I'll Have a BLT - No Bacon, Lettuce or Tomato

SAN FRANCISCO - It's the first rule of thumb when it comes to the hospitality industry - the customer is always right.

But what happens when that customer wanders into a high-end restaurant expecting a fabulous meal, without meat, fish, wheat, nuts or dairy?

It's happened to chef Joshua Skenes at Saison in San Francisco, despite his fixed menu.

It's happened at La Mar Cebicheria, the Peruvian restaurant specializing in ceviche.

It's even happened to Charlie Hallowell at Pizzaiolo in Oakland.

"When people come to Pizzaiolo and say, 'I don't eat wheat or cheese,' I'm like, 'Why did you come to a pizzeria?' " Hallowell says.

It's a question chefs are asking more and more as diners become increasingly picky about what they want - or don't want - on their plates.

No gluten. No salt. No dairy. No wheat.

No peanuts. No seeds. No fat.

Whether it's someone following a vegan or macrobiotic diet, someone allergic to wheat or nuts, or someone who simply doesn't like mushrooms or eggs, there's a new wave of special requests being made that go far beyond leaving the salad dressing on the side.

"It's like a puzzle," says Andrew Generalao, La Mar's general manager. "You have to try to find the right fit, and sometimes we pull it off with great things. A lot of times, it's just not that exciting."

Like most in the restaurant industry, Generalao wants to wow his customers. But trying to make ceviche without cilantro or jalapenos is like ordering macaroni and cheese without the cheese. Though the dish still might be perfectly good, its essence has been stripped away.

Still, Generalao added three vegan items to his seafood-heavy menu shortly after opening, and says he's happy to accommodate the special requests he gets.

But in an era where cafegoers order split-shot soy mocha lattes with sugar-free vanilla, light foam, no whip - and extra hot, please - restaurantgoers are tailoring even fixed menus to their taste buds.

Skenes offers one nine-course meal at Saison, and though he asks that the menu stay the menu, he still gets several special requests per week.

"We don't rule over the kitchen with an iron fist and say, 'No soup for you,' " Skenes says. "But we do it on a case-by-case basis.

"The other day, we had someone who didn't eat shellfish, didn't eat fish, didn't eat dairy, didn't eat lamb. And on the menu, we had shellfish, we had fish, we had lamb. And they also didn't eat gluten or wheat.

"So that was pretty much impossible. We just couldn't do it."

Skenes says it's mostly a matter of staffing and resources - it's too much of a strain on the small kitchen to constantly handle special requests.

Read the rest of the story here.

Can You Trust a Skinny Chef?

Chefs Cook up a Weight-loss Solution

By Kelly Carter, Special for USA TODAY

Kristi Ritchey bought into the stereotypical chef image — rotund belly, chin to spare — for a while. She started cooking when she was 16, went to culinary school and nine years later ballooned to 260 pounds and wore a size 26.
"Everyone says 'Don't trust a skinny chef,' " says Ritchey, 27, executive chef at Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop in Beverly Hills. "Well, you know what? I also don't like being a chef people stared at and wondered if I ate their meal. It was becoming very uncomfortable."

And unhealthy: Ritchey's wake-up call came when a prep cook rushed her to the emergency room. Now down to 150 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame, Ritchey is among a new wave of U.S. chefs proving that size is not indicative of their talent. Not only are some losing significant weight, but their emphasis on healthier living is reflected in their menus — which means their customers reap the benefits as well.

Since losing more than 90 pounds, including 60 on an 800-calorie-a-day liquid diet, Kevin Hickey, executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, has "definitely added on (healthier) dishes," including a frittata made with egg whites, turkey, tofu, asparagus, low-fat mozzarella and tomato sauce.

He uses cream and butter sparingly. Instead of pan-searing his whitefish, Hickey cooks it in a stew with white beans. The liquid diet has helped him in the kitchen, where chefs agree the No. 1 rule is to taste.

"But I don't have to swallow it," Hickey says.

More...

NIH Study: Calories, Not Content, Determine Weight Loss

You aren't what you eat. You're how much.

That's the message from a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded study that assigned 811 overweight people to one of four reduced-calorie diets and found that all trimmed pounds just the same. It didn't matter what foods participants ate, but rather how many calories they consumed.

An intense debate has long raged over which dieting regimen is best. Low carb? High protein? Low fat? But the federal study, one of the longest of its kind, "really goes against the idea that certain foods are the key to weight loss," says Frank Sacks, principal investigator and a professor of cardiovascular-disease prevention at Harvard School of Public Health. "This is a pretty positive message. It gives people a lot of choices to find a diet they can stick with."

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, put participants on one of four diets: Two were low fat and two were high fat, and each of these included either a high-protein or an average-protein component. Carbohydrate intake ranged from 35% to 65%. All the diets were low in calories and saturated fat, and high in fiber, and participants were asked to exercise a fixed 90 minutes a week.

Patients, who attended counseling sessions, lost an average of 13 pounds after six months. After two years, they had lost nine pounds on average and trimmed two inches off their waists regardless of which diet they followed. The study, which ended December 2007, was conducted in Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and in Baton Rouge, La., at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

In the study, doctors calculated each participant's energy needs, and structured a diet that had 750 fewer calories than would be necessary to fuel his or her activity. Typical diets in the study had between 1,400 and 2,000 calories a day.

Continue reading here.

Flexible Vegetarians Come Out of the Closet

Dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner is a flexitarian, which is defined as a vegetarian who is flexible enough to eat some meat, poultry or fish.

She discusses the diet in her new book "The Flexitarian Diet." She says it's a "win-win" because people get the health benefits of vegetarianism without the limitations, although some disagree.

Read her story and some of here dietary recommendations here.