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Sashimi Over Across Town

After a few years of apprenticeship in the restaurant business, I decided to look around for whatever next opportunity was available. After all, they couldn't ALL be assholes, right?

Feeling the same yen for opportunity, my boss/owner transitioned from active work to retirement in pretty much the same week.

Within hours I landed at a Pan-Asian restaurant of some local reknown and repute. 

Having never worked in a professional kitchen before, I was immediately assigned to the kitchen. An Asian kitchen. Well, the cooks were Mexican, but all cooks are Mexican. If the cook isn't Mexican, worry.

After a torrent of work over the ensuing few months, in which I learned an amazing amount, an opportunity arose in management, and I was hastily bundled off to the back office. 

Within weeks the Assistant Manager was no more and I was asked if I could fill-in for him over the ensuing weeks while a replacement person with suitable experience was found. Once again it was a torrent of work during which I learned an amazing amount.

And now since hiring of the new person has been accomplished, I can now settle-in to marketing and doing the things I do best. Although, I use the phrase "settle-in" loosely.

That is, until the next crisis ensues.

And that's why I haven't written.

Snark Attack

I have come to the conclusion that Yelp is a virtual rogue state for a coven of Cyberbullies. This, after suffering the slings and arrows of a couple of post-adolescent amateur restaurant reviewers online who, upon closer investigation, have turned out to have been "Yelp friends" in collusion all along, and who were both offhand, ill-toned and callow in their criticisms.

For those of you who don't know, Yelp is an online social network where civilians can review their experiences with local businesses. They form friend networks with other like-minded individuals and they award each other stars and what-all for their reviews, and as they progress they are reinforced by rising to an enhanced status on the network.

The concept is an interesting one because forever the public's only recourse against maliciously bad businesses was a report to the Better Business Bureau or the attentions of a hack television or newspaper consumer reporter who may or (probably) may not have take up their cause for redress. Or a picket line.

The problem is that the Yelp business model, as it is set up, encourages and reinforces blatantly bitchy behavior. Feel slighted by the shopgirl at Target? Slime her on Yelp and then twitter gaily with all of your other jujubee friends about it. I guess it gives them a sense of empowerment, but really its just sort of sad.

The one girl who ranted about us from last December was an out-and-out liar, and her friend's recent comments were merely ignorant. Its frustrating because there is no standard of professionalism, opinions are based on only one visit, and there is no honest public recourse for a challenge.

Your response choices are handy buttons that say "Helpful", "Funny" or "Cool".

REALLY?

Please, how about giving us a simple "Unhelpful" as an option? Even this little blog of mine has an open comment link, though its rarely availed of since everyone evidently agrees with me.

There is an owner's response link, but using it only encourages them, so that is a losing proposition no matter how you go at it.

And the really frustrating part is that their so-called "reviews" of businesses carry the same weight as that of a REAL journalist who actually knows what they are talking about, with the added annoyance that, long after they have left their momentary emotion behind for some other drama and forgotten what they were exacting revenge about, their internet shitpiles continuously circle the globe for eternity.

Its like the metaphor about gossip ... tear paper up and throw it to the wind; you never can take it all back and have no control over where it goes or the damage it wreaks.

I really doubt they care anyway. They really don't have to I suppose. They are protected by a network that doesn't allow the exact same public recourse within the same venue, plus they have the added cloak of anonymity.

But I do smell a class action lawsuit somewhere down the line. A cursory google will turn up that a few businesses have gone legal already. The network is eventually going to have to change their policies one way or the other.

But it does bring up an interesting concept ... few businesses aside from movies and theater suffer the lens of criticism more than restaurants ... what if other businesses really WERE reviewed the same way?

Drive-Thru Car Maintenance

So many oils to choose from, and the mechanic could not tell me the terroir or appellation of any of them. Great, so now how do I know if my fossil lubricants are Paleozoic or Cenozoic? What about pairing? Are they sweet or sour? Am I buying local? I may never know.

Toy Store

Really, with a baby in the stroller and two toddlers, you think they could spare an amuse bouche of free candy samples and give a mother a break. Couldn't find anyone to help me with the Legos, although my boy found the Matchbox and Hot Wheels selection was adequate yet overpriced. Doll aisle would be acceptable except that its crowded with annoying little Mommie-Wannabees.

The Big Box Hardware Store

Miles of endless aisles, one could search forever but never find The Truth. Disappointing hammer selection. When I asked the gruff salesman what else he had in the shape of tools, he looked me up and down with disdain and said, "I doubt you could handle it."

