The Signature Dish

On my trip to the slightly surreal gated communities in Surrey this week, we ate at a delightful, if very expensive, restaurant. As seems to be the norm, there was a "signature dish". It led me to ponder - what constitutes a signature dish?

If it is a dish that nobody else can make, with ingredients they cannot access, that showcase exceptional skills, that would count. In this case, however, the signature dish was good but not outstanding and one I would expect to see on the menu at any similar restaurant. It seemed to have the same characteristics as one of those rubber stamp signatures used years ago to make the task of signing many documents less tedious or the scanned signatures found at the bottom of emails.

The reality is that every piece of work we do carries our signature, whether we work in a call centre or run a corporation. We are not machines, so whatever the interaction, it bears the imprint of who we are, how we behave, and our level of skill and commitment.

The thought th…