So last night Fish, Chips & Peas it was. However when it arrived, palatable though the Fish, Chips and Peas were (the advertised key components of the dish), we found approximately one fifth of the plate was occupied by a rough collection consisting of shredded lettuce, cucumber, spring onion and a few slices of red, green and yellow pepper (undressed of course, this is England - what is it about the English mentality that allows an undressed and random pile of raw ingredients to be passed off as "salad"?)
There's a point to be made. Why the salad? We ask Mrs Capable.
"Oh, it's to make it look nice"
"But it doesn't"
"(sigh) maybe it's so they don't have to put so many chips on the plate - keeps the cost down"
"(thinks for a moment) no - that doesn't make sense either. That pile of salad ingredients, bizarrely, square inch per square inch, will be a lot more expensive than the potato-based alternative. It's also time consuming to prepare. So I'm not having that either"
"(sighs more heavily) in that case maybe it's to stop you filling up on chips and increasing the chance of you ordering a desert"
"(thinks for several moments) hmmm, I could see how that might work. The cads! Even if we're still hungry, we're not having one!"
Frankly though, we're not convinced that this salad nonsense is a deliberate attempt to boost desert sales. It just didn't feel like that sort of place. So we had to re-evaluate the presence of the offending article as a potential crime against lean. Let's look at the facts.
1. It occupies approximately one fifth of plate space
2. It is not an advertised ingredient, meaning that the meal will not be selected in eager anticipation by the customer that salad items will be present
3. It is relatively expensive compared to a similar volume of "chip"
4. It tends not to get eaten, and the level of waste will be very visible when the plates are returned to the kitchen. God forbid they recycle it. Sometimes it can look pretty old ...
5. It adds another process to the manufacture of the product
We think the lean case against the salad item is pretty strong, and we hope that these "before and after" pictures will help make our point. But ultimately Capable Blog respects other opinions, and if any of you feel compelled to pose a counter-view, please feel free.
Is this evidence of a crime against lean? - you decide
