Does anyone else's local takeaway have a secret menu?

[Cheeseandlobster]

I heard this can be a thing on mumsnet so I asked my local Indian restaurant I have been going to for 19 years if they have one. They told me no, but I can order the staff curry if I want to. So I have been. I never know what I am going to get. Its usually chicken or lamb and often lots of on the bone meat, but the flavour is out of this world.

Does anyone else go to a place like this? I wish I had known about this sooner. I love trying different dishes and the element of surprise 😋

When my DP was pregnant and we used to go to the local dim sum place a lot, they'd every now and again fuss over her and tick her off for not ordering the right things for the baby - some of those weren't on the menu. It is nice, isn't it?

It's lovely. The staff curries are more difficult to eat as there are often quite a lot of bones but the taste is a different level to the ones on the menu. The dim sum staff sound wonderful!

Staff curry is one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten.

My DH did some work for a local restaurant whilst I was pregnant with DD1 and used to bring it home a few times a week. It was super spicy and had such a deep savoury flavour.

It is probably a conicindence, but my DD is now 12 and has a seriously impressive chilli threshold 😂

A local take away was in the paper recently for having a cannabis farm above the shop and was apparently well-known for offering wrapped goods.... not sure that is the type of secret menu you mean though When McDonalds still had the usual queuing system, I was stood behind a little boy who couldn't decide between a smarties mcflurry and another flavour so the server popped two shots in and mixed together :)

Our local Chinese was a Szechuan one and had a menu DH loved full of offal and really spicy hot pots. Then they relaunched with a far more standard Cantonese menu, so I called them up, and they will happily still make all the other stuff on request, just mostly for Chinese customers.

Well! I’ve never heard of this! Interesting.......🤔🤣

Chinese restaurant near me had a secret menu for their friends for the The Chinese New Year which they always allowed my friends and I to order from. The owner for some reason really liked us when she appeared to hate people in general.

@BrutusMcDogface

Well! I’ve never heard of this! Interesting.......🤔🤣

Happens in restaurants too - lots of Chinese restaurants have a different menu for Chinese diners.

I have only ever asked one restaurant about this and I think its more common for Chinese restaurants. If I was a restaurant owner I think it would make me happy that someone wants to try more authentic cuisine as I know many dishes are westernised for us

I order a dish that’s not on the menu in my local takeaway. Took me ages to realise it had been taken off the menu.

Friend speaks mandarin (but isn’t thbuxally chinese) and sometimes orders stuff off menu in restaurants. Obv. Mostly northern as opposed to Cantonese places.

I regularly order off menu as I know what I like Its rare for them not to do it. The staff curry sounds very interesting

My favorite Chinese shop has a menu on their wall. If you were not looking it is sort of hard to find.

When I was an academic we sometimes used to go to a local Chinese with the PhD students and get the Chinese students to order. It was a different league from the standard takeaway menu I often had from the same place.

There's a Chinese restaurant in the bottom of my niece's hall of residence that caters for the Chinese students, so it's got lots of authentic stuff. I was quite jealous of it when we visited.

A friend of mine used to order an 'Italian hot chocolate' from Costa. She said it was off menu and you had to know which barista to ask for it. It was basically just liquid chocolate.

Our local favourite restaurant have a wierd cocktail menu where nothing is regular, such a regular martini or margarita. It's all fancy gussied up cocktails. Depending on who is on the bar I ask for a plain vodka martini. Sometimes they refuse outright, but seriously- just offer the classics as well as the new fnagled jobbies!

Not a secret menu as such, but my local Chinese in the last place I lived had a sign on the counter saying thst if you wanted a dish that wasn't on the menu, you could ask for it. I'm not an adventurous eater but I did get to try out a few different combinations that way! The owner would decide on a price based on the ingredients/similar dishes on the menu, and it was always very reasonable.

I don't know

This isn’t really the same but I still order the Four Seasons pizza at Pizza Express even though they took it off the menu half a decade ago it’s my favourite and they always have the stuff in, so why not!

plus I like to think they’ll take extra care to make it good because by ordering it they know I’m a PE afficiando but DH laughs at me for thinking that

We sat in a restaurant in France once and although we waved and beckoned to the staff they ignored us and we never got a menu. Does this count?
We left and went somewhere else (that's probably what they wanted us to do!)

My local Chinese does, for Chinese customers! I lived in Beijing for a decade and speak mandarin, so I ask them for regional stuff that isn't well known here by non-Chinese, like "di san xian" which is stir fried potato, aubergine and pepper in a very tasty sauce.

I lived in Korea for a while and speak a wee bit of Korean (not very well, but enough to have a relatively polite conversation).

I've made friends with the owners of a local Korean restaurant, so now they make tteokbokki for me and I get the 'proper' kimchi which is made for the Korean staff, as opposed to the Westernised stuff.

All the Chinese takeaways near us will make a version of a dish much more similar to how it would be made in that region of China.

At first I was actually really unimpressed with several of the “authentic” Cantonese dishes I ordered, because Cantonese cooking is very subtle and fragrant and when it’s made Western style it’s a lot sweeter, saltier and oilier. Cantonese white cut chicken is now one of my favourite foods ever, though.

Our local seafood restaurant was part of a chain until about 4 years ago. There were a few items on that menu that I really enjoyed, but aren't on the menu of the new restaurant. Most of the staff are still there, so I just ask for what it is I want, and they make it. They can't put it on the menu due to franchise rules, but we know just to ask.

A roadhouse opened near us, their first branch is a bit of a drive away but we used to go there quite a bit. The menu is bigger at the main one. So when we go to the smaller one closer to us, we ask if they have XYZ and they have yet to say no sorry we don't do it.

So I think it happens a fair bit. A KFC type chicken place does a secret menu. It's actually the staff menu but if you ask, they don't refuse you.