Last week I had the pleasure of dining at Spezia, in Omaha, NE.

While I was looking over my available choices from the menu, I kept coming back to the fact that I just did not want any of those things that night. Sure, they have some nice looking stuff on their menu, but DO NOT WANT!

So I asked myself, if I order something not on the menu, will they indulge me? You can't expect that service from just any restaurant. Large chains, including fast food restaurants and restaurants designed around good convenient food (Chili’s, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, etc.), often will only entertain mild substitutions.

But, this being a small, kind of local place...I thought they might hook me up. I looked around the menu to get an idea of what items were available on other dishes and to understand what may be handy in the kitchen to be tossed in my dish. I finally went with grilled chicken breast over fettucini with alfredo sauce, peas, crimini mushrooms and prosciutto.

Each person I was dining with paused at least once to look at my plate and ask me, “What did you order again? That looks great.” Why? Because my dinner was awesome.

I have no idea how far they'll go to indulge my special requests, but each time I go there, I think I'm going to refine this dish a bit more. Eventually, I want to find it on the menu! Pasta alla Grigorio indeed.