To conform or not...

In my last blog I was talking about how I went to Brewzzi for my 16+14 Birthday (thanks to Keith for the correction, as I still get carded for R rated movies, I couldn't possibly be older than 18, and since I still do stupid things from time to time, I must be around 16).
Now this blog is going to seem kind of stupid, but it is one that I have to read and question the idea of whether or not conformity is a good thing or not. As I mentioned in the previous blog, Alex had ordered chicken parmesan at the restaurant. Now as most of you know chicken parmesan is one of my favorite dishes.. hell it became the second most popular thing to make at good ol' NHC just after chicken sate. So when you think chicken parmesan what do you think of? Here is my idea of what consists of a good recipe for chicken parmesan:

1) chicken (preferably breaded)
2) Linguini or angel hair pasta
3) parmesan cheese
4) marinara sauce

This being the most basic recipe (as I tend to add a lot of different spices, and sometimes add some other types of cheese variants with the parmesan) is a pretty standard design. There are other minor additive that can be added to enhance the flavor but to make a good parmesan this is the basic formula.

Well let me tell you that night at Brewzzi things weren't exactly as Alex and I expected. She ordered parmesan (as she has in the past from there) and the waitress asked her "Would you like the sandwich, or the entre?" A pretty straight forward question that she quickly answered "The entre". Knowing that we would be going some place nice, and also knowing that she has never finished an entire meal at any of the restaurants we have gone to in the past, she didn't eat that day and spent the entire day working on her demo reel.
With that said it should be abundantly clear that she was starving, as it was now 8pm by the time we were seated and 8:30 by the time we got to order. So when the food arrived around 9:00 or so we were completely surprised to see that her "chicken parmesan" arrived the following way:

1)Breaded chicken, that was over cooked and dry
2)Penne pasta
3)Bolognese Sauce
4)A melted swiss cheddar cheese combination on the pasta.

Ok, for those of you unfamiliar with the problems let me give you a quick break down...

1) While the chicken was breaded and cooked, it should be moist and tender, if it is tough to cut, and dry straight through the thickest part of the center, this is a problem. It means that it was cooked too long, and possibly left under a heat lamp for a long period of time, it also means that the chicken may have been frozen at one time as when you freeze chicken the moisture inside freezes and when it is thawed the moisture leaves, this is especially bad when working with actual chicken, chicken patties can withstand the freezer as they are made to be moist when they go in the freezer to ensure that not all the liquid will leave when they thaw.

2)Penne Pasta... well there isn't anything exceptionally wrong with this, except when you are expecting angel hair or linguine, or any other kind of pasta that you can twirl with a fork, then penne is not going to cut it. Its like ordering mac and cheese and getting ravoli instead, it just doesn't compare when you have your heart set on something.

3)Bolognese sauce, The basics of bolognese is that it is a meat based sauce with very little tomato in it, in fact the little that is used is usually a tomato paste not a tomato sauce. Bolognese sauce is not a bad sauce, in fact it is very tasty with penne pasta, but being that we didn't expect penne it was just another unexpected additive. Also when ordering chicken parmesan I generally think of the chicken as the meat, why would you order chicken parmesan with a meat sauce? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? I mean its like ordering a hamburger and putting a piece of chicken on top of it, the two flavors while tasty on their own just aren't great together because if you expect to taste chicken, you don't want to be tasting hamburger, and vice versa. The combination may be good on pizza, but thats a whole different animal, and we are talking about traditional Italian chicken parm.

4)As I mentioned mixing different types of cheeses in can be good, but you don't go over kill. While it can be traditional to add a lot of different types of cheese with penne pasta, even adding enough to the point so that the pasta is sticky with the cheese is normal, that is not the way to make chicken parm!

So when the waitress returns we ask her about the penne, and ask her about the bolognese sauce. She said "Oh! I'm sorry, I should have asked if you wanted linguine and marinara sauce or not. I forgot to ask and this is how we serve it if no one mentions that they want it changed." She was at least nice enough to run to the back and get a small bowl of linguine and some marinara, but that doesn't fix the fact that the chicken was over cooked and dry. Personally I think that someone else ordered the chicken parm and then decided they didn't want it, and instead of throwing it away they let it sit under a heat lamp and handed it off to us. But this was the first time out of 7 or 8 times that we have been to Brewzzi that we had a bad meal.

So the real question is, should they go around calling what they were serving chicken parm? Or should they conform and give the people what they would expect? Honestly I think if they labeled that one Brewzzi parm, and made a separate dish called Chicken parm it would clear up the problem and they could offer another meal on the menu that people who enjoy their obscure version could order.

Either way, I know that if we ever order it from there again we will make sure to drill the wait staff on everything to ensure that there isn't a twist up like this one again.