Peel 'em and Eat 'em Shrimp

Faced with pangs of hunger for something more than a baloney sandwich, yet not possessing the strength to prepare anything more complicated, I decided to go simple and messy.

The most difficult part was mixing the dipping sauces ... I chose to make classic seafood cocktail with LOTS of horseradish, creamy tartar with plenty of relish, capers, lime juice and cilantro, and for a Mexican touch, guacamole.

Chef at the restaurant thinks I put too much garlic in my guacamole ... for that matter so does my family in Mexico ... of course this is nonsense; you can never have too much garlic in anything  ;-)

The boiling water was salty-salty with a helping of San Francisco Bay seasoning, and I picked up a sourdough boule, just in case any sauces were leftover and wanting of attention.

All in all, it was a most satisfying dinner, whipped together pretty quickly and effortlessly. The most time was spent waiting for the photographer and food stylist.

On Being a Restaurant Reviewer: A Guide

What actually possesses a person to want to write restaurant reviews is beyond explanation. A simple answer is that he does it for the attention, which is ridiculous because attention is the last thing a good reviewer needs.

To this end, as a budding reviewer do not use a plain name to make your reservation. The surnames Smith or Jones have been done to death, and America is vastly more cosmopolitan these days. Choose something with more vowels than consonants and you will blend right in.

If your cover is blown at the door, don't write about it later. Nobody cares.

Complaining about the noise and temperature is fruitless. "Quiet" restaurants often close quickly because nobody goes to them, and your personal warmth can be well regulated by wearing pants. Move on.

If you want to maintain your anonymity, never ask what part of the Atlantic your salmon came from. Nothing will show your hand more. The question is probably unanswerable because who ever really knows where one's food comes from, and real guests are more concerned with having enough rolls.

Don't bitch about the service. You are gambling on the tender mercies of someone who, for their part, is sizing you up for a tip. After years of hard knocks, your server has developed the antennae of a customs official, and his vast experience tells him that you are, in a word, lousy. If you want excellent service, tip first and ask for extras later. Not only will this assure you the quality of service you have paid for, but oral/genital contact is not out of the question.

Actually, writing anything beyond a simple "Try the veal" once you get to your review is treading on dangerous ground because a reviewer who dwells on such details on the premise that "his readers demand it" is dealing cavalierly with his career, as he is depending on someone who may or may not chance upon his work while sitting on the toilet.

East Dallas Peregrinations

Today was a day of chores mixed with some light exploring.

I thought I would begin by taking some Fall photos, but there is not much color happening around here (yet) as there was last year ... but last year's color was more to the end of November, so we'll see what develops.

I went to Old East Dallas, to the Wilson Block of Swiss Avenue near downtown, but all the trees there are 120 year old live oaks; not much color there.

So I then went to unload some storage, and on the return leg I picked up some tamales and then went to La Huasteca, a store I saw days earlier in passing which I thought might have some Mexican honey from the Huasteca area. But no, it turned out to be a very lovely restaurant with plenty of ice cremes, pero no miel.

Across the street was Fruiteria Cano, my favorite place to get good fresh fruits. They sell fresh aguas drinks in many tropical flavors, fresh chunk fruits already cut-up for you, many paletas, which are Mexican fresh fruit popsicles, and ice cremes again. However, again no honey.

Finally, I was starving, so I went by La Princesa, my favorite Mexican restaurant that I have not been able to go to for a year or so because of the economy. I have joked in the past that the restaurant is actually a front operation for a vast ice creme empire, which in fact is true. Despite the glories of the restaurant, their primary business in the adjoining building is an ice creme plant of that makes frozen sweets that are shipped all over the Southwest.

I was expecting a Sunday afternoon throng, but as it turns out, I was the only one there.

During a lengthy discussion in Spanish with my server, she said that the crowds have not been by for some time now because of the economy and the shifting Hispanic work population in Dallas, so they usually close by six. This is truly terrible, because their food is EXCEPTIONAL. I have taken clients there from all over the world and they all have raved.

Chiefly, their Guiso de Res, an unctuous beef stew of tomatoes and chilis that ... ohhhhhh ... its just marvelous. I could have had TWO plates. I thought about asking for one to go.

So if you get a chance, drop by the intersection of Philip and Graham Street and give them a try and help keep a good thing going!

Critical Moment

Lately I have been rankled and I decided to sit down and try and discover why.

The Dallas Morning News brought on a new restaurant critic from the limping L.A. Times who was reputed to be not quite so generous in their reviewing, and as a matter of fact, had a tendency to be rather personal.

