I’ve always wondered why restaurants do that. I mean, shouldn’t all your dishes be recommended dishes? What’s the point of recommending one dish over another? The only reason I can think of is the restaurant wants to sell something that isn’t selling very well, or something that they have a surplus of. But these star dishes are always on the menu and are rarely changed, so it doesn’t make much sense unless they are constantly overstocking the kitchen with ingredients for those dishes.
There’s a chance that it really is the best dish available at the restaurant. But if that’s the case, does that mean the other dishes served are sub-par? Why not improve the recipe of everything else so that they can all be recommended too?
And if only certain dishes are worth eating, why not cut everything out and only sell that? Become a specialized place. That way you can save inventory space, reduce the training for your chefs, and possibly make more money in the process. And it’ll also eliminate any mistakes in the order process.
Because the ‘chef’s recommendation’ label does work (at least on me). Every time I go to a new restaurant and I have no idea what to order, the little star/chef’s hat/tick next to the dish name makes me lean towards ordering it. Maybe I am just a weak-minded fool. Ever noticed that the recommended dishes are usually the pricier ones?
Maybe I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill here, and there is no thought process behind the ‘chef’s choice’ label. It was just an idea some random employee thought of doing to make their menu look more interesting, and it somehow caught on to the rest of the industry.