One of my biggest pet peeves is when useful shorthand or professional jargon becomes overused and overextended into general use for no purpose but to sound trendy. So, this article may seem more like a rant than a constructive piece. I’m talking about when restaurant waiters say “Would you like protein with that?” I heard a chef who does little skits about the restaurant life say this. He was asking a customer who ordered Caesar salad “Would you like a protein with that?” The customer said, “Ummm. what?” That is a logical response to a ridiculously phrased question, which was the intent of the skit, I presume.
I don’t remember when this started but it’s time it stopped. Nothing is appetizing about referring to food as a macronutrient. And don’t put “protein” on a Caesar salad.
Why do restaurants feel the word protein is so impressive and cheffy sounding? I’ve heard many excuses about why restaurant waiters ask “Would you like a protein with that” and none of them make any sense. This trendy terminology may be useful in a restaurant kitchen, but it has no place in the dining room.
When you refer to foods as proteins, you don’t sound like a person serving enticing food, you sound like a dietician. The word chicken is perfectly serviceable and much more informative. As the skit I mentioned points out, what does it even mean to talk about “protein” on a Caesar salad? Are you offering beef or tofu? Are you going to put beans on the salad? I highly doubt it. And if you are, you should not.
The word “protein” is useful in a restaurant kitchen as a shorthand for “some type of meat, poultry, fish, or other high-protein food.” For example, there may be a refrigerator or walk-in where all of the beef, pork, chicken, and fish is kept. It is useful to refer to this as the protein locker, protein fridge, or protein walk-in.
Or, if a chef is trying to conceive of a dish to uses certain ingredients, they might say that they need to figure out a protein to use with some vegetables. You hear this a lot in food TV competitions when chefs are given certain ingredients to work with and they are trying to think of what “protein” to use in their dish.
However, if you are conceiving of a dish, it is unlikely that you are conceiving it as being so flexible that any protein at all can be used. It is unlikely that fish would be as welcome as beef or that beef would be as welcome as beans. I’ve literally heard chefs say, I’m trying to think of what protein to use. I’m thinking beef or fish. Here’s a much easier way to say it: “I’m trying to decide between using beef or chicken.”
There are other reasons that the word protein might be used as a stand-in for the entire category of protein-based foods. Even so, the list of proteins being chosen from is usually limited and they never mean that every high-protein food available is an option.
No matter how useful the term is in the kitchen, it has no place in the dining room. Again, when a waiter asks you what protein you’d like, are they offering you virtually any protein in existence? No, they are offering you one option from a limited list of proteins. Therefore, the waiter will still have to name the proteins being offered. So, if you are offering a choice of say, chicken or shrimp (I’m imagining “Alfredo”), why not say, would you like chicken or shrimp with that? You are probably not offering chicken, shrimp, beef, pinto beans, chickpeas, peanuts, tofu, or oysters.
None of the excuses used for this behavior track. One such excuse is that “protein” is used when something other than meat is offered, like beans or tofu. This is simply untrue. How often does a restaurant offer beans or tofu as a random option and if they were, why would they not say ‘beans or tofu?’
Another claim is that you don’t hear this is fine-dining but only in corporate based restaurants or fast food. I’ve never had McDonald’s offer me a “protein.”
Other say this is based on an increased focus on nutrition. Again, there is nothing appetizing about sounding like a dietician when offering your customers menu options. While a discussion of macronutrient content may be useful for professionals working with restricted diets, or as a shorthand in a kitchen, it is nothing more than a trend when used in the dining room of a restaurant. And, in my opinion, even using it in the kitchen is a bit trendy.
My reason for not liking this term is completely different than why a fellow named Chris Castiglione doesn’t like it. He complained about a restaurant chain called Dig Inn asking “Would you a protein?” To him, the problem is that the question distracts customers from the reality of animal agriculture while ignoring that veggies contain plenty of protein alone. This argument makes no sense, as the main defense for using the word protein is that it encompasses all protein-rich foods, including plant foods. I don’t think using the word “beef” is going to cause a non-vegetarian restaurant guest to gasp and say, “Oh my, that comes from animal agriculture! I think I’ll take some plants, instead.”
If you are a waiter and you’ve been referring to protein-rich menu options as “proteins” instead of beef, chicken, fish, beans, tofu, etc., please know that you sound ridiculous. If you have the option, stop. Your customers will appreciate more direct communication of their options. And if your manager makes you say this, well, say it only when he or she is within earshot.
