to get prime rib in a multiplicity of other things, and do it in a way that brings me deliciousness, satisfaction, and yes, victory, that's what I'm going to do. Mark, I didn't know you were so motivated by schadenfreude. That is really the essence of your buffet strategy, is to make the buffet master sad. I don't wish to make him sad. The essence of my strategy is to make me happy. You keep saying it's about winning, but really, it's not about winning for you, it's about beating someone else. I can win without anyone else losing. Life is not a zero-sum game to me, my friend, nor is a buffet. So I can have quite a good time at a buffet and eat very well and get my money's worth.

• 17:13Dan Pashman?

  I know the tricks. I don't eat rolls at a buffet, I don't eat salad, I'm not stupid, I worked at a restaurant too, buddy. But you would sacrifice some measure of satisfaction for that victory. How am I sacrificing satisfaction? I don't understand. I'm eating, I'm getting the best stuff. It's not necessarily the best stuff that is the food that makes you happiest, it's the food that costs the most, and so you aren't able to- Not necessarily. I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to eat things I don't like because they're expensive. I've never done that. I mean, like, you know, lamb is generally pricey, but it's not real popular among American palate, so usually if lamb shows up on the carving station, it's been sitting there just becoming desiccated, and it's not going to be good. So I like lamb, but I'm not going to eat that lamb just because maybe I'm hurting the restaurant a little bit like that. It's got to be good lamb.

• 17:55Dan Pashman?

  But, but if I've seated myself properly, I know when that lamb comes out, and I'm going to get it, I'm going to hit it, it's going to be, and if she tries to slice me a thin slice, I will ask for another, and another, and another, and I don't care how many people are behind me, I will get the thickness that I desire, and I'll have some mint jelly with it too. I think that if that lamb were as desiccated as lamb could possibly be, but yet it was dipped in gold, you'd still eat it. I don't think so, because like gold, colorless, tasteless, doesn't, doesn't help me. But it costs a fortune, and that's why you'll eat it.

• 18:32Dan Pashman?

  Let's turn now to our loyal listeners and see what they had to say. We solicited feedback for this episode. We got a lot of great comments on Facebook, Twitter, the blog. Remember, you can find all that by going to thesporkful.com. On Facebook, Gabe writes, "Looking for seconds of one buffet item. Is it cool to cut the line, Mark?" It is, but in a, in a polite and more effective way than just cutting the line. So I like to think of it as my hummingbird technique. Just think of how a hummingbird kind of will hover and then dart into, get the nectar from the flower. What you can do is kind of use the, the hummingbird technique to look for that moment when, when the spoon or the tongs are dropped, and then you'll, you'll be hovering in the line, then you dart in, grab the tongs, get the nectar of the goodness, the protein, put it on your plate, and dart out.

• 19:17Dan Pashman?

  I think that there are always natural breaks in a buffet line. Things are going to clog up at a certain station, and then there'll be a gap after that clog. I actually will say that it is wrong to cut the line if you're going to go right into the middle of that clog, even if you can quickly stick your hand and grab the spoon, that's really not nice. But if you read the breaks in the line correctly, you can usually get in there. Sometimes what I will do, which is borderline from an ethical standpoint, is go ahead beyond the glut, around to the next area into that gap, and then you can kind of reach backwards into the glut and get something. Then you're not really cutting, you're just like, ooh, I didn't realize that the mac and cheese was back there. So I think that that's not the worst thing you can do. So you're kind of surfing the wave of the line. So it's, you have the hummingbird technique, you have the surfer technique.

• 20:02Dan Pashman?

  These are effective. Gabe is not the only buffet strategist weighing in online. Dave on Twitter says, "Don't load up on any one portion. Stay away from foods you regularly eat. Be sure to get salad and/or veggies with each trip. Second most important buffet tip, somehow leave room for dessert." I agree with what Dave says, don't load up on any one portion, stay away from foods you regularly eat. I mean, you know, you're going to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you want to treat yourself. Exactly, yeah. Have foods that you're not going to get, or, I mean, I think that's a general good rule for anytime you're going out to eat. I have a big problem though, when he says, "Be sure to get salad slash veggies with each trip." I can only imagine that the logic there is some sort of health motivated thing, like fill your plate up with salad and veggies. I mean, look, if you're the kind of person that's going to go to an all-you-can-eat

• 20:44Dan Pashman?

  buffet and fill your plate up with greens because you don't think that you can have the willpower to just eat a reasonable amount of food, then you shouldn't go to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Until next time, I'm Mark Garrison. And I'm Dan Pashman, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 21:09Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Kenji Lopez Alt and I open the phone lines and take your calls. Stick around.

• 21:15Speaker 03

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• 22:59Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. It's time now for my friend Kenji Lopez Alt and me to settle a dispute between a father and daughter.

