The chefs at restaurants often work hard to provide their customers with the highest quality meals made from the highest quality ingredients, and most of them must be annoyed when they watch people put large quantities of sauces over the top of their food. Sauces like mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, and thousand island dressing not to mention mustard can cover the flavor of what people are eating. You might as well be eating something that was bland, or completely tasteless if you smother it in the strongest mustard you can find in the restaurant.

Respect the chef; eat the dish as it's served to you.

People should not be surprised if chefs are driven crazy when watching diners eat their painstakingly prepared meals under layers of dressings and sauces, as that does not respect the dish at all. Chefs and restaurant owners will generally take a great deal of time, as well as effort to draw up menus that are intended to make their venue a very attractive place to eat a meal at. Before finishing the list of all the dishes and meals on the menu the best chefs will make sure that they can get each and every ingredient, and that their restaurant has the facilities to cook those dishes to the highest standards. Chefs will even select the best wines to accompany their dishes, so that the wine does not contrast too sharply from the flavors within each meal. For example a red wine goes better with beef, or a white wine complements fish dishes better.

Respect The Chef

The whole point about taking time plus effort to have a menu is that customers can select from a very carefully list of courses, dishes, and starters. Chefs when they put meals on a menu that have different courses generally come up with courses that are meant to be eaten in the particular order they are presented in. Now some cooks want to give a full variety of contrasting taste experiences, whilst others prefer courses that complement the other foods in the meal more closely. At some restaurants the sauces that accompany the meals are often put in small dishes in amounts too small to alter the taste of the meal too much.

Either way the chefs that arrange the menus and then prepare the meals intentionally the tastes of meals in specific orders and ways to provide people with the tastiest meals that have a precise mixture of flavors. If chefs want people to put anything with the meals then they will put out the sauces that accompany them the best. Ideally those would enhance the flavor or flavors of the meal instead of drowning them out completely. Although most restaurants will have ketchup and mayonnaise etc available for their customers to use as they wish that will not please some chefs, whilst more relaxed ones might not be that bothered. Chefs, if it were up to them might only have pepper, salt, and vinegar to add to their meals so the balance of flavors is not greatly affected. The best advice for people eating out in restaurants is to respect the dish.

Before covering your meal with extra salt or sauce, taste the food without it. You might find you can savor all the ingredients and enjoy your meal more by eating it the way the chef intended you to!

If you tend to customize meals while eating out, don't worry, most people do.