I pooh-poohed it to myself, until they reviewed the new restaurant of our former chef and raked her across the coals. True, we never got along for whatever reason, but I took no pleasure in the ember-rustling she received by the new Poison Pen.

Maybe it was just a one-off, bad as it was. Surely nobody meant to be hurtful or mean. But then another review appeared that even trashed another critic by association. And then another. Wow, this person was out for blood, and not the kind that seeps unctuously from a perfectly cooked steak.

But then a review actually glowed for one of those places with a sexy chef that charges for a compote of fruit what others pay for a black market pancreas, and which the kicky crowd will drop like a hot potato after ten months for something new.

Was I threatened? Was I thin-skinned? Could I be provincial enough to throw up a crenelated ten foot thick wall against any hostile encroachment against my fair city?

And then they wrote an in-depth article presuming to give Dallas tips on what it would take to be a great restaurant city.

CUH-mon.

Most people can't find their way around town without a Mapsco after six months, let alone prescribe ways to improve the city. How can anyone after so short a time have the slightest comprehension of what a place has to offer? How is that possible in any business?

And nowhere in the article was there any casual indication that the surface of what this city has to offer was even scratched. So many things would never have been said if it even had been.

And then it led to what I feared most: the article was suspiciously picked up by The New York Times at a time when their chief restaurant critic was leaving the paper. Now every snoot on the Upper West Side who'd  never seen Jersey was gonna weigh in on the yokels. Boring.

The Morning News blog then had a cutesy squib asking if it was weird to trumpet being picked up by the Times. Weird? No. Self-Servingly Narcissistic? Definitely.

I had run into this phenomenon before during the first year I went to college when some wag in the Times who had never set foot on soil called my school "an intellectual desert". No big donors that year.

I subsequently had dinner with a local legendary restaurateur who told me, "Nobody deserved a one-star more than [redacted], but it was still unnecessarily hostile. I hope they never come to my place. Who needs the hassle? My customers come because they like the food."

And there lies the rub. Sixty percent of a successful restaurant's business comes from repeat customers. If you can get them to come eight times a year you are batting a thousand. But diminishing returns naturally set in, people move, some casually drift elsewhere out of convenience, and you need to keep refreshing the crowd with new visitors. A vicious review can kill walk-in business.

Knowing the earnest work that goes into making a place successful, there is a helpless feeling when you know that you fate lies in the hands of the newbie leading the newbies. Your horse is a loser before it leaves the gate.

The most useful reviews, to me, come from the blogs. That's where the action is. People pay their own money and say what's-what way more readily. They enthuse as well as don't pull punches when a good right-cross is called for. On the whole, they're pretty accurate. You can read a whole section of diner's reviews on any one subject and get a great comprehension of what lies in store if you decide to sample a place for yourself.

So it points to a greater divide. Newspapers are the old paradigm, like when I was on the radio, where a few, yes, annointed folks get to control the arguement. It was fun while it lasted, but those days are so numbered.

So maybe dwindling circulation and even lower readership of the dead tree editions sort of make it all a moot point.

A cabbie who drove me home one night told me that our restaurant actually was a part of the "Dallas Reputation for food". That was quite a statement, and I kind of nodded and said, "Oh, that's nice." I mean, it seemed a little grand to say the least, until he said, "And I should know, I drive a cab from the airport and I hear people talk!"

That was the best review ever.

Hollandaise Holiday

In my youth I once asked a substance abuser why he abused substances.

"Because in an instant I can take a little vacation."

Things being as they are, and a real vacation being far, far away, one must improvise.

I first made eggs benedict when I was eighteen years old in my first apartment in college. Like every hugely ambitious cooking project I take on, it was an overwhelming success on the first go.

One taste and I thought, "Why am I not eating like this every morning for breakfast?"

The subsequent twenty failures told me why.

Actually, at this remove, I had not the patience, discipline or the equipment to make a decent hollandaise sauce on demand.

On the face of it, its ridiculously simple. One tablespoon of butter to each egg yolk, whisked with lemon juice and a little salt, pepper and cayenne over a light fire and - voila!! A bright and unctuous heavenly delight.

But examined more closely, you have to crack eggs open, separate the yolks from the whites, don't get any eggshell in anything, have your butter melted and ready, all your other ingredients set up and ready to go ... then as in all fine cooking, an element of chemistry enters into the production. Fats must co-mingle and enzymes combine, but in a strictly temperature-controlled environment or everything separates and it is a disaster!

Lately with the stresses of the times, eggs benedict seemed like the perfect cheap vacation ... only I've done a little twist. I make a thick sourdough grilled cheese sandwich with ham, stack a couple of fried eggs on top of that, then DROWN it in hollandaise and garnish it with parsely.

