When eating at a restaurant, have you ever encountered hard raw/undercooked onions diced into the sauce?

I’m sensitive to onions. This would keep me from ordering any of the dishes with that specific sauce.

I’ve encountered this sort of thing at restaurants I “used to” visit…

@Silence04

Ha ha. If the rest of the food wasn’t so good and the prices so reasonable, this place would be on my “used to” list also.

Plus, it’s getting increasingly more difficult to find reasonably priced places that still cook all from scratch. So many of them resort to frozen pre-portioned food loaded with salt and preservatives that barely passes as food (just like the fast food places do. )

So, when there is one that cooks real food, I want to support and encourage. And when you live in the boondocks, choices are more limited :)

Ask if you can speak to the chef next time you are in and tell him what you told us. S/he should give a caring explanation and response.

I would guess onions are diced near that pot and some accidentally wind up
in there.

I agree talk to the chef. Find out if the onions should be there or not so you know whether to order it again.

I know that the onions belong there because a lot of the other onion pieces are nice and soft the way you would expect in a slow simmered sauce. I really don’t know of anyone or anyplace that makes spaghetti sauce without onions.

That being said, if a quarter to a third of them are raw I think that would be a lot more than accidental.

If it happens again I’ll definitely speak to one of the chefs. Apparently there is no one chef who is the “boss”.

In the past I have tried to find out what their soup of the day will be a few days in advance and was told by the manager that the chefs get together each day and decide which soups to make from whichever ingredients they have the most of.

I had always assumed that the soups were done on some type of regular rotation basis determined by the head guy and planned out in advance along with the daily specials but apparently not. I thought that was rather strange but I guess that’s the way this place functions.

If the food weren’t as delicious as it is, I definitely would drop them. Plus all the waitststaff are really pleasant and accomodating.

Is the restaurant Mexican?

I didn’t think that there were supposed to be zero onions in the sauce. I understood that your gripe is that there are some raw, or close to raw, onions in the sauce regardless of whether there were cooked ones or not.

OK I misunderstood your question when you said to ask if there should be onions there you meant raw onions.

No, the place is not Mexican. It’s more Greek than anything. But it’s listed as an American Diner.

I only asked if it was Mexican, because my MIL uses small diced raw onions on several dishes. The Greeks I’m not sure. They do use raw onions on gyros and salad. I realize they are Greek in the way that so many diners are owned by Greeks (just to go ahead and mention a stereotype) but the place mainly serves American food. Still, it might be a thing that certain sauces they add raw onions. If they toss them in right before they put it on your food you might be able to 86 them. Think about it, if they have a sauce on the burner through dinner service all the onions would cook.

It’s one thing to use raw diced onions in a salad-type dish or tacos, etc. where you expect to encounter some crunch.

It’s another thing altogether to encounter it in spaghetti sauce. I have yet to encounter anyplace or anybody who uses diced raw onions in a simmered spaghetti sauce

I watch a fair number of cooking shows and have seen absolutely no one who does that with spaghetti sauce.

Even with Gazpacho, a cold soup, they purée the heck out of everything.

I’ve seen some pretty esoteric ingredients and dishes on Food Network but it’s not as if putting raw onions in spaghetti sauce is the latest avant garde technique or something.

There is no spaghetti sauce which calls for crunchy raw onions. It just isn’t done.

Does your MIL add raw diced onions to her spaghetti sauce?

I agree the raw onions is weird. I still think it’s some sort of accident, because I think it’s so odd.

My MIL cooks from scratch every day and I’ve never seen her make spaghetti sauce. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pasta with red sauce at her house ever. She does make a variety of salsas, and usually the onion would either be cooked or raw, but not both in one salsa. I’m with you in your like of thinking. Although, some things are topped with raw onions and cilantro and meant to be eaten with an additional sauce.

If you ask the chef, let us know what he/she says. I’m assuming this happened to you more than once. You aren’t basing this Q off of one experience are you?

No, not just one time. It didn’t happen every time but often enough that each time I ordered a dish with tomato sauce, I would ask the waitress to ask the cooks if the sauce had any uncooked onion chunks among the rest of the well cooked sauce.

I warned that if I’m finding crunchy onions, the dish will be going back. So, if she wished to save herself the hassle of the return trip and substituting another entrée, it would be in her own best interest to ascertain this beforehand. But the cooks response to her question was often far from accurate.

But I finally quit ordering anything with tomato sauce altogether since sending back a dish and waiting for another was just too much of a PITA to deal with and left me out of sync with everybody else at the table.

My theory on why it happens is that if they’re running low on sauce, they likely add another can or more of tomato purée along with the onions and after a few minutes of mixing thoroughly and heating up figuring it won’t be that noticeable. But it is.

Onions don’t take very long to break apart. They could boil them in salted water or broth for 10 minutes before adding them to stretch the sauce, or put them in the blender with some sauce and then add it.

I would “complain” to management about it. Or, if you do ever order it again and it happens, take a photo. Add it to a tripadvisor post.

It sounds like you have done everything you could warning the waitress. When you send it back or point it out what does the waitress say?

My guess is the cooks still
perceive the raw onions as cooked onions. They are heated probably to some extent I would guess. That’s probably the miscommunication.

Usually, when making spaghetti sauce, you would saute the onions and garlic first until the onions are soft. That is the classic way to include onions so something is very bizarre with these renegade raw onions.

@JLeslie

I agree that they can do something, even pureeing the hell out of them before adding to the sauce.

The waitress was fine. She realized that I was trying to save her the hassle of extra trips. The waitresses have never been the problem.

@janbb

Bizarre sums it ip nicely. So this is why I was curious if others have experienced the same thing ever.

Onion terrorists or infiltrators? A fifth column? The onion who came in from the cold? Onion on a Hot Tin Stove?

:) :) :)

I love raw onion and frequently order them on the side to eat with my meal, so it wouldn’t bother me.
I’m guessing that the onions are left fairly firm when the sauce is fresh so it doesn’t have the consistency of tomato soup after it stands a while. As you suggested, they are probably blending new sauce with old, making it inconsistent.

A side note: all the full service restaurants that I worked in determined the soup of the day, that day. Why? In a word, leftovers. Say the dinner special last night was broiled lobster, and there were 10–15 left over. Viola! Soup du jour: lobster bisque!