Are the restaurant specials really that special? - Food Files

Apr 12, 2024

It's worth questioning the value of the special board, and what it's really offering.

We should cut chefs a lot of slack in the way they write their menus. If they choose to include full descriptions on what temperature the chicken on the menu preferred its breakfast and no key details like what is brovada, that’s their choice.

But trusting in the artist-slash-chef and allowing them to do their work has its limitations as diners ponder what exactly is so special about a special. There’s some value in asking further questions about the chalked-up, time-restricted items dreamed up by chefs and promoted by wait staff.

Chefs’ stories of what has turned up on the specials board of some unnamed restaurant they worked at, once upon a time, might leave diners reeling. Corned beef and cabbage would be served on St Patrick’s Day as a special, and it was special. But the “special” omelet filled with corned beef, or the soup of the day for the next week with traces of cabbage in it were decidedly less special.

Is the specials board a means for chefs to sell yesterday’s glut of a certain product? Or perhaps a means to make back money on a dish that didn’t sell as expected?

“Never order fish on a Monday,” wrote food writer and television host Anthony Bourdain when he burst into the public’s eye with his book Kitchen Confidential. Since fish markets were closed on Friday nights in New York City at the time, any fish was likely caught days before. His words were so powerful and widely adhered to that many people wouldn’t eat sushi or seafood on Mondays, anywhere.

Bourdain later ate his words. He joked to Insider Tech that his advice not to eat fish on Mondays would be on his tombstone. Years later he said that the industry had changed. The fish special at the local pub might not be advisable on Mondays, he said, but overall food standards had improved.

“There is the classic ordering seafood after a long weekend mindset when I eat out,” says Daniel Pepperell, executive chef at Pellegrino 2000, Bistrot 916, Clam Bar Sydney and the soon to open Neptunes Grotto. “I know the fish market hasn’t been open for four days. If I order a special it’s generally something that sounds special.”

The fleeting and often limited nature of some exceptional produce makes placing the dishes in which it appears onto the menu impossible, says Pepperell. Sometimes, what makes a special appear as a special is one ingredient’s limited availability.

Specials are a way for restaurants to offer their diners something unique, for a limited time. “We might get a small catch of red mullet and we have a few kilos that we can run as a special,” he says.

“If there’s a cool bit of produce, we get it while we can. It’s a good chance for the chefs to contribute and have a play around with it. When there are pine mushrooms, we will get a full tray that are a few hours old and we will put it on as a special that night. We use it all because the next day they will be b- grade. Truffles are another example,” says Pepperell. “At Clam Bar, we will get two or three mudcrabs, enough to put a mudcrab spaghetti on the menu, and when it’s gone it’s gone.”

Pellegrino 2000. Source: Supplied

Porteno co-founder Elvis Abrahanowicz, also behind Continental Deli in Newtown and the wildly anticipated adjoining venues Flora Newtown, Mister Grotto and Osteria Mucca, agrees his chefs put on specials when something is not readily available.

“We work closely with farms and a lot of the time the supply of a particular cut or access to the short-supply Rubia Gallega beef means you could never put it on the menu. We get this beef using retired cows and it only comes in every few months, and we have a specialty cut. It’s a special thing,” says Abrahanowicz.

How to spot such a special? It should never be printed on a laminated card, because if it’s truly special it wasn’t meant to last as long as a laminate would imply, and it’s unlikely a restaurant would have had time to turn laminated menus around that quickly.

At Bar Louise in Enmore, also owned by Abrahanowicz, menus are divided simply into vegetables, seafood and meat. The dishes change often, and you might find house-made chorizo, morcilla with peas and fried eggs or raw Hiramasa kingfish with charred eggplant and almond ajo blanco. But the menu is made smaller so the head chef Marcelo Munoz has the freedom to order produce in and do different things.

“There’s nothing stock standard on the menu and then you have produce- and technique-driven specials. It’s a way to give regulars something different.” says Abrahanowicz.

Porteno. Source: Supplied

Chefs will often keep an eye on the specials board for something actually special when they dine out. It’s an opportunity for flair and originality. Abrahanowicz loves eating at Bar Vincent, owned by Sarah Simm of Billy Kwong, and Andy Logue from Melbourne’s Pinotta and Scopri.

“I go to the same places all the time, and I love it there. Bar Vincent’s specials menu is almost bigger than his main menu. It’s a real ‘90s vibe, I really like it,” he says.

As well as being a place for creativity, the specials board is also a place for trial, a place to test a chef’s idea. “Things can move from specials to the main menu, we can see how they go. Or we will see something do really well with a rare or limited produce, and then we will put something similar on the main menu when it does really well.”

Feedback has a huge impact on what appears on a main menu, says Pepperell. A chef will put a new idea or dish up as a special, and if it does really well or “if people want more we put something up for a few months”, he says.

The specials are more than a place to trial dishes before they make their way to the menu, says Pepperell, reassuring sceptics everywhere. “It’s good for the chefs to contribute and have a play around with a dish, to use unique ingredients, but to get it up there at all it actually has to be very special.”