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Dear Helena,
The other night some friends and I went out to dinner. I wanted to order the salmon, but not if it was farmed; I have concerns about environmental damage from farming. I asked the server about it and he didn’t know and had to go and ask the chef, and it turned into this huge production. My friends were all waiting to order while the server tried to find the answer to my question.
So my question is: What is the correct way to question the server about where an ingredient comes from? If the answer isn’t to your liking, what’s the best way to encourage the restaurant to get its ingredients from better sources?
—Mysterious Origins
Dear Mysterious Origins,
More of us are concerned about where our food comes from these days, but most restaurants have not kept up with our need to know. Adria Blotta, co-owner of Barbrix in LA, says her restaurant serves “an environmentally conscious, very intelligent demographic.” Nonetheless, she doesn’t get a lot of questions about ingredient sources, other than, “Is it organic?” When a CHOW editor dined there recently and asked who made the restaurant’s charcuterie, the server vaguely said, “I’m not sure, but it’s local,” and didn’t go to the kitchen to get a more conclusive answer.
Let’s face it: At some restaurants, there’s clearly no point in asking, because you pretty much already know the answer. (If it’s a budget place and the menu doesn’t list the origin of a single ingredient, you can assume that the salmon is farmed and the meat is from a CAFO.) If you have a problem with it, avoid the most suspicious ingredients. Susan T. Barclay, a coleader of Slow Food Pittsburgh, says: “If friends want to go somewhere, like for a birthday celebration, I just try to avoid ordering the meat when I know they’re probably sourcing from a [nonsustainable] national chain.”
But if the restaurant aspires to transparency in its food sourcing—that is, the menu mentions where some ingredients come from—it’s not unreasonable to ask where other ingredients come from. Try to keep your question as clear and short as possible. “Do you know if the salmon is wild? Are the strawberries locally grown?” Be prepared for the server to be baffled by your questions, however. Barclay recalls, “I once asked at a very nice upscale pub where the beef came from, and the server just looked at me and said, ‘From a cow.’”
Don’t tsk-tsk at the server, who isn’t the one responsible for sourcing ingredients and may not have been trained properly to handle such questions. Just have a backup option ready in case you don’t get the answer you want.
Another idea is to do your research in advance. For instance, if your concern is animal welfare, you could check out the Eat Humane restaurant database of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), which lists restaurants serving products from animals that were reared humanely.
If you want to encourage the restaurant to source better ingredients in the future, Sharanya Prasad, the US programs manager of the WSPA, advises that you write your complaint on a comment card or email the restaurant the next day. (Bear in mind that such ingredients are usually more costly, so prices may go up.) But when ordering, it’s best not to dwell on the matter. A busy server doesn’t want to listen to a lecture about the evils of aquaculture. Nor do your fellow diners.
I have always wondered why we use fish meal, there are methods to raise large masses of insects can't we just use insect protein instead? Nobody yelling about insect populations decreasing. Much as I love eating fish I feel dreadful every time I do due to the huge negative effect fishing has much more than eating meat.
This has happened to me so many times! It should become a law to post sourcing facts about food in restaurants in the same way that nutrition facts have to be on foods we buy in the grocery store. That way, every place has to follow the same standard and the general public will become more aware of the source of their food (and may in turn actually care more about it). Also, we would not be put...+READ
This has happened to me so many times! It should become a law to post sourcing facts about food in restaurants in the same way that nutrition facts have to be on foods we buy in the grocery store. That way, every place has to follow the same standard and the general public will become more aware of the source of their food (and may in turn actually care more about it). Also, we would not be put into awkward social positions with servers and fellow diners when we ask them about our food's origin. How difficult could it be to have this info readily available anyway?-COLLAPSE
As Helena points out, there are some places where the answer is obvious (salmon dinner for $5.99? not wild). That said, waiters at upscale establishments should absolutely know the answer. If not, getting the answer shouldn't be a "production," but rather a quick inquiry with the kitchen staff (if the kitchen staff doesn't know, the place is beyond help).
Sometimes price can be an indicator. Wild salmon is roughly twice the price of farmed.
Any place serving wild salmon will usually proclaim it, and their source, on the menu in a few simple words. Any restaurant worth eating salmon in should be able to tell you without effort.