• 23:14Dan Pashman?

  From WNYC Studios, this is the Sporkful. Grapefruit Spoon Edition, Calls Show Edition. I'm Dan Pashman. I'm here with my friend Kenji Lopez Alt of Sirius Eats. He's the author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. Hey, Kenji.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Hey, how's it going?

• 23:30Dan Pashman?

  Good.

• 23:30Speaker 05

  How about Matching Cutlery Edition? You know, like, you're the spork and I'm the little crappy plastic knife.

• 23:37Dan Pashman?

  Oh, you're looking for something that's more referencing the fact that the two of us are...

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:41Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. Maybe that's the way it should go, because I do like us hanging out and taking calls together. I was thinking more that we're looking for something that denotes this is a special mini-bonus.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:50Dan Pashman?

  Okay, all right.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  Something. We'll work on it.

• 23:53Dan Pashman?

  I think this is something that we're going to work on forever. I kind of like the idea of never reaching a resolution. So, before we get to the calls, I would love to enlist a little bit of your help settling a debate that my wife and I have often. Can you help me with this?

• 24:05Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 24:07Dan Pashman?

  She is very anti-microwave.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 24:10Dan Pashman?

  I'm not a huge microwave proponent. Like, I don't want to cook foods in the microwave for the most part, but I think that it has its place.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Is she anti-microwave because she thinks it destroys flavor or nutrients, or that it gives her cancer?

• 24:25Dan Pashman?

  It's more of a natural issue. Like, her big line, every time, every time, every time I want to microwave something for her, she says, "Don't microwave it. It alters the molecular structure of the food." That's what she says. And when you first hear that, you think, "Oh, my God, is that true? That sounds horrible. Maybe I shouldn't microwave this."

• 24:46Speaker 05

  I mean, I'd hate to break it to her, but there is no cooking that doesn't alter the molecular structure of your food. It all alters the molecular structure of your food.

• 24:53Dan Pashman?

  So, does microwaving alter the molecular structure in a way that is different from other more quote-unquote "natural" forms of cooking?

• 25:01Speaker 05

  The microwave will penetrate up to like a centimeter or so into a solid piece of food. And so, it'll very quickly heat up food from the inside, as opposed to an oven where the heat generally, gradually goes in from the outside to the inside. But the end products that you end up are basically the same, and a microwave just does it more efficiently.

• 25:19Dan Pashman?

  But it's not like zapping your food with...

• 25:22Speaker 05

  It's not going to turn it into something that you couldn't...

• 25:23Dan Pashman?

  Plutonium or something?

• 25:25Speaker 05

  No. Not any microwave I know of.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, a microwave is just a tool, like anything else, right? I think it's good for some things, it's not good for others. There are studies that show that, like, microwaving your green vegetables, for instance, you actually retain more nutrients by microwaving your green vegetables than by boiling them, because it cooks so efficiently and because you're not leaching anything out into a big pool of water. So, microwave vegetables can actually be, in many ways, healthier than vegetables that are boiled.

• 25:53Dan Pashman?

  But so, when you microwave vegetables, you are altering their molecular structure less than if you boiled them?

• 26:00Speaker 05

  I wouldn't necessarily say less, but you are, yeah, you're losing fewer things to the outside environment.

• 26:07Dan Pashman?

  Okay. All right, I'll take it. Should we go to the phones?

• 26:11Speaker 05

  Sure, let's do it.

• 26:12Dan Pashman?

  All right. Hi, who's this?

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Hi, this is Lynn. I'm calling from Jersey City, New Jersey.

• 26:16Dan Pashman?

  Hey, Lynn, how are you?

• 26:17Speaker 04

  I'm good, Dan. How are you?

• 26:19Dan Pashman?

  Good, good. I get Kenji here with me. And am I correct, we've got someone else on the line?

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Yes, we have my father, Joseph.

• 26:26Dan Pashman?

  Joseph, how are you?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  I'm good, thank you. And yourself?

• 26:29Dan Pashman?

  I'm doing well. And where are you, sir?

• 26:30Speaker 04

  I'm in Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

• 26:33Dan Pashman?

  Okay, so you guys are, what, about an hour apart in New Jersey?

• 26:36Speaker 04

  About an hour and a half. Yeah, a little bit more.

• 26:38Dan Pashman?

  Okay. So, Lynn, what's on your mind?