Proletarian ingredients exalted to great culinary heights.

The perfect antidote to the New Depression.

Restaurant Etiquette

Now that I have had a crash course in working at a fine dining establishment, I have done a lot of reading and research on the subject and have come up with a few suggestions for the aspiring diner.

Assuming you are dealing with a well-managed restaurant offering food bestowed from heaven, which is nessesarily my control subject for this digression, the following are a few rules you should have pasted to your foreheads for future reference.

1) If you make reservations, please keep them and show up on time. Patrons have no idea of the amount of work and planning and preparation that goes into executing a well-managed restaurant experience. It requires tectonic geography and complicated timing. Thus, if you have told the restaurant you are coming, they are planning upon you doing what you said you would do. Not only that, if you say you are arriving at eight, they naturally assume you will do so five minutes either side of eight, not an hour later. The well-bred and mannerly use their cellphones if they are stuck in traffic, or they call to say they can't make it. These people rightfully siteth at the right hand of their Maker.

All others will of course rightfully burn their nethers for all eternity.

You see, other people would like to be seated also, and they don't appreciate your table being held for 30, 40 or 50 minutes while you dither like a silly-billy. Get your act together! Put on your big boy/girl pants and look alive and show some spunk!

Even worse than laggards are the large parties who don't show up. No notice, no nothing. They confirmed their reservation as bald-faced as you please, and then they don't show up. Once again, other guests have to wait while an immaculately set table sits there in the middle of the room making a mockery of them in the lobby. In New York they charge you fifty bucks a head if you don't show up. We do that only on big holiday nights because once we were screwed by 50% no-shows. Food has been bought, staff has been scheduled in anticipation, other guests inconvenienced, and for what? Deplorable.

Conversely, arriving a little early always gets you seated almost immediately. I don't know why that is true, it just is.

2) If you and your date have been seated early in the evening, after about 2 hours move the night along to a private room. We had this happen the other night, and it is a phenomenon that is most responsible for people waiting in the lobby. Usually, two people eating can more than adequately absorb the maximum experience to be had in the dining portion of the date in an hour and a half, an hour-forty tops. Valentines night was filled with couples and they were all no longer than this. Its a rule and it just works out that way, partially because it is ungainly to try and mount your date in the restaurant, what with pedestal tables and such, but also because everyone knows it is rude as hell to monopolize a table beyond a certain period without further ordering and paying for your server's time. Later in the evening is fine, but much later and you run into the keeping-everyone-up-past-their-bedtime scenario. So, eat your food, have a good time, bon voyage and please come again.

We had an instance of an early seated couple who arrived promptly at 6:30PM, so good so far, and I allowed them two whole hours before we needed the table again for a table of six, which involved moving tables together. It was a packed night with enough challenges of it's own, but these people put down roots and set up housekeeping for three hours, thus unleashing a contagion of waiting for other patrons, for whom a generous application of comped drinks and appetizers assuaged their discomfort, barely.

3) You have been sat at the best table. This is the most perplexing behavior of all, at least to me. Whenever I am sat at a restaurant, I stay like a good pet. Besides being settled once I've been sat and not wanting to get up again, I assume I was placed there in order to give me the fastest and most convenient service possible for everybody concerned, from me to the waiters to the other guests. And you know what? I have learned I was right.

Personally, I do all sorts of things to assure this. First of all, our main room has no bad tables. It is far from the kitchen and has many interesting nooks and open vistas. I set early arrivals away from each other so they can discreetly converse. I put lovers in secluded places and pretty people in places others can see them so they can show off. Also I am trying to distribute the room evenly so waiters can give the best service possible.

However, there is a species of clientele straight out "The Lucy Show" that thinks we are out to disrupt their carefully balanced feng shui or self-esteem by seating them at what they feel is an inferior table. Now, if someone feels a draft or is claustrophobic or needs more legroom, no request could be more reasonable. Of course you should be accomodated.

However, table-hopping can get to be like knats on a pond surface if a good host isn't careful. We had an epidemic of this one night recently, made all the worse because it involved large tables. One large table changed twice. Have you ever heard of such a thing? We practically had to call Bekins and Mayflower to help with the moving. Another group, well, they just couldn't decide. I personally put together and broke down a six-place table into two four-tops and back again three times. An amused couple on the upper level was very entertained and offered to tip me for my inspired performance of the man who resisted strangling his guests into unconsciousness.

4) If you mistreat people who serve you food, you are fucking crazy. I don't use the f-word often here, so I hope you harken to this.

