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I understand that chefs can gauge the quality of a dish by monitoring its popularity. However, suppose a chef wants to improve an existing recipe, how might he/she do that?

Will the chef rely on customer feedback? Suppose a customer says he likes the steak but thinks the sauce can be improved. How can a chef use that information?

Clarification - I want to understand if and how chefs might use customer feedback to improve dishes.

Suppose a chef surveys 100 customers. 60 of them say that the steak sauce need some improvement. Will the chef investigate further to improve his recipe? If so, how would he do it?

Also, suppose that the same 60 customers say that they prefer the steak sauce in another restaurant, will the chef go to the another restaurant to investigate?

I'm not senior enough to leave comment, so thanks to everyone that tries to help!

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    There is a phrase "too many cooks spoil the dinner"... A chef is always welcome to accept criticism but there's no need for them to change it. Food is full of opinions. One person can love a dish and another person think it's awful... Were a chef to try and please everyone, they would probably quit in frustration. Should a chef want to improve a dish, I'd guess they'd be more likely to talk with their other staff/friends/family before talking to random customers.
    – Catija
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 0:15
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    Can you clarify what you're actually trying to find out? Are you asking if it's useful for you to give feedback? Or are you asking if it's a good idea as a chef to take feedback into account?
    – Cascabel ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 2:00
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    IMPE, most chefs will think the sauce is perfect, and the customer is defective for thinking otherwise. If you don't like the food, you're better off looking for a restaurant that cooks food you like.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 3:11
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    I am closing this question because it is about restaurant management and business practices. Our scope is food preparation methods, not how restaurants should be run, and even less how they are ran in practice. Your question is quite unanswerable anyway, because I'm certain that out of the millions of chefs in the world, there will be a large range of different responses, none of them being "the way chefs do it".
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 10:23
  • Thank you for trying to clarify the question, though. I unfortunately agree that it's a bit broad to answer; good chefs when presented with evidence that a lot of people don't like the food would surely try to do something about it. Beyond that it's down to whether the chef is actually good, and the details of how to improve a specific dish. (Also it's better that you edited anyway, but you're supposed to always be able to comment on your own question.)
    – Cascabel ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 15:11

3 Answers 3

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I'm only a semi-pro chef, but let's have a go at answering your question.

There are some people who have an actual impact when they provide feedback on one of my dishes. These are people I have cooked for more often and whose tastes are familiar to me. They will often function as a "test panel" when I want to try out a dish I'm considering for the menu of a commercial event I'm planning.

Should this test panel think my sauce needs more seasoning or more acidity, this would certainly cause me to adjust the recipe and/or process.

On the other hand, feedback from an individual guest whose tastes are unknown to me is pretty much meaningless. How would I be able to tell whether their likes and dislikes are anywhere near an average opinion? There those who will nearly always reach for the salt shaker when served a dish, even if to the average taste it is well seasoned.

So this hypothetical individual customer that features in your question seems pretty unlikely to cause a chef to change his recipe, unless of course the same feedback has been given before and a pattern emerges. In that case an individual customer can of course tip the scales in favor of a change.

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This is a very broad question. My answer would be "yes and no". When a customer has an opinion, that's just an opinion. For instance, 'the hot sauce isn't hot enough'. The chef should taste the hot sauce (again) because maybe the client is right.

At any rate, the chef will let his own opinion prevail over the customer's.

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By chef, I assume you say the cook, in any situation, including at home host feeding guests, as well as chefs making rounds after a restaurant meal.

The only time a chef will use customer feedback to improve a recipe is when a benefit is at stake, trying to compensate for a loss, or improve for a potential gain. There is a minimum to learn about proper way of cooking things, but when wandering about taste beyond that point, sky is the limit, who do you want to come and eat your food?

A chef will adjust his recipe to whatever taste, including awful, as long as it would bring more guests or more money. Sad :-(

E.G. I've had long discussions with chefs on top of Las Vegas tower restaurant about some great food not offered because of customers rejecting the concepts, not yet knowing what the ingredients would be. Tough start.

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  • Guests at home aren't "customers".
    – Cascabel ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 1:58
  • Unfortunately, plenty of us are inviting guests at home which are more business related than simple friends or family crowd. Some invite me to help them with staff related problem in their own businesses. They better treat me with a good meal first.
    – Dimitri Lovsky
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 2:13
  • That's still pretty from different customers in a restaurant, but really, it all seems kind of beside the point. The OP's asking specifically about customer feedback given to chefs. You can just answer that question, without trying to explain that sometimes people serve customers in their own home, and without writing it a way that misleadingly suggests you're trying to broaden it to include cooking for friends and family.
    – Cascabel ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 3:04
  • I said it before, I'll say it again: The only time a chef will use customer feedback to improve a recipe is when a benefit is at stake, trying to compensate for a loss, or improve for a potential gain.
    – Dimitri Lovsky
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 4:12
  • If you read what I wrote, you'll notice that I didn't at all disagree with that part of your answer. It's cynical but presumably mostly true. All I'm saying is that it's confusing that you're implying in the opening sentence of your answer that it all applies equally to people at home cooking for guests too; that's not really true and the OP didn't ask about it.
    – Cascabel ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 4:34

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