It seems another restaurant chain has opted to truck in food that was once made in house.
One of my sinful pleasures, Chipotle, is no longer making their tangy honey vinaigrette salad dressing inside the restaurants – this according the manager who asked me to tell him if I liked the new dressing that is now shipped into the restaurant known for its football-sized burritos.
With a small cup in hand, I poured the orange dressing over my salad that was complete with beans, tomatoes, sour cream and chicken. I’ve had this salad once before without the salad dressing and learned it was actually the dressing that makes this dish work.
But this time the dressing hijacked the taste of my salad. The same leafy green goodness my taste buds were waiting to try was usurped. (OK, honestly, I don’t know how much leafy green goodness is in a salad topped with sour cream, but hey, it was there so how could I say no.?) The new dressing was too spicy, and that the fiery taste helped to mask what used to be subtle flavors of honey mixed with sweet vinaigrette. I told the manager that I thought that he did a better job making the salad dressing inside the restaurant, and he agreed.
It all brought back memories of when I used to help manage a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. Known for it’s salad bar and fresh ingredients, when I worked there the company decided to truck in pre-sliced vegetables packaged in plastic. Oversized tin cans with beans and other items replaced produce that was once delivered fresh, and potato salad that was once made from refrigerated baked potatoes from the night before was replaced by something that came from a plastic tub.
Even meat was packaged to order, as steaks, chicken, and hamburgers were frozen to perfection before they were pulled from freezer shelves and placed onto a “pull thaw” rack for the next day.
Thought not for certain, I have inkling this is how most restaurants – especially large, high volume eateries – operate every day. Make no mistake, I’ve always been more of a people person and enjoyed working in the dining room or behind the bar serving customers than I ever did working in the kitchen. But restaurants often do make the mistake of changing what works – whether it’s doing away with free bread that used to come before the meal, or in my case at Ruby Tuesday, doing away with hamburger buns and French fries in favor of tortilla wraps and pork rinds to appease those who I think were on the South Beach Diet plan.
It’s a lesson that a restaurant large or small can always learn – if works, it works. If you can make it fresh, that works, too.
