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Much more than secret sauce

What you see on the menu is not all you can get at many Lodi restaurants

Newsflash! Starbucks offers 8-ounce short-sized hot drinks. It will only be given to you if you order a "short," rather than a small. But this 8-ounce size, which contains the same amount of espresso as a tall size, will save you about 30 cents.

You won't find it on their menu. No, this is just one of Lodi's best kept dining secrets.

For many Lodi residents, ordering a meal can be akin to participating in a secret society. There's no membership fee, secret handshake or passwords, but you'll only find out about them through word of mouth.

Just a few examples that you won't find on the menu:

• Mar y Tierra serves chimichangas. Pick your fillings and they will make it.
• Wendy's offers no-meat junior cheeseburgers for 99 cents, which comes with American cheese, pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard. Ask for it "with everything" and you'll also get lettuce and tomato for no additional cost.
• Matsuyama Sushi will put together any custom sushi roll not on the menu, if they have the ingredients.
• In-n-Out Burger has a lengthy secret menu that includes triple meat and cheese burgers and Neapolitan shakes.
• Peppermint mochas, a seasonal drink, are served year-round at Starbucks.
• McDonald's still sells the ever-popular Two Cheeseburger Extra Value Meal for $4.60, even though it is no longer on the menu.
• Taste of Thai and Busaba Thai in Lockeford will substitute any meat entrée for tofu.
• School Street Bistro serves up chicken piccata and chili cheese fries.

"If we have the ingredients in the kitchen to make something and it's not a major ordeal, we'll do it," said Will Ownby, chef at School Street Bistro.

Three items not listed on King Tsin’s menu. The restaurant will strive to meet their customers’ dietary needs, owner Teresa Ju said. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Some other regularly ordered items that are not on the School Street Bistro menu include health conscious requests like bunless burgers wrapped in a lettuce leaf, penne pasta with portobello mushrooms and baby spinach tossed in olive oil and sole sautéed in olive oil.

And some Lodi residents take matters into their own hands.

Lodi Coronary Health Improvement Program (CHIP) leader Dr. George Chen and his wife Irma have worked with restaurants to create low-fat and low-salt alternatives to regular menu items.

For example, at Yen Ching, they request an eggless mushu vegetable dish and eggplant with garlic sauce cooked with less fat.

"Actually when we share our principles with (our CHIP classes), many will just go to a restaurant and ask for what Dr. Chen orders," said Irma Chen.

Lodi vegan Danny Vierra and his family also know where to go for entrées that meet his dietary needs.

Some of his favorite spots includes Porfi's, where he orders the fajitas without meat ("I can get beans and rice, guacamole and corn tortillas and he'll give me extra tomatoes," said Vierra), Taste of Thai, where he orders the pad thai with tofu instead of meat, and even Round Table Pizza in Stockton, where he has been known to bring his own cholesterol-free soy cheese for them to top onto his pizza.

But Vierra has been a regular at King Tsin for over 15 years and has helped the School Street-based Chinese restaurant to design some vegetarian dishes that he likes.

Vanessa Kosta takes an order from Adriana Tenbrink as she idles in the drive-through at In-N-Out in Lodi. (Angelina Gervasi/News-Sentinel)

Among them are mushu vegetable, tofu salad and a meatless, soy-based chicken, which can be substituted for any of their chicken dishes like their house chicken, their lemon chicken and their cherry chicken.

"I really like their food and they're local and they were workable," said Vierra, explaining why he picked King Tsin.

Word has spread about these offerings, despite their absence from the menu.

Instead of adding these specialty entrées to the existing menu, owner Teresa Ju has added a one-page preface to the menu, explaining their willingness to meet their customers' dietary needs.

"The menu is large enough," Ju said. "And everybody knows the menu already."