Menus Written in Stone: Diners Often Just Bite the Bullet

The stubbornness of restaurants in refusing to depart from fixed menus seems to have generated a subculture of anecdotes.

Oddly, many of the stories I have received concern eggs and toast. These breakfast staples may be served in various ways, but the chef will not vary the listed combinations to suit a willful customer.

One story, sent to me by Harold M. Koenigsberg of Beverly Hills, is an excerpt from Ernie Pyle’s “Home Country.” Pyle went into a coffee shop in Carmel and ordered orange juice, one egg, medium boiled, crisp bacon, dry toast and coffee.

The waitress told him: “That would be No. 3, but No. 3 is a poached egg. You can’t substitute.”

Pyle said he was not ordering a number, he was ordering what he wanted.

The waitress said: “But the cook won’t boil one egg. He’ll poach one, but not boil one.”

Pyle asked how much his breakfast would be a la carte. The waitress left to talk to the chef. She returned and said: “The cook won’t boil one egg under any circumstances, for any price.”

“And so I left,” Pyle wrote, “my vexation completely overshadowed by my admiration for such a man.”

W. E. Easton recalls a comic scene that befell a bed and breakfast in London when his wife ordered a boiled egg with bacon. The waitress, an au pair, said bacon was served only with fried eggs, not boiled eggs. Thinking the au pair was French, Mrs. Easton pursued her point in French, only to discover that the waitress was Spanish, which further complicated the impasse.

Tourists at other tables were soon involved. Not understanding any of the three languages thus far employed, a group of Germans was thoroughly confused, but no less voluble. The proprietress appeared. A British woman offered her services. Apprised of the question, she said that if a person ordered a boiled egg with bacon in her home she would not serve it.

Easton solved the problem by ordering a fried egg with bacon and sharing the bacon with his wife. This subterfuge was viewed with mixed reactions by the other guests.

An even more ingenious solution was hit upon by Walt Hopmans of Santa Barbara when he asked for hot cakes and eggs and the waitress said, “How do you want your eggs?”

Hopmans said he didn’t care. “Why don’t you just surprise me?”

The waitress insisted. “I can’t take your order, sir, unless you tell me how you want your eggs.”

Hopmans said he’d take his eggs the way the waitress would take them. She said she didn’t eat eggs.

“OK,” Hopmans said. “I’ll take one scrambled and one sunny side up.”

That’s the way he got them. “But she had her revenge. They were cold.”

Deborah Emmey recalls an incident when she and her boyfriend were walking along the ocean front walk in Venice, watching the dancers, listening to the music, dabbling in the shops.

“We noticed a sign on the sidewalk. ‘Free pretzel when you buy a lemonade.’ My boyfriend walked up to the window and ordered a pretzel. After he paid, he said ‘Where’s my lemonade?’ Their reply: “If you order a lemonade we’ll give you a free pretzel, but if you order a pretzel you have to pay for the lemonade.’ ”

I can understand that if the lemonade cost more than the pretzel.

Morton Moskowitz recalls stopping at a coffee shop in Sequoia National Park about 30 years ago. His daughter ordered a jelly sandwich. The menu listed only peanut butter and jelly. Moskowitz offered to pay for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if they would hold the peanut butter. The waitress said that could not be done. Finally they ordered some toast, which came with butter and jelly. “We never used the butter and my daughter had her jelly sandwich.”

A similar gambit failed Jim Webber in a beautiful restaurant in Boothbay Harbor, Me. He ordered a lobster dinner with iced tea. The waitress told him the dinner came only with hot tea or coffee. Webber ordered hot tea and a tall glass of ice. The waitress told him, “We do not permit substitutes.”

Chalk one up for the system.

The system also overwhelmed Emma Adler before World War II when she was a student at UCLA. With a group of six students she stopped at Dolores’ Drive-In on Wilshire at La Cienega. Having studied logic under Dr. Hans Reichenback they agreed that if they all ordered the same thing they should have no trouble getting the order straight.

They ordered hamburgers, fries and six Cokes. When the order came it was six grilled cheese sandwiches and six milks. “We informed the waitress of the mistake, and she, without blinking an eye, informed us that the order she delivered was more nutritious. Needless to say we ate what we were served.”

When I patronized Dolores’, before World War II, the waitresses were not known for their maternal instincts.

I wish we had that drive-in back.

There’s a question for Dr. Reichenback and his colleagues. What caused the demise of drive-ins?