Is it really bad to dine out on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday?

I know that somebody (Bourdain?) has written that restaurants blow on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and one should dine out only on Wednesday through Saturday, and that this has become the new received wisdom--but is it true, or just a "new wives' tale"? It doesn't make sense to me that restaurants can't lay in fresh provisions on these early days of the week--I can see markets being closed on Sunday maybe, but Monday and Tuesday? Anyway, I'm not rejecting the theory out of hand, just looking for someone to make sense of it to me--or to make a convincing case that it's a crock.

riddlemay wrote:I know that somebody (Bourdain?) has written that restaurants blow on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and one should dine out only on Wednesday through Saturday, and that this has become the new received wisdom--but is it true, or just a "new wives' tale"? It doesn't make sense to me that restaurants can't lay in fresh provisions on these early days of the week--I can see markets being closed on Sunday maybe, but Monday and Tuesday? Anyway, I'm not rejecting the theory out of hand, just looking for someone to make sense of it to me--or to make a convincing case that it's a crock.

From my experience in restaurants the purveyors do not deliver on Sundays. So, by deduction any of the fresh items on a menu served on Sunday had been delivered on Saturday, at the latest. The same deductions can be applied to some items served on Mondays, but I've never heard of any reason not to dine out on Tuesdays.

Flip

Just so I'm clear, Flip, you say "the same deductions can be applied to some items served on Mondays"--does this mean purveyors don't deliver to restaurants on Mondays either, just as they don't on Sundays?

I know Lula has "farm dinner Mondays," which some here have raved about. Have they found a way around the problem, and if so, how?

riddlemay wrote:Just so I'm clear, Flip, you say "the same deductions can be applied to some items served on Mondays"--does this mean purveyors don't deliver to restaurants on Mondays either, just as they don't on Sundays?

I know Lula has "farm dinner Mondays," which some here have raved about. Have they found a way around the problem, and if so, how?

No, daily deliveries run Monday through Saturday. What I was referring to is the stock rotation for fresh items. Where I've worked, prepared items had a shelf life of up to 5 days, although most had a shelf life of 3 days. Inevitably, on Mondays there will be some items remaining from Saturday even though it might only be 1 or 2 servings for one item on the entire menu. Most well operated establishments are very good at controlling waste, so , most everything is used up before the use-by date.

Flip

I eat out nearly every day of the week. There are certain things in certain restaurants that I don't order on Monday. Of course, there are certain things in certain restaurants that I don't order regardless of the day of the week. Just use a little bit of common sense and you probably won't kill yourself.

Ah, the Gospel according to Bourdain. Here are some more observations from my experience in the kitchen. I am not going to claim that they apply to every place but I have purchased millions in food.

First, MOST vendors don't deliver on Saturdays or Sundays. And when they do, it is generally product that was received earlier in the week. I have no professional experience in Chicago but have worked in New York, St. Louis, and Detroit. I would hope that some of the high end places would be heading to the wholesalers to pick out their food.

Second, MOST vendors deliver 2-3 times MAX. I was buying between $25-50k in food a week and even that volume generally didn't bring me daily deliveries except for milk and bread.

Third, on some items like chicken, the technology of storage is such that the product gets to the kitchen a lot fresher. Gone are the days of the old ice pack chicken.

Fourth, a lot of the "fresh" fish (sea species) doesn't get to the table for a couple of weeks after capture. Handling is critical. That might be the one thing to avoid on a Monday.

Personally, I prefer eating out earlier in the week as the crowds are a lot smaller and you get more attentive service (at least sometimes).

My recollection of Kitchen Confidential was that he was specifically to seafood. Whereas many major fishmarkets are closed Sunday and Monday, so Monday night's fish special is leftover from Friday or Saturday. Is this always bad? No, not always. By no means did I take away from this book that you should never eat out Sun-Tue.

I think a lot of what Bourdain wrote about in that book gets blown out of proportion in discussion. Generally, he gave a lot of good tips for bettering your odds of getting a good meal and lowering your odds of getting sick. None of what he said is an absolute and must be considered with reason and consideration.

That being said, there are quite a few things I did take away from his book that I keep in mind (besides the "fish on Monday" thing):

Brunch: Weekend brunch is often full of second-string chefs, leftover food, and second-string servers who do not want to be working on a Sunday. The odds of getting a great meal with great service at a weekend brunch are slim. I subscribe to a similar school of thought.

