Overcooked or "perfectly" cooked?
When I came up in restaurants in the early aughts, it was perfectly acceptable for the customer to ask for substitutions and changes when they ordered their food. The old motto, "The customer is always right." was still very much in effect.
As time went on, I noticed that it was evolving into the customer doesn't matter and the chef is god. I worked at restaurants where they wasn't even a menu and people just ate what we cooked for them. At the time it seemed like the height of fine dining and culinary excellence. But essentially it was, "You are going to eat what I make and you're going to like it!" What if you don't want to eat fried duck tongues or braised rabbit? What if the texture of chicken feet makes you want to vomit? If you have celiac disease does that mean you can't enjoy the bread service or pasta course--or will you get to enjoy a delicious substitute? While I love and appreciate a good tasting menu, part of the enjoyment of dining out for me is to peruse the menu and get excited by the different offerings. I love seeing when soft shell crabs, squash blossoms or stone fruit start to creep up on menus. Maybe the bartender is making a riff on an Old Fashioned that piques my curiosity in a way that makes me forego a glass of Cotes du Rhone and start my meal off with a strong cocktail instead.
For me, a great meal is one with delicious food, engaging company, fantastic drinks and a comfortable place to sit. What I am coming to truly understand as I get older is that taste is entirely subjective. I once watched in horror when my sister in law put ice cubes into her wine glass and my mom can't stand al dente pasta. She always claims it's undercooked. I poured a fantastic Lambrusco for my cousin's wife and she frowned in disgust and said it tasted "like liquor". For chefs, the funkier and weirder the ingredient, the more exciting it is to eat. For the general public, the idea of a cold beef tendon salad sounds particularly unappetizing.
What I'm driving at with all of this is that there is more than one idea of good food. Whether you are enjoying frozen pizza or a 3-day-cold-rise-dough hand tossed pie doesn't matter--if you're enjoying it, that is all that matters. My mother once exclaimed to a crowd of other Korean tourists in Italy that her chef daughter's pasta was better than the pasta in Italy. This is patently false but I know she loves overcooked spaghetti and I add those extra minutes of boiling time out of love (even though it's killing me inside). "Perfectly" cooked spaghetti for my mom, prepared by her daughter, is her idea of the ultimate good food and no one can argue with that.
