It’s always a challenge cooking for others. For me it’s not really the quantity of food or even timing the meal so that all the dishes are ready for the table at the same time. The hardest part is anticipating people’s’ tastes. For example, when I make jambalaya, I like a kick beyond that of some good andouille sausage. Finding a well-seasoned chunk of tasso along with a fairly liberal dose of cayenne can do it for me but there are very few people for whom I cook that like that sort of heat. A splash of hot sauce at the table isn’t the same thing – it’s a sharp “forward heat while cooking the spices into the dish is a slower, more mellow burn. Still, one has to know one’s consumer (as I always remind us here) so I tone it down in most cases.
Taste isn’t just something that applies to food. It’s easy enough to season a dish in a way that makes you happy as a cook, but unless you’re a well-known chef who has developed a palate that others find appealing, you’re probably going to under-season and let people add salt, pepper, hot sauce, or whatever else makes them happy (I just shuddered as I recalled a niece pouring ketchup over a delectably spiced dish years ago). As businesspeople, we have to assess our tastes continually and remember that there are as many permutations of it as there are people.
Very few business leaders can impose their tastes on others. Even a guy like Steve Jobs failed to do so from time to time (remember the antenna debacle on the iPhone, which was a design issue? Customers got fed up with the dropped calls even if it looked pretty). Listening to the social sphere, reading your data, getting regular customer service reports, sentiment analysis, and lust plain talking to people is a critical part of assessing taste.
How’s your palate these days?
Consult Keith 