Price disclosure required on restaurant specials

Q. Are restaurants legally bound to tell you the prices of the specials?

A. Yes, it turns out.

After complaining in last week's column about restaurants that don't, I received an e-mail from the office of Suffolk Legis. Lynne Nowick.

Nowick, of Smithtown, introduced a measure, signed into law in 2008, that requires restaurants to provide the prices of daily specials in writing. "The price of food items shall be set forth on a restaurant's regular printed menu, on a printed daily specials page and/or posted in a manner and location so the price of food items is readily observable by patrons," according to Suffolk Local Law 52-2008.

The law is enforced by the Suffolk County Office of Consumer Affairs (631-853-4600), and restaurants that run afoul of it can face a fine of up to $500.

After Suffolk passed the law, Nassau got into the act. David Denenberg, legislator from Merrick, sponsored a measure that became law on Feb. 15, requiring restaurants to post the specials, in writing, either on each table, along with the regular menu, or on a "prominently displayed" blackboard or whiteboard. The penalty is up to $100 for the first violation and up to $250 for violations thereafter. Nassau County's Office of Consumer Affairs can be reached at 516-571-2600.

As soon as I learned about Nassau's law, I called Il Mulino in Roslyn. Il Mulino's printed menu is a document that only rank amateurs consult; the restaurant's "real" menu is the exhaustive list of daily specials recited by the captain. (The last time I ate at Il Mulino, I asked the captain for the price of the daily specials and he reluctantly fetched me a printout.)

Il Mulino's co-owner, Brian Galligan, said he had not heard of the law, but that two Saturdays ago - six days after the law took effect - a customer complained that he had not gotten a specials menu with prices. "We always had a printed specials menu," Galligan said, "but the captains didn't always give it to the customers." After last month's complaint, he said, "I had a meeting with my staff and told them from now on, we give people the specials menu."

Q. What can I do about sauces and frying oil that splatter all over the stove?

A. You can buy a splatter guard - a round, metal-rimmed, mesh screen that sits on top of a skillet and stops its contents from leaping out. Splatter guards are sold in houseware stores and most supermarkets and usually come in packages with two or three different diameters. To block the splatterings of small pots, you also can use an upended mesh strainer.