In January of this year, a new technique for farm-raising coho salmon was approved by Seafood Watch. It has been independently reviewed by a number of different organizations to be environmentally neutral and safe -- enough to earn a coveted 'Best Choice' designation from Seafood Watch. Supplies of this new type of farmed salmon are expected to hit the market by 2011.
Clearly the solution here is to have the farm raised salmon pick vegetables to alleviate the underpaid illegal immigrant problem. Am I right?
A decent restaurant should have servers that already know the answer to these questions. When I worked as a server, we'd learn about new menu items. We'd ask the questions we knew the customers would ask. Is the fish wild or farmed? Where does it come from? If it's a type of fish that a lot of people haven't heard of, what is it similar to?
They were such common questions that I never thought...+READ
A decent restaurant should have servers that already know the answer to these questions. When I worked as a server, we'd learn about new menu items. We'd ask the questions we knew the customers would ask. Is the fish wild or farmed? Where does it come from? If it's a type of fish that a lot of people haven't heard of, what is it similar to?
They were such common questions that I never thought ill of the tables that asked these questions. Don't feel bad.-COLLAPSE
@bshaddock, farmed salmon is generally considered a worse choice environmentally since the concentrated fish farming operations will result in a lot concentrated waste runoffs into nearby waters, and keeping fish in such close quarters also ups the risk of disease & parasites (which in turn, forces fish farmers to feed them antibiotics and other drugs, which also run off.)
Of course, you make a...+READ
@bshaddock, farmed salmon is generally considered a worse choice environmentally since the concentrated fish farming operations will result in a lot concentrated waste runoffs into nearby waters, and keeping fish in such close quarters also ups the risk of disease & parasites (which in turn, forces fish farmers to feed them antibiotics and other drugs, which also run off.)
Of course, you make a good point that there's only a finite amount of wild salmon that can be caught (several species of tuna are encountering this problem right now) . . . so some other alternatives include varying up the seafood a bit, aim for seafood that is plentiful and not endangered or threatened. Quite a few environmental organizations have put out easy-accessible guides on what seafood are better choices and which should be avoided if possible.
But having said all that, I agree with Helena that the dining table is no place to lecture (and bore) the waitstaff and other diner. Do your restaurant and its food sourcing homework beforehand, and as she suggested, send an e-mail or write a note expressing your concerns after the meal.-COLLAPSE
Correct me if I'm wrong... but if every restaurant that served Salmon, servered "Wild" salmon... wouldn't that be unsustainable and harmful to the environment? Wild for sure taste better, but I think her reasoning is a little off on the environmental impact comparison
"Vegetarians dont give a about the immigrants who pick their food for 2 bucks an hour." Huh? I'm not one myself, but where's your basis for making such a claim?
Vegetarians don't eat fish - last I heard, fish was not a vegetable.
In all fairness, factory farmed fish are more damaging to the environment than underpaid illegal immigrants.
Vegetarians dont give a shit about the immigrants who pick their food for 2 bucks an hour but people get mad when fish are farmed. Grow up or move to a commune where you grow your own food and raise your own fish.
How about not ordering the salmon...
If a place has wild salmon on the menu, it will say "wild salmon", "local strawberries" etc. when places go to the work of sourcing these things they will want to let you know
MattInNY: Wow, that's an expensive proposition.
"what’s the best way to encourage the restaurant to get its ingredients from better sources?"
Buy a controlling interest in the business and enact the change that way.
I'm of the opinion that in a 'very nice upscale pub' where the origins of some ingredients are listed on the menu, the servers need to be trained to handle those questions. Not that I don't appreciate the 'from a cow' response.
The OP asked: "So my question is: What is the correct way to question the server about where an ingredient comes from?"
That sounds like an etiquette-oriented question to me.
I don't understand how this has anything to do with manners or etiquette. The OP did the right thing at the restaurant by asking the server politely. That's all you can expect any diner to do. It was the restaurant that was unprepared for the question.
Barclay recalls, “I once asked at a very nice upscale pub where the beef came from, and the server just looked at me and said, ‘From a cow.’”
Love this!
Maybe the waiter wasn't ignorant, just sarcastic.