S.O.S.

[October 18th, 2006] Imagine this: It's Saturday night and you're a chef working on the line of one of Portland's busiest restaurants. You're so busy you can't even look up. Your team of cooks and servers have their groove on, working together like a well-oiled machine. Then a ticket comes rolling off the electronic order machine with bold red letters that read "SEE SERV" or "SOS." It's enough to chill the blood of even the most seasoned chef.

"SEE SERV" is short for "see server," "SOS" is sauce on the side. That means that before you start that order, the server has to fill you in on the special requests of that ticket. As Murphy's Law would have it, the busier the night, the bigger pain the special order. We asked some of Portland's best chefs to share some of their SEE SERV pain.

The Waffler

Brad Root of Roots Restaurant fondly remembers a particular customer who taught him a valuable lesson in patience: "I was cooking lunch at Wildwood, and it was super-busy. A lady came up to the open kitchen. She wanted poached halibut with absolutely no flavor, no seasonings, and no oil. That's irritating enough, coming up to me to place her order personally when we're busy, instead of with the waitress. We sent out a nice, plain piece of halibut, as she requested. A couple of minutes later the server returned, rolling her eyes. The lady requested not one but two sides of tartar sauce, complaining the fish was too bland. All I could do is laugh. Sometimes you do everything they ask and they'll have a problem with it anyway."

The Special Diet

Chef Vitaly Paley, of Paley's Place, says he'll always respect people's special request, especially if they have allergies. He finds it a little unnerving, though, when their diet isn't quite as strict as they originally made it out to be. "I've spent a good amount of time preparing a meal void of all traces of dairy for someone who is lactose-intolerant, only to get a glimpse of them digging into their friend's crème brûlée at the end of the meal. That's tough to see after all that effort."

The Indulger

Sarah Hart, owner of Alma Chocolate, recalls a regular who came to the now-defunct L'Auberge weekly who had a fondness for shockingly rich food: "He

would always order the same thing: a triple foie gras appetizer, beef tenderloin with foie gras on top and a poached lemon cheesecake with crème anglaise and whipped cream. Every week we wondered if he would come back or die before we could cook for him again."

The Substituter

Chef Kenny Giambalvo of Bluehour saw a lot of SEE SERV tickets at his recently shuttered pasta venture, Balvo (which will soon re-emerge as 23 Hoyt, helmed by Chris Israel). "The real challenge is people wanting to substitute different pasta shapes with different sauces, which on a side note is irritating because not all shapes work with all sauces. Italians created all those different shapes for a reason. Here's an example of me calling out a particularly large group's order to the cooks: 'Ordering one rigatoni sub spaghetti, two linguini, one sub tagliatelle, two risotto, one no Parmesan, three spaghetti, one sub penne no bacon, one sub linguini extra bacon, and two kids' cheese pasta, one no cheese.'" It's enough to make any cook's head spin.

The Clueless

And then there is the diner who modifies the order simply because they aren't well-versed in the style of food the restaurant serves. "I'll never forget it," says chef Pascal Sauton of Carafe, rubbing his temples, "One night I had a guy who sent back his steak tartare, complaining that the meat was raw and he didn't get any tartar sauce with it! I thought the waiter was joking! It was pre-theater, before a Broadway show, we were really busy—that's when they really come out of the wood[work]."

The Demander

Jake Lindemann of Dan & Louis Oyster Bar recalls a customer who really wanted things her way: "We had a customer come in who pitched a fit because we weren't making our alfredo pasta with the same sauce anymore. We changed the recipe three years prior because the original sauce had no flavor whatsoever. She wanted the old sauce, and since I was the only one who knew how to make it, they called me in on my day off. I quickly made the old sauce and sent it out. She said, 'No, this isn't the sauce I'm talking about.' I assured her it was. She insisted it wasn't. She ordered a third time and ended up with the new-recipe alfredo—shit, after all of that."

Most chefs love to kvetch about particularly obnoxious SEE SERVs, but will be the first to tell you that normally they don't mind special orders. As chef Sauton points out, "I am in the business of making people happy. If folks are nice about it, oh my god, I'm on my knees. But there are some people who you just can't please."