Knife's Edge - Restaurant Rants & Raves

Let's Talk About Reservations

Since we opened we have had a no-reservations policy. That changed to accepting reservations for parties of 6 or larger because we were getting our asses kicked by large groups. We have a huge dining room, tables spaced widely apart and since we encouraged people to just show up, they did but in groups of 12, 17, 22 and we just weren't prepared for them.

Things work pretty well this way although some get miffed we don't take reservations for deuces. From the diners perspective I understand why they want reservations, they want to know they're getting seated. From our perspective however, we wanted to be a locals friendly place where our year round residents aren't bumped out of the dining room in favor of out of towners. Also, reservations require confirmation and juggling of tables and because many diners don't keep their reservations (making multiple reservations at 4 or more restaurants and deciding at the last minute where to go) careful overbooking. We don't have the staff to deal with this and since our space is so large seating is rarely an issue. Yes, sometimes people have to wait but usually no more than they do in a busy place where they have reservations.

The downside of course is we never know how many people are going to show up. We've tracked our numbers every year and have system of averaging customer counts which is relatively accurate and we'll notice trends like for a few weeks being 15% over the average, etc. Then there are the mid-winter nights we expect to do 40 and 85 show up. As an old friend used to say "Honey, you've got high class problems now."

Believe me, I'd rather have more show up than less, but in the middle of it when you're wondering why everyone in town decided to show up on this particular night, it's not much fun. Still, it's more fun than sitting in a cubicle.

Dining Celebrities

We had a bona fide celebrity in for dinner last night. no, not Hilary Swank, Jamie Foxx,  or any other Oscar nominee. We had a real celebrity in. The actor who did the voice for Big Bird on Sesame Street. The funny part was there was a young woman at another table wearing a Big Bird t-shirt.

I don't know if he ordered chicken.

Putting the Hospital Back in Hospitality

No, this isn't about food poisoning, or contract foodservice. Four or five years ago, during winter, we had a couple in and before their entrees arrived the wife asked the GM where the hospital was. The husband was having a heart attack. After they left, I suggested since it was slow, perhaps the GM could bring the food down to the wife. The hospital is about a mile away from us.

The GM did, the husband recovered and the couple was very appreciative and came to to dinner every time they were in the area, eventually buying a house and moving here. They've since returned to the East Coast.

In our constant evaluation of our business I have had the growing feeling we're no longer as hospitable as we could be. After a conversation about one of our servers who always exhibits exemplary warmth and patience I was finally able to articulate the feeling by using the above story as an example. I'm not sure that the people we are now would have done the same thing. We may have thought "Oh how terrible" and perhaps checked in with the hospital later that evening or the next day.

Small businesses are often worried about money, in winter, we're no exception. Small-town restaurant owners are very public figures and are barraged (as are all in the hospitality business) with requests for donations, complaints both reasonable and un, and attacks both personal and business related. Under these circumstances it's a challenge to be hospitable. You don't want give away the store but being stingy with your customers isn't the way to go either.

The main thing for us is to separate work from our lives. Last night the GM said "But, we are the restaurant." My replay was "No, the restaurant is our business. It pays for our lives." By depersonalizing things it's easier to hear feedback. We had taken a good step toward this a few months ago by redesigning our comment card in a way which felt would invite more negative feedback. We braced ourselves for the bizarre and varied responses we were sure to get and to our surprise the most common response has been "don't change a thing, you're great". The negatives we've received have for the most part been honest attempts to help us improve. Some of the issues we can address and some we can't. At least we put ourselves in a position to hear them.

So, hopefully we're once again the place to go if you're having a heart attack.

How Were The People?

This is my nightly question to the GM. We started this a few years ago when we realized that we could have a wonderful night with one customer having a negative comment or obnoxious behavior and that one person would cause us to lose sleep, argue with each other, and forget the other hundred people that evening who had a terrific time.

So, we have made a habit of going over as many tables in the dining room as she can remember and she tells me about her conversations with them, how they liked the food, any comments they made, how they found us, where else they've been, etc.

Even though it's tiresome for her sometimes it's been a very valuable tool for us because it allows to identify weak points before they become problems and it reinforces that we are doing a damned good job.

We're very lucky to have the luxury to do this. I know it has helped me get more sleep.

The Real Replacement

We'd like to stop carrying sodas entirely, and of course we could. We own the restaurant and can make that kind of decision after all. We also don't want to alienate customers so we've been looking for better sodas to carry.

BTW, this post is inspired by Accidental Hedonist v2.1 who was writing about a new favorite flavored water.

Here's what we need to achieve. We have to replace Coke, Sprite & Root Beer with something we can be proud of and our customers will embrace. We also have to have a distributor who delivers to us. We could have things shipped but after product cost, adding shipping will put prices at a level no one will pay.

Here's what we've tried so far.

Fentimans, British company, professional rep, got us samples right away. Tried Curiosity Cola, Ginger Beer, Shandy and Seville Orange Jigger. We really wanted to like this one. The bottles are nice, the rep easy to deal with but alas, they all tasted a little flat and just weren't it.

