Default sauces

At a shawarma place, I asked for fattoush dressing on my salad. What arrived was toum, the garlic sauce. Toum is great at what it does. It's also garlic whipped up with a lot of oil and salt, and it was not what I ordered.

Kitchens have a default pour. If you say "dressing," or say nothing at all, you get whatever goes on everything. The default is rarely the light one.

So now I name the exact dressing I want, every time, and I ask for it on the side. Not "the dressing." "Fattoush vinaigrette, on the side, please. No toum." It feels fussy. I do it anyway.

The same goes for white sauce, house dressing and "a little something on top." If I didn't name it, I assume it's coming.

At home, it's simpler: my yogurt dressing goes on everything, and nobody pours it but me.