Food feedback: Chefs create a checklist to find if they are on right track

Its imperative for chefs to be clued into Twitter Facebook and Instagram to track feedback PICSatej ShindeFeedback is a pillar of any service industry especially hospitality However despite forms handed out to guests and the stray chef coming out to ask How did you like your food restaurants are always up against the challenge of figuring whats working From a customers first facial reaction to a dish arriving at the table to leftovers that make their way to waste bins chefs have a checklist of indicators that tell them if they are on the right trackChef and restaurateur Vicky Ratnani on gauging facial reactionsPlaying private eye Chef Vicky Ratnani admits to watching customers at his Khar restaurant Korner House carefully Like you have the fashion police Im the plate police at my restaurant he laughs He is usually by the music system which serves as vantage point The diners expression when a plate arrives and reaction to the first bite are key Whether its a wow or a polite umm okay an experienced chef can read the signs says Ratnani who spent 14 years at cruise ship kitchens including Queen Elizabeth 2Chef Ranveer Brar gets a bit more brazen waiting by a table as the steward serves the meal No matter what a diner says you know the truth from his face he says Since chefs cant hang around the dining area too long a welltrained group of servers are taught to see through the it was nice remark The next time you have a waiter politely interject to ask you if all is okay you know whyLeftovers are evidence of how good the food was PicSatej ShindeGarbage audit is a real thing Dont underestimate the power of leftovers is what chefs often say But thats often in the context of whipping up an easy meal with yesterdays food What they dont tell you is that leftovers are crucial evidence Checking clearance plates once they return to the kitchen is a practice Ive followed since I started out says Kunal Patkar sous chef at Lower Parels Farzi Cafe If a dish has five portions for instance and one piece returns uneaten it tells me the guest may not have enjoyed it A clear plate is your biggest complimentSaurabh Udinia noveau Indian restaurant Masala Librarys founding chef doesnt hesitate to play investigator Sometimes I go out and inquire what the dish lacked Personal interaction with guests goes a long way in encountering truthLeftovers can go beyond being indicators of taste alone Recalling an experience from his days at Banq a premium restaurant in Boston Brar says There was a time when large amounts of rogan gosht was returning as leftovers However it was also an oftenordered item which meant that taste was not the problem Later we discovered that portions were the issue It was a filling preparation and guests ended up wiping clean the potatoes leaving the meat behind We resized the portions and it worked just fineThat only 20 per cent customers are honest enough to offer feedback on a mediocre or disastrous preparation means that leftover audit is crucial Chef Ajay Thakur of Mira Hospitality says A chef needs to hone his instinctSiddharth Kotian used a software called Prism to keep a tab on the frequency with which the nalli rogan josh is ordered at Yellow Chillies PicSneha KharabeVirtual reality matters How a dish journeys on social media through hashtags and likes is indicator of its worth Its imperative for chefs to be clued into Twitter Facebook and Instagram to track customer feedback Chef Sahil Luthria of the House of Mirabella Andheri West sets aside an hour every day to scan the above including Snapchat and food aggregator sites like Zomato I go past the cosmetic food porn and seek out the comments Ive come across all sorts of feedback right from I hated the food to Oh my God I cant wait to go back and hog he says Luthria of course also has a team solely dedicated to tracking social mediaChefs say most restaurants and bars have a welltrained group of stewards to keep an eye on guest satisfaction and see through the it was nice remarks Represantation PicUndercover food copsInstinctive methods may go a long way in telling the truth however at Brars Kamala Mills restaurant Tag GourmART kitchen a welloiled machinery called the Mystery Audit is in place We have appointed an agency to handle it They send a person to the restaurant for an experience without our knowledge The guest comes acts like any other customer eats the food experiences the place service music etc and returns to file a detailed 35point report which the agency submits to us Brar says The agency picks out of towners to weed out regional bias They are new to the experience and come devoid of notions Its a foolproof way for us to know exactly where we stand as far as our customers goChef Ranveer Brar recalls an episode at Banq Boston on the garbage auditProblem solversSometimes the description of the dish on the menu could be a red flag in itself Ratnani found out There was a fad of mentioning all ingredients that go into a dish on the menu Now we add a little bit about the technique used too and that gets guests curious enough to try it He speaks of a salad on the menu that was described as including baby spinach with soy marinated egg grilled eggplant and pickled ginger dressing It was a tasty dish but rarely got ordered I tweaked the description added a bit about the technique and its popularity has seen a sudden spike he addsGeography matters too When chef Siddharth Kotian took charge of the Dadar outpost of Sanjeev Kapoors The Yellow Chilli he noticed that the bhuna gosht their best selling item across other outlets was moving less We serve it boneless usually but here we happened to overhear a couple of customers say how they miss the bone in it he says It was not possible to add bones to the gravy because of menu standardisation across branches So now we recommend the nalli rogan josh thats got a large piece of meat on bone he says Kotian used a software called Prism to keep a tab on the frequency with which the nalli rogan josh is ordered We also keep an eye on how often a customer visits us By the third or fourth visit its validation that our food is working