Steaz Green Tea Soda in a word, no.

Hank's Beverages Out of PA. Tried Orange Cream, Root Beer, Berry Soda, Vanilla Cream and Black Cherry. The Orange was close, Vanilla Cream wasn't bad, the others didn't make it.

Abita Root Beer (no website) made with Louisiana Cane Sugar sure tasted like it. Not bad but too much sugar.

ROTO Frizzante (no website) citrus & bitters soda. The kitchen crew liked it but we knew the customers wouldn't. At least not those we're trying to appease with the sodas.

IZZE we don't want to carry because the pizza place next door has it and we have a kind of unspoken agreement with them that we won't step on each others toes.

Boylan's Premium Beverages were the best we tried. We'd carry them but the area rep is a half-assed one person outfit who's three hours away and comes to deliver "every month or so". We don't have the space to store cases of soda. Plus he wouldn't get samples to us, we had to buy them in SF.  He's also the rep for GuS Grown-up Soda which we haven't tried but I know they serve it at The French Laundry and Per Se. We've got our local beer distributor working on both of these companies to see if they can carry their products up here.

We also haven't tried Jones Soda and haven't called their rep.

Some other qualifications. We'd prefer to carry something somewhat unique so things like Sobe, Tazo teas, etc are out. There are also a lot of juice based seltzer beverages out there like Fizzy Lizzy, The Switch, etc. but if were selling juice and water, I'd make my own. Plus, people looking for Coke don't want juice, trust me.

So, I tried making a batch of ginger syrup and running it through our post mix system. The results including making a horrendous noise of spurting co2 during service were less than successful. I will however try again. I suppose we should also investigate Torani syrups to mix with carbonated water but I know the GM will say it's too much trouble for the waiters on a busy night.

Some of this was prompted by an article in the NY Times by Kim Severson Juice for caviar, soda for foie gras about high end restaurants offering pairings of alcohol-free beverages being paired with tasting menus. Great idea and a really hard sell for us. In an area where dressing for dinner means to most people, scrape the dirt off your shoes we have a hard enough time selling Pellegrino much less convincing people a glass of house-made cherry-lime ginger ale would be great served with semolina-fried oysters and cucumber mâche salad spiked with ginger and loquat.

Some of this was also prompted by Killer Coke which documents murder of union activists at bottling plants in Colombia, SA.

for the time being we have ordered a case each of Baron's Ginger Ale and Ginseng Cola. Not the greatest but a stopgap until we can find the real replacement. I'll also test the waters with some more inventive alcohol-free drinks (according to trade magazine Market Watch, they sell better if you label them alcohol-free, rather than non-alcoholic).

If you know of any great solutions or have insight into how much syrup goes into a glass of soda (I could figure it out but I'm being lazy) let me know.

Culinary ADD

I can see why many restaurateurs open multiple locations. Besides the financial rewards (or the financial risk looking from another perspective) it gives you the opportunity to feed many passions. Whenever I'm working on menus I find myself with a sort of culinary ADD, one moment entranced with Indian flavors, another with fried chicken, then Slavic-inspired followed by Vietnamese, well you get the picture.

I don't want the restaurant menu to be a confused mess of cultures however so I keep trying to redefine who we are in relation to where we are and who our customers are. In doing so I look back to childhood food memories to draw on.

I realized very few of my food memories are about family, or home-cooked meals other than ones I cooked myself. It seems all those self-cooked meals taught me valuable lessons.

I vividly remember my first "real" culinary foray at 9 or 10 years old. I was to make dinner and after studying the Joy of Cooking decided on Chicken Paprikash with Spaetzle. The chicken was great and I still love to eat it today. I didn't realize you had to cool the spaetzle after initial cooking so it congealed into a giant mass not long after dinner. Fortunately 2 busloads of people arrived that evening (we lived in a small commune and some friends were passing through the area) and devoured the entire thing.

I remember also cooking a steak for myself at perhaps 11 or so. Shirtless, in the Northern Florida wet heat. Hot oil, tossed in steak, blistered chest.

We lived all over the Eastern part of the states and going out to eat could mean fried catfish and hush puppies at roadside stands, BBQ brisket, beans and slaw with Coca-Cola at Bonnie's Beanery somewhere in or outside of Austin, TX, blintzes at Ratner's in NYC where I examined the menu for a interminable length of time until someone asked what I was looking for. "The meat" I replied, and then tried to understand the concept of a restaurant that didn't serve meat.

Before you get the idea my childhood was spent exploring delicious food all over the country let me assure you there was plenty of KFC, McDonald's, leaden homemade 100% whole wheat bread (one of my favorite jokes about being a hippie kid is you grow up thinking a Tiger's Milk bar actually tastes good), and of course the good old school lunch program, without which I may have perished.

As an adolescent on my own on the streets of NY I tried, rather indiscriminately I'd say, all kinds of things. