I've got to hand it to American eateries -- they really take consumer freedoms to heart. In an American cafe, you won't be offered bread without being offered the choice of sourdough, corn, brown or white, and now no doubt also a special lo-carb option made out of pigs' ears and sawdust. You will be given several different varieties of butter, some of which are actually butter. And you can't order coffee without being offered all the wonders of Starbucks' laboratory, topped with your choice of nutmeg, cinnamon, or brown or white chocolate sprinkles.
I thought this was great. An endless vista of choice in the land where the customer was king! Not that I didn't exercise my consumer rights in Ireland. I was a regular summer visitor to Jones's deli, where I was accustomed to ordering myself unique and outlandish sandwich combinations. I would often totter from Jones's into Merrion Square with a baugette full of chicken Mary Rose, bacon, sweetcorn, pastrami, swiss cheese, and cheddar and onion salad, all sealed with a leaf of lettuce which inevitably blew away in the wind. I was stating my individuality in sandwich form, and no one could take that away from me.
So, when I visited my first European deli, I was in for something of a shock. I proudly ignored the suggested sandwich combinations and went to the counter to order chicken and swiss cheese and....
"Chicken and cheese?" asked the server, looking at me as if I had just ordered whalemeat and peanut butter. "Are you sure?"
"Um... yes," I said, promptly losing the resolve to order salami, olives, feta and sundried tomato paste as well. I watched as the server dutifully made my chicken and cheese sandwich, which she did with the air of someone changing a baby's nappy, and went to my seat somewhat angry and humiliated. How dare they question my sandwich choices! Surely I was the customer, and I whatever I ordered was by definition right!
Since then, my attitude has changed. Now, my only regret is that they made my sandwich at all, and didn't kick me out of the building. Chicken and cheese is a truly tasteless combination, which only someone from the barbarian isles could consider. Chicken and cheese is something you can do quite happily in private, like picking your nose, but in public it's just bad taste.
I no longer want to go to a restaurant to get my own bad taste thrown back at me. Rather, I go there to experience someone else's good taste. Let loose in a kitchen, I would throw all sorts of unpalatable combinations together, so when it comes to a restaurant menu, I should really have no say in the matter. When you give a man a choice, he usually chooses wrong; a civilised society should point him in the direction of what is right. Like schools, museums, and concert halls, eating-houses are cultural venues. Their role is to educate their customers in what is tasteful, to gently uphold and pass on the practice of civilisation. Not to encourage us to act like pigs in a trough.
But what about consumer freedom? On the one hand, it's irrelevant. The freedom you lose by being denied the possibility of ketchup with your salad is not worth anything. There's an Italian restaurant nearby which has no a la carte menu: instead there's a choice of three dishes based on fish, meat or vegetables, which for most customers is not even a choice. But the lack of a choice absolutely does not diminish the experience of eating there. If anything, I'm usually grateful to be spared those irritating few minutes when I want everything on the menu and can't decide.
And on the other hand, consumer freedom is an illusion. In food, as in art and politics, our economic system works to ensure a certain homogenisation -- between franchises and within them. The more products the consumer can choose from, the less actual choice exists between those products. Who cares if Subway offers you 2^12 sandwich combinations? Every single one of them tastes like polyurethane.