Each day this week, we dive into the surprising and unverified history of the five-course meal. Join us as we interview resident food critic Bianca Strings on each course’s complicated social and political history at a restaurant worthy of Restaurant Week.
Those Stories: We have now arrived at the Third Course, the salad course. We must eat the course to feel good enough to enjoy the rest of the meal. I’m sure this is a straightforward course.
Bianca: It was called the salad course long before they served lettuce. It’s called the salad course because of how much money green restaurantgoers throw around during this third course. Restaurants have mostly abandoned this tradition, but you used to order the main course during the salad course. Ordering food is when friends dining at restaurants became enemies as they battled to get the best main course. A good restaurant often had only one of the best dishes left, so they let the bidding war commence. Someone once gave a restaurant a vacation home to secure the last duck. The restaurant used it to open a second location.
The salad course is all about status. Who gets to place their order first? Who wants to change their order? How many overpriced sides will they add to the meal? Who’s paying, and how much can we squeeze out of them? One restaurant paraded animals around to get people to bid on what they wanted to eat. These animals were the owners’ pets, but the people thought that a specific pig was on the menu that night, and they fought each other for the chance to eat it.
Those Stories: This sounds gruesome.
Bianca: Five-course meals are not for the faint of heart. The salad course is a bloodbath.
Those Stories: And here I am, thinking we’d discuss croutons.
Bianca: We can explore the dark past of croutons another time.