Mussels: Bourdain pointed out that he has rarely seen mussels handled properly in kitchens he has seen. I am pretty picky about where I eat mussels and I often quiz the waiter about freshness or how often they serve mussels to gage their response (which is always positive, but it's all about delivery).

Hollandaise sauce: Another item Bourdain mentions as being often handled improperly. Fortunately I figured this out before I read his book, as my wife pointed out to me early in our relationship how I always got sick after eating eggs benedict.

Specials: Beware of specials that sound like something has been done to cover up leftovers. I think fish in a vinaigrette or seafood au gratin were prime examples. You are likely eating last night's leftovers in a sauce designed to mask the lack of freshness. Which is fine, if that's the dish you really want.

Bottom line is that I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule about when and what to eat. If you're really concerned about certain things, use your best judgment and do what you can to improve your odds.

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:Mussels: Bourdain pointed out that he has rarely seen mussels handled properly in kitchens he has seen. I am pretty picky about where I eat mussels and I often quiz the waiter about freshness or how often they serve mussels to gage their response (which is always positive, but it's all about delivery).

I am also picky about mussels. I didn't use to be, then my parents moved to Anacortes Washington. When I would vist them, we would drive down to Coupeville on Whidbey Island where the Penn Cove mussel beds are. That is where I realized that I had never really eaten a truly fresh mussel before (I also realized that Penn Cove mussels are much tastier than their east coast cousins). I always thought that mussels are supposed to be pinkish orange, but it turns out that really fresh mussels are actually wheat colored. They get more orange the longer they are out of the water.

The last time I was at the Hopleaf was last Tuesday. Somebody once told me they get fresh mussels delivered on Tuesdays (I don't know if that is still true). We got there pretty early in the evening. The mussels we were served seemed to be mixed. Most were extremely fresh, but a few were decidedly older. I think they might have mixed in some older mussels with a newly delivered batch. I don't know if that is because it was a Tuesday, or because we arrived early, or possibly their vendor mixed older mussels in with the fresher ones (a fairly common practice). Anyhow, they were still very good and even the older ones were fresher than one usually sees around Chicago. I still think eating mussels at Hopleaf on a Tuesday is a good strategy, but the next time I will arrive later.

d4v3,

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've never seen a mussel change color over the course of it's natural shelf life.

Actually, it's the female mussels which are orange in color. The male mussels are more pale in color. The females are sweeter in flavor also.

Furthermore, if your mussels at hopleaf were mixed in color, it's because that's the way they come. Would anybody in their right mind actually mix old seafood with new? Can you explain the logic behind your assumption?

Bourdain's argument about fish on Monday is that although they may have some fresh deliveries on monday morning, they're probably pushing (i.e. daily specials) of what's been sitting around all weekend. So a regular menu item, something a restaurant is known for, is likely fine on a Monday because they do enough traffic on it, but watch out for specials.

The point about days of the week from him was not to be a weekend diner like the "bridge and tunnel" people (we don't have many of those, so does it not apply here?), but get to be a regular at your favorite restaurant by visiting frequently on Tues-Thurs, get to be known there, and tip well. Then you'll get the lagniappe, the special service, be offered the best of the best.

eatchicago wrote:Brunch: Weekend brunch is often full of second-string chefs, leftover food, and second-string servers who do not want to be working on a Sunday. The odds of getting a great meal with great service at a weekend brunch are slim.

The "first-string" in ANY good restaurant is generally scheduled during the high revenue times. In many of the SOUTHERN cities where I started , Sunday brunch is probably the most IMPORTANT (and profitable) meal of the week. As a general rule, the waitstaff was at their best as people dropped big tips after church and a meal with the extended family.

If I walk into a place that is hopping on a Sunday, you generally get very good food at brunch. If the place is dead, well, I generally find that the food generally suffers.


My aggravation with Bourdain (and I think that he is a good read) is that a good portion of Kitchen Confidential is pretty obvious to most in the business. In that respect, it is pretty good. However, people sling around his "common wisdom" as if it is hardfast rules. The only thing that you generally find in the restaurant business is that no two meals are ever quite the same.

Evil Ronnie wrote:Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've never seen a mussel change color over the course of it's natural shelf life.
Furthermore, if your mussels at hopleaf were mixed in color, it's because that's the way they come. Would anybody in their right mind actually mix old seafood with new? Can you explain the logic behind your assumption?