I would say the way-vast majority of people who leave the restaurant where I work are giddy to the point of irrational exuberance at the fulfillment and conclusion of their dining experience. Its almost spooky. Its like they've been to Disneyland. So I know that when somebody is disatisfied, they are quite probably mentally deranged.

I have never, very honestly, heard of these things happening at our place, I swear to God, but we all have heard of the vile and disgusting things done to the food of patrons who mistreat their waiters. Spitting into the soup is the least of it, so the less said, the better.

Despite this, there is a whole breed that likes nothing more than to bitch because they think it gets them better service, or somehow that it is the only way to get things they erroneously think are being kept from them. These are the same people who call talkradio shows. After they put a poor waiter through the wringer with their abuse, they are also the same people who leave an insulting tip. These folks have consumed alot of waiter spit in their lives, and only God knows what else, believe me.

After abusing her waitress all night at a big table and leaving a lousy tip (of course), one crazy woman pointed her finger at the owner after complaining about what she thought was lousy food and proclaimed that the only thing which would make her happy was a gift certificate for a free meal! I was surprised she wasn't late for a date on a streetcorner because a hustler is a hustler in my book.

As a civilian, I always have been polite and solicitous of my waiter no matter what the situation, and usually by the end of the night they are cutting my food for me and paying ME a tip.

Once again, good manners will get you everything you want in this world, in spades, and with an absolute minimum of effort.

5) Put away the cellphones.

Often I seat people, often a couple, and the moment I inform them who their waiter will be, out whip the cellphones and they begin texting. They don't even relate to each other, let alone me. Very odd.

One woman berated her kids for texting in public whilst waiting in the lobby for the valet. That was going a little far, but hey.

I have noticed very many people who receive cellphone vibrations in the dining room (I rarely hear them ring) will come to the lobby to speak on the phone, or will step outside. That's fitting and proper and very modern of them.

Otherwise, cellphones should be used for letting us know they are stuck in traffic and will be late, or for cancelling reservations, or for telling others in their party to get-a-move-on because their table is being seated. I can often do a traffic summary for the radio because of the mannerly guests who phone-in from all over to tell me of their situations. It's great because I can adjust the room accordingly if I know where people are and when they are coming, that way I can whisk them to a table the moment their dainty feet step inside the door.

6) If you work for a miserably failed and federally bailed-out financial services company, don't go to top-tier restaurants and act like pigs with a sense of entitlement.

I decline to say more at the risk of causing a taxpayer riot in the streets.

In Conclusion ...

So you see, given that the restaurant is doing everything in it's power, the problem really is other people and their deplorably bad manners. So the next time you have to wait an hour for a table, simply ask me who is holding you up, I will ever-so-discreetly and unobtrusively let you know, and when they finally walk out, you can slap them.

Midnight in the Kitchen

After a huge Saturday night of 92 covers, the stories from which I'll save for a future screed, I rewarded myself by having a late night dinner in the kitchen.

The waiters had already begun eating their repasts by the coffee station in between serving the last of the tables. Once my Kobe Burger with onion rings like Queen Anne's Lace was passed across the counter, I joined them and was as happy as an oyster who thought he had no pearls, but then found an extra one or two stashed away.

It was amusing as always the hear the stories of the night, the victories of service and the abysmal customer rudeness they had to endure, plus the mortifying mishaps (I accidentally spilled some ice on a table whilst helping fill water glasses. Luckily one of our crack waiters swept in instantly and joyfully quipped, "Isn't it great it wasn't wine!?" and everyone twittered happily and all was well ... I could have crawled into a hole).

Midway through my meal the waiters dispersed and one of the busboys standing by the cooking line said, "Oye! Why don't you come over here and eat with the Mexicans. You don't have to stand over there with the white people you know!"

Heavens, I thought to myself, once again my people have found me and I am home again.

The kitchen had cooked itself a huge pot of caldo camarrones, which was basically a shrimp stew in beef broth with potatoes and carrots and whatever else seemed right at the moment. They served me up a big steaming bowl with a fresh lime and bread to dip, and we all spoke in Spanish and laughed and ate and danced to ranchera music until late, when it was time to clean up.

It brought to mind other late, late night behind-the-scenes restaurant experiences, such as a full meal served in a little dirt floor Mexican taqueria in the middle of the night with as much warmth and grace as if it were hours earlier, and oysters on the half-shell at a favorite bar after closing when I was young, or a friend opening up a pizzeria he owned at 3AM after a night out with his friends and making pizzas for everybody, or partying in a musician's secluded New Orleans apartment while he was in-between sets.

Something about it is just so cool.