Copying restaurant recipes can be easy or hard. It depends on whether a dish is simple, as many side dishes tend to be, or complex, as many main dishes or entrees are--especially the ones that are considered to be a restaurant's "billboard" or signature menu item.
The key to becoming a skilled restaurant menu copycatter is to sample a wide variety of dishes from many restaurants. Also, you should try to train your taste buds and nose to be able to detect and differentiate between different spices, herbs and other flavorings. Make a list (mental or on paper) of all of the ingredients you think are in the next food item you have in a restaurant, and ask your waitperson to tell you if you pegged them correctly.
If the waiter, cook or manager of your favorite recipe is willing to give you a copy of the actual recipe used to create a particular dish, you are most of the way home to being able to copy it in your own kitchen.
Having the list of ingredients and some instructions for putting them together and preparing them is most of the battle, of course. But even then, you might have to compensate for not having some special cooking utensils or devices that the restaurant uses to make the dish. Or, you might have to scale down the recipe considerably if the recipe you're given is for making large batches at a time.
There are books available now that have worked out these problems for you. Their authors have spent many hours tracking down or figuring out scores of those secret restaurant recipes, testing them over and over, and then modifying them as needed for the average cook's kitchen.
Where there's a will there's a way. If it is your fondest desire to be able to copy your favorite restaurant's top recipe at home, know that you can do it ... so get to work!
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