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Okay, well, my dad and I had been to one restaurant where I had eaten a dish of delicious scallops. And then, a couple of nights later, we went to another restaurant, and I ordered scallops again. And I ate them and didn't think much about it. But later on, a couple of days later, I was talking to my dad, and I said, "Oh, you know, those scallops at the second place weren't as good as the ones at the first." And he said, "Oh, well, you should have sent them back." And I said, "Well, why would I do that? There was nothing wrong with the scallops. I simply didn't like them. The preparation wasn't what I would have chosen, and they just weren't, they didn't wow me as much as the

• 27:21Speaker 04

  first scallops." And my dad said, "Oh, well, it's your right to send something back, simply if you don't like it." And so, that is when I wrote to you, because I thought that didn't make sense.

• 27:34Dan Pashman?

  Okay. So, Joseph, can you please elaborate on your position? Why do you feel that it's always okay to send something back if you don't like it?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Well, I've been in the restaurant business, and I always felt that the customer's always right, and that they're entitled to get what they like. In other words, if they receive a dish that doesn't taste right to them, then it should be the restaurant's pleasure to receive it back and allow the patron to pick something else out.

• 28:10Dan Pashman?

  And Lynn, why do you disagree?

• 28:13Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, chefs can't account for individual tastes when they are creating a dish. And if they needed to do that, I think they'd be receiving a lot more food back in the kitchen, and there'd be a lot of wasted food. So, I have an issue with wasted food, especially if there's nothing wrong with the food. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with this food. Now, I have no issue returning a dish if it's overcooked, or, you know, there's something clearly wrong with it, but if it's just not to my particular taste, to me, that doesn't seem fair to the restaurant.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Can I ask you, what were the two different scallop preparations you had at these restaurants? Starting with the one that you really liked first.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  In the first restaurant, it was scallops with bacon. And at the second restaurant, to be honest, it was not memorable. It was not that memorable. I just know, I was holding them up to the bacon-sallop standard, and they just weren't meeting that bacon-sallop standard.

• 29:21Dan Pashman?

  And that's another factor, is that, you know, sometimes, when I eat a really good version of a certain food, and then days later, I'm craving it, and I keep thinking back to that other meal, then I go to a different restaurant, and I'm like, "Oh, I've really been craving scallops since I had these amazing scallops the other day." What I've learned is then the scallops at the next place are never going to be as good, because you're holding them to an impossible standard.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  Even because, maybe just because they're different, not necessarily even bad, they're just different, and they're not exactly what you're thinking in your head.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Well, that was part of my point. They just didn't wow me the same way. So, when I explained that to my dad, though, his immediate reply was, "Send them back."

• 30:01Speaker 05

  So, did you end up eating them, or did you just kind of poke them around your plate and...

• 30:04Speaker 04

  No, I ate them.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  You ate them, okay.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  I also am not one who likes to waste food. That is the cardinal sin. But I don't think that if she had said that she didn't like them, and she sent them back, I'm sure one of the kitchen helpers, somebody, would have probably ate that dish. No, they would not. I've worked in kitchens. No food that goes back in the kitchen is eaten by anybody. Not necessarily.

• 30:34Dan Pashman?

  Really?

• 30:35Speaker 05

  No, I'm on Lynn's side. It probably would not have gotten, well, at least in my experience in kitchen, I mean, I've worked in many restaurant kitchens. In my experience, it probably would not have gotten eaten.

• 30:43Dan Pashman?

  Well, I worked in a couple of kitchens, not as many as Kenji, and probably not as nice.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  And it did get eaten?

• 30:49Dan Pashman?

  Oh, yeah. Sometimes by me.

• 30:55Dan Pashman?

  Untouched scallops? I'm not throwing those in the garbage. Are you kidding? That's like one of the perks of the job.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  But you don't know who touched it. In the kitchen where I worked, it would have gone straight to the garbage.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Well, in kitchens I worked, the waiter would have probably tipped it into the garbage on the way, because they would have been afraid to show the chef that it was coming back.

• 31:12Dan Pashman?

  Oh, interesting. One of those, yeah. I remember I used to work in a seafood restaurant, and one time, we had a bunch of tourists came in, and they all ordered, this was in Boston, they all ordered whole steamed lobsters, and none of them knew how to eat the claws. And they ordered hundreds of dollars of lobsters, and they left all the claws whole on their plates. And we took them back to the kitchen, and we hid them in some, like, closet. When our shift ended, we ate like kings that night.

• 31:42Dan Pashman?

  But so Joseph, you know, I'm sure you would agree that when you eat a dish and you decide how much you like it, it's not always just thumbs up or thumbs down. There can be a spectrum of different levels of enjoyment or dislike that you may experience. Lynn ate all her scallops, so she didn't hate them. They weren't disgusting to her. So where on the spectrum of like and dislike do you cross into acceptable territory to send something back?

• 32:10Speaker 04

  It's up to your taste buds and whether you can tolerate the dish as it is as opposed to returning it. In my eyes, I always felt I'm the customer, I'm paying for this dish, and if it doesn't come up to my standards or I don't like it, I don't care if nine people out of 10 liked it, but I did. A little unscientific poll I did on Facebook of the many respondents, only two disagreed with me, and most said, of course, they would not return food.