I am still not convinced about the color issue and gender. When I get the the mussels that are fresh from the beds at Penn cove, they are all the same color, a wheat color. Are you saying they are all male? Granted, maybe that is just the color of that particular breed of mussel, and since they are always extremely fresh, I just associated that color with freshness. However, fresher mussels are certainly more tender than older ones.

At any rate, my "logic" about mixing the older shell fish with newer shellfish is simply that we were one of the first 3 tables of the evening, that arrived at the same time, and all ordered mussels. If the restaurant had some mussels left over from an earlier delivery, but not enough to make the first 6 orders they got, doesn't it make sense they would have mixed them with the newly delivered ones? It was not just the color that made me think they were from different batches.

If you want to see older seafood mixed with fresher stuff, all you have to do is go to one of the fish suppliers in town (which shall remain nameless), where they routinely seem to put fresher shrimp on top of older ones, the same way some grocery stores put nice fresh red ground beef on top of older gray hamburger in a package.

"If the restaurant had some mussels left from an earlire delivery, but not enough to make the first six orders they got, doesn't it make sense they would have mixed them?"

No. Not a bit of sense. Even if all three tables of Hopleaf's early customers happened to order mussels, each table had a separate ticket. When the first table ordered two bowls of mussels and the ticket came up in the kitchen, the line cook fires two orders of mussels, probably in separate pans. Bring to a boil, steam open, finish with whole butter. Bingo. When each sucessive table ordered their two mussels, two more pans were brought to a boil on the burner and finished a la minute. Six orders of shellfish=six pans on the stove. Why in the world mix old product with new to prolong the agony of keeping the old stuff arould. The kitchen manager was probably happy as a clam that he was able to get rid of the old stuff before he had to dump it.

Evil Ronnie wrote:Why in the world mix old product with new to prolong the agony of keeping the old stuff arould. The kitchen manager was probably happy as a clam that he was able to get rid of the old stuff before he had to dump it.

That is not exactly what I am saying. You are indeed right that the orders at Hopleaf are cooked separately. In fact, the mussels are served at the table in the pots in which they are cooked (at least I assume so). I agree that if the kitchen has some leftover mussels from a previous delivery, they are going to use those first, especially if there are enough for more than a single order. So the first tables of the evening are more likely to get the older mussels, and somebody is likely to get a pot that is mixed with the last of the older batch and some of the newer ones, especially if it is a double order, which comes combined in a single larger pot.

I have no idea if that happened to us or not. It is just a theory about dining on Tuesdays (the subject at hand), my entire point was that if a restaurant does get a delivery on Tuesdays (which may or may not be true in this case), if you are among the first tables of the evening, you may still get older product, and in the case of mussels, some older ones mixed with newer ones. Like I said, the next time I eat mussels on a Tuesday, I will make sure I am not the first table. That's all.

The same theory could apply to a wholesaler. Say they have 40 pounds of older shellfish, and get a delivery of 500 pounds of newer shellfish. If they get an order for 100 pounds, they would probably combine the 40 lbs of older product with 60 lbs of the newer product to make the 100 pounds. I know that isn't quite honest, but I bet it happens all the time. I'm sure that afforementioned supplier that shall remain nameless, would do it in a heart beat.

Edit: I did some research on the color of mussels and found out that the species of mussel which is peculiar to Penn Cove Washington, M. trossulus, also called a Bay mussel, has creamy white meat as opposed to the apricot color of the East Coast blue mussel. So I was wrong (not the first time). I assumed the cream color meant it was fresh as opposed to the orange PEI mussels I was used to getting in Chicago (which were never nearly as fresh). If I went to Prince Edward Island, I am sure I could get orange mussels that are just as fresh as the ones on Whidbey Island. The Penn Cove Shellfish Farms has a policy of getting the mussels to consumers within 4 days of harvesting them, so my theory of cream colored meat being fresh is true, but for entirely different reasons.

Musing on this whole topic, I'm thinking the non-delivery by purveyors on Sunday (and by many on Saturday) must be a Teamster thing. Otherwise, the free market would have caused some purveyors to jump into the gap, since there would be some restaurateurs who would be all over the opportunity to be able to say "Dine with us on Sunday and Monday, we've got fresh stuff, unlike the other guys," and some purveyors would love to have that business. No other explanation for this not happening occurs to me offhand.

In addition to the issues with purveyors, chefs often take their days off at the beginning of the week, so the second string may be manning the kitchen.