Have you ever heard of Pozole? It's an amazing, delectable soup made from pork and hominy. As far as I know, it originated in Mexico, but don't quote me on that. (You can, however, quote Wikipedia, and they say it's from Mexico: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole.)
The cafeteria in my building offered it on their soup bar today. I was thrilled! The cafeteria usually offers standard American food, and rarely ventures into ethnic cuisine except for the occasional taco or corned beef brisket. I scooped up some yummy soup, then looked around for the toppings. Ok, where'd they go?
Pozole is traditionally served up with shredded cabbage, radishes, lime wedges, onion, avocado, chiles, and tortilla chips. They had saltines. Now, I've never had pozole with saltines, and I wasn't about the start today. Seemed to me a little like substituting green peas for red beans in your chili - you could, but why would you want to? I figure I'm in a cafeteria with a salad bar, I should be able to get what I need. Plus, there's a little convenience store across the hall. I work in a large office building with a variety of people, so they've got to have at least some of these things, right?
Wrong. After wandering around and checking for the various toppings that I like, I start to get upset. If you are going to offer up a traditional ethnic dish, shouldn't you also offer up the traditional go-withs? If I go to China and decide I want a burger (why I would do this is beyond me - I'm in China! - but humor me), I would also like, at the least, a bun, ketchup, and lettuce. I would not be terribly happy if I had to venture to three different stores to buy these things, either. If you're going to sell the burger, sell the burger trappings.
But here I am, in a metro area, unable to find onion, avocado, limes, or tortilla chips to enjoy with my soup. The taco bar usually has chips, but not today. Of all days they pick to not offer chips, it has to be the one day they should. Go figure. But, they had shredded lettuce, which is a fair substitute for cabbage. I head to the convenience store to peruse their chip offerings. I'm only looking for plain tortilla chips, which are amazingly popular in my neck of the woods. Of course I can get some. But alas, I cannot. I can have any flavor of Doritos® I would like. They also have a variety of Corn Nuts®. And they have three different flavors of Fritos®. Granted, these are all corn based, but don't quite fit the bill.
My soup is cold, my lettuce is getting soggy, so I cave and buy Doritos® Nacho Cheese flavor. As I sit at my desk, eating lukewarm pozole with wilted lettuce and Doritos®, it occurs to me that I have not created a taste sensation.
Is it too much to ask that companies put a little thought into what they offer? If you want to take the next step and offer something unusual, go right ahead. But please, take some time to research and do it right.