• 32:52Dan Pashman?

  Well, that's not admissible in this court, Lynn, because Facebook works on an algorithm by which each one of your posts is only directed to friends of yours who are predisposed to agreeing with you on everything.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Ah, okay.

• 33:04Dan Pashman?

  So that's meaningless.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  You were shot down, Lynn. You were shot down.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Can I ask a question of both of you?

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Do you consider cooking to be an art? Like, do you consider a chef to be some form of artist?

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Yes, I would say a chef is a culinary artist. Yes, I definitely do think a chef is a type of artist. And as such, you wouldn't necessarily tell an artist how to make their artwork. And therefore, you wouldn't say, I don't like the way you prepared this dish, I want something else.

• 33:48Dan Pashman?

  Kenji, I assume that you agree with Lynn?

• 33:51Speaker 05

  No, I think actually a chef falls somewhere in between an artist and a craftsman, you know, somewhere between the house painter and the Jackson Pollock, you know. So there is some artistry to cooking, but at the same time, I do agree with Joseph that a chef's primary, in the hospitality business, your primary goal is to make customers happy.

• 34:10Dan Pashman?

  Kenji, what's your final verdict here? Where do you stand?

• 34:14Speaker 05

  If there's nothing actually wrong with the food, you know, unless there's something that they really messed up, like they over-seasoned it or they cooked it the wrong way, you should not send it back. But what I sometimes do is if I really don't like what I'm eating, but there's nothing actually technically wrong with it, I just happen to not find a flavor that I don't like, for example. Sometimes, you know, I'll eat it very, very slowly. And then sometimes you'll find that a waiter will come over and say, oh, is there anything wrong with this? And then when they invite you to comment on it, you can be honest and say, well, actually, you know, I don't really like the flavor. And I find that most of the time, they'll very politely, you know, apologize and take it back and ask if you'd like something else. So I think that's an easy way to bridge that gap.

• 34:52Dan Pashman?

  Right. That's good. I think that makes a lot of sense. I would say, yeah, I'm concerned by a slippery slope here. You know, where do you draw the line? You know, if you're going to say you can return something just because you don't really like it, well, can you return something because you don't love it? Can you return something because it didn't change your life? You know, how great does something have to be before it's okay? And so that worries me, because I think there are some people, and I'm sure Lynn and Joseph and Kenji and I, we're not these kinds of people, but I can see some people taking advantage.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Waiter, this burger was great, but it wasn't life-changing. Can you take it back, please?

• 35:31Dan Pashman?

  Right, exactly. You know, to me, I think the rule is that if it's good enough that you can eat it, and you're going to finish most of it, then you should eat it and be content. If it's so unpleasant to you that you're really having trouble eating it, then you can send it back. But if you're going to clean your plate, then you shouldn't complain. All right, well, Lynn and Joseph in New Jersey, I hope that at your next meal together, nothing needs to be sent back.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  I hope so. I hope so.

• 36:01Dan Pashman?

  All right, take care. Thank you so much to both of you.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Thank you, Dan. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

• 36:14Dan Pashman?

  Kenji, good time. Man on the phones with me, I appreciate it.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 36:18Dan Pashman?

  I think we made the world a little bit better today.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, a little bit, yeah, a little bit tastier.

• 36:23Dan Pashman?

  We brought some delicious justice. Kenji Lopez has all, of course, Sirius Eats, and his book is The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. Thanks, Kenji.

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Thanks a lot.

• 36:37Dan Pashman?

  This show is a production of WNYC Studios and The Sporkful. It's produced by Anne Sanni, Shoshana Gold, and me. Editing help from Dan Charles, engineering help from Irene Schrodell, music help from Black Label Music. Special thanks to Paula Schuman. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 36:51Speaker 07

  And I'm Bresson from Edmonton, Alberta.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  And I'm Susan Moreville from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

• 36:57Speaker 07

  And I'm James Nance from Knoxville, Tennessee, reminding you to eat more.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Eat better.

• 37:02Speaker 07

  And eat more better.

• 37:19Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Gianna Palmer.

• 37:22Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 37:26Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, if you want to hear new episodes of The Sporkful ad-free, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit siriusxm.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 37:57Speaker 03

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• 38:09Speaker 02

  Integrity matters when it comes to providing financial advice. At Ameriprise Financial, we believe doing the right thing is always the right choice, and it has been for over 130 years. No wonder Ameriprise is the highest-ranked diversified financial services company on Time's 2026 America's Most Iconic Companies list. Ameriprise Financial. Advice worth talking about. Visit ameriprise.com/advise for information and disclosures. Securities offered by Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC.