Can You Order Off-Menu At A Fancy Restaurant?

For most of us, fine dining is a strictly special occasion. We don't often head out to Michelin-starred restaurants for dinner, but it can be a nice treat for a celebration, a date, or just something different once in a while. However, you may feel a little anxiety about the experience, whether it's due to the price, the formality, or the etiquette, which can seem a little hazy. To that last point, we wanted to know if it's acceptable to order off-menu at a fancy restaurant.

If you're a fine dining first-timer, it's okay not to know all the rules. Many restaurants are happy to make substitutions or put together dishes that, strictly speaking, aren't on the menu. That's actually encouraged in fast food with all the secret menus and hacks you hear about online. At the New York City Wine & Food Fest at the Seaport, Tasting Table caught up with Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, owner of Cecchi's restaurant, to get his insight. His answer was unequivocal. "No," Cecchi-Azzolina says.

"No. We have a menu for a certain reason," he explains. While there are certain circumstances when there is some wiggle room for diners, most kitchens won't accommodate changes because it affects both the dish's flavor and the timing of its preparation. So what does that mean for diners? "If you can't find what you want on the menu, you should probably go somewhere else," Cecchi-Azzolina says.

"We spend countless hours developing a dish, and we don't want somebody to come in and wreck it," Chef Jon Shook once told Today. At his restaurant, they don't even make accommodations for people with allergies. They simply recommend a different dish. But Cecchi-Azzolina isn't so rigid. "So, look, you have dietary restrictions, absolutely, we're happy to do that," he says.

At Cecchi's restaurant, they are willing to work with a diner "within reason." For instance, you're not going to get a lobster risotto made without lobster. But, to meet someone's dietary restrictions, "we will modify things as much as possible," Cecchi says.

Altering a dish because a person literally can't eat it is very different from changing a dish just because someone wants to have something different. A fancy restaurant is typically operating on the strength of its chef and that chef's vision. Going off the menu is questioning the chef's expertise and opinions. In some circumstances, that might be okay. But at a fine dining restaurant it flies in the face of why you would go there in the first place. So it's no wonder that a lot of restaurants wouldn't allow it.

When you decide to invest your time and money in going to a fancy restaurant, it's best to just trust the process and not give in to a classic fine dining mistake. If it turns out you don't like the food, then you've learned that the restaurant isn't for you. But you should give the restaurant and its menu a chance and experience them as they're intended.