That’s how we make it. That’s your food.

When my niece Molly was in her waitress-playing stage – she was age three or so, but by that point had already eaten out often enough to know how to take and deliver an order – her restaurant had a somewhat limit menu. It served something called “shambooey” and desert was either raspberry or chocolate “tinoconti”. When Molly put your order down in front of you, she always informed her patrons, “That’s how we make it. That’s your food.”

As I read through last week’s New York Times article on so-called “Puritan Chefs,” Molly’s restaurant came back to mind.

Apparently in New York City, and other fine dining precincts, some restaurants are going beyond “we don’t serve” and “it’s not on the menu” to an iron-chef, tough yez, hard-line approach to what might seem a fairly modest and non-aberrational request.

For one thing, some restaurants don’t allow you to make any substitutes.

Which, to some extent, makes sense. If you’re a fancy-ass establishment, you probably only purchase enough Brussels sprouts to take care of the number of Brussels sprouts accompanying dishes you expect to serve. Someone asking for, say, pea tendrils instead could really set the plats spinning in the kitchen.

And I suppose that in factory restaurants, where a robotic vernier caliper allots the precise number of French fries to accompany the rib eye steak, you could upset the Applebees cart by asking for something green.

Still, in my go-to restaurants – which are in the middle of the continuum between fancy-ass and factory -  I’ve been known to ask for swap-outs, and appreciate being accommodated.

For one thing, I don’t like stand-alone cooked carrots.

Raw carrots, I love. Carrots in soups, stews, and chicken pot pies: yum! But, for whatever reason, I am generally not a big fan of cooked carrots as veg. I’m not a fanatic here. It’s not a matter of give me broccoli or give me death, but, hey, ask and you shall receive.

Unless you’re in some snooty joint in New York, where the “customer is not always right.”

One place won’t serve de-caff coffee. Which is probably not that big a deal, since half of them will slip you caff as de-caff, anyway, as I saw with my own two eyes as my waitress pour my de-caff from the same pot from whence she poured my dining companion’s caff. When I called her on it, she denied everything.

Another place mentioned in the article had a two-fer going fer it. They wouldn’t serve take out espresso unless you bought or brought your own ceramic cup, since, in their view, espresso was meant to be drunk hot and fast, not taken to go in a heat-dissipating paper cup. You might well ask, what’s it to them if you down a cold espresso in your office. I sure did.

This same place once “refused to grind two pounds of espresso beans at once because he was concerned that the coffee would lose its freshness before [the customer] could brew it.

Putting me in mind of a restaurant in Maine where the waiter informed us, after my husband order a steak well-done, that “the chef might not do that to a beautiful piece of meat.” Well, the cattle’s past caring, so you might well ask, what’s it to them if you want to saw through a tough, grey well-done steak. I sure did. (As did my husband.)

At some places, there’s no accounting for taste. They won’t let you request a varying degree of spiciness. Or they won’t serve ketchup with their fries (wonder what they’d do if you slipped in a couple of packets from Mickey D’s and furtively ripped and dripped). Others don’t put out salt and pepper because the chef is a perfectionist who apparently knows the right way to eat, even if you don’t.

Then there was this:

New York has a hallowed history of persnickety cooks: Kenny Shopsin became something of a cult figure for the litany of rules — including no parties bigger than four and no more than one order of any particular dish per table — enforced for years at Shopsin’s diner in the West Village, now a small outpost at the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side.

“No more than one order of any particular dish per table”?

What’s that about?

And note to those suffering from peanut, shell-fish and citrus allergies. If you’re heading out to a David Chang restaurant, don’t forget your epi-pen, since in Mr. Chang’s “personal opinion” you might be fibbing just a tiny bit:

“To do this ‘Can I get this with no olives, can I get the salad chopped, sauce on the side’ — some of those special requests are ridiculous. My personal opinion is that a lot of people say they have a special allergy or they don’t like something so they can get better service.”

In my personal opinion, people say that they have a special allergy or that they don’t like something because they actually have a special allergy or don’t like something.

I’ve known several folks with very severe food allergies. One was to anything with citric acid in it – and you’d be amazed how many things have citric acid in them – and another to shellfish.

Both of these guys had near misses, brushes with death by anaphylaxis, even after they’d been assured that the food they ordered was allergen-free. And neither was looking for the better service provided by an EMS with a gurney.

My favorite fuss-budget restaurant mention was this one:

At Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte, a Parisian import in East Midtown that offers a set menu of salad and steak frites, diners are asked a single question: Would they like their meat cooked well, medium, rare or bleu (extra rare). Woe unto those who want it medium rare.

“We have no medium rare in France, and we are copying the French way,” said Darin Nathan, a partner in the restaurant, adding that French rare is a close alternative. (A request for guidance from a waitress at a recent lunch elicited only the curt statement, “Rare is red, medium is pink.”)

Mais, oui. Why bother to kindly note that “rare is red and medium is pink” when you can snottily put that fauve of a patron down with a curt snarl.

Perhaps the waitress was not aware that, in Paris, they may not have medium rare, but they don’t give 20% tips either.