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The time a wedding party in Chicago sent back every single plate of risotto | Chefs - Opinions Matter

kaip11•6mo ago

The time a wedding party in Chicago sent back every single plate of risotto

This was about two years ago at a big hotel kitchen I worked in. We had a wedding for 150 people, and the main was a mushroom risotto. The first batch went out, and within five minutes, the server came back saying the whole head table said it was undercooked. I tasted it myself and thought it was fine, but we remade all 15 plates for that table. Then, the rest of the room started sending theirs back too, saying the same thing. It turned out the bride's father had told his table it was 'al dente like pasta should be,' but most guests just heard 'undercooked' and panicked. We ended up cooking the risotto into mush for the re-fires just to make them happy. Has anyone else had a whole room's opinion swayed by one loud guest like that? How do you handle it without slowing service to a crawl?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_julia6mo ago

That story about the father at the head table is exactly the kind of domino effect I've seen before. When you had to recook everything into mush, did the servers try to explain the dish to other tables, or was the panic too fast to stop?

the_oliver6mo ago

Actually the servers were the ones who started the panic in the first place lol. They saw the dad's plate and just assumed the food was bad, so they started warning other tables before the kitchen could even explain. By the time we got the mush version out, half the room thought there was a real problem with the dish. Total mess.

lily2305mo ago

I was at a wedding last summer where the same thing happened but the other way. A guy at table 6 loudly said the risotto was 'perfectly creamy' and suddenly everyone was raving about it, even people who had barely touched theirs. The whole domino effect is totally on the guests and the servers, not the dish itself. If the servers had just told people that al dente rice is normal in a good risotto, that wedding party in Chicago would have eaten it fine. It's really about the front of house managing the room, not the kitchen bending over backwards.