From: rhs@world.std.com (Richard H Schwartz)
Subject: Deceptive menu practices
Summary: Yen's Wok menu just ain't Kosher
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: ne
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:24:21 GMT

This is a complaint.  A nice night out at a restaurant that
came highly recommended was ruined.  The restaurant is Yen's
Wok on Route 9 in Framingham.  The problem is their menu.

I went with my girlfriend and her daughter.  They keep Kosher.
That is usually not a problem in Chinese restaurants.  I order 
Hot and Sour soup.  They order Egg Drop.  We either eat from
the buffet, or we simply don't order pork and shellfish dishes,
or anything with oyster sauce.  On menu items we're not familiar
with, we ask.

The night started off with a big surprise: the Egg Drop soup
contained pieces of pork.  Upon a closer look, I guessed that
it was a pork broth as well.  I have never seen or heard of 
Egg Drop soup that is pork-based.  I do a lot of Oriental 
cooking, and none of my cook books have pork-based recipes for
Egg Drop soup.  Many restaurants put it on their menu as "Chicken
Egg Drop" soup.  

The waitress courteously took the soup away and said she would 
remove it from our bill.  I can't really fault them for the fact
that their chef makes Egg Drop soup with pork.  I do think that
since it varies from accepted custom in a way that makes it 
unacceptable to many people, the menu should have specified "Egg
Drop Soup with Pork".

For the rest of our meal, we ordered Lamb Ravioli (Yes!  Some 
restaurants have this on their menu, and it is a welcome sight
for those who can't eat the pork variety), Crispy Hot Pepper
Chicken With Vegetables, and from the section marked "Vegetables
and Bean Curd" we orderd Dry Cooked String Beans.  

The last item contained ground pork.  Again, I don't recall ever 
seeing pork mixed in with Dry Cooked String Beans before.  Another
item in the same section of the menu is marked "with or without
pork".  So why wasn't this one?  Sure, I would have known that
the Home Style Bean Curd contained pork, because every restaurant
and every cook book does it that way, but lots of people wouldn't
know that, just as I didn't know that this restaurant puts pork
in the Dry Cooked String Beans.  Given the much larger group of
people who, expecting a vegetable dish, are distressed by any 
meat at all, I consider this to be a far more serious problem than
that of the soup.

I spoke to the manager.  She offered to replace the dish with one
without pork.  But she would not accept the criticism of the menu
as valid.  "That is how we make it" was all she had to say.  We
accepted the replacement, but left feeling that this restaurant
was ignoring the needs of many customers.

Comments?

--rich

P.S.  The chicken was very nice.  A blend of szechuan peppercorns
with that nice light sauce that I can never reproduce in my own
cooking.  The hot and sour soup was also very nice.  The ravioli
were passable.  The string beans, minus the pork, were far too salty.


-- 
             Richard H. Schwartz, Scheduling Systems Inc.,
            1000 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA  02138
                  (617) 864 8330; FAX (617) 864 8377
                          rhs@world.std.com
Newsgroups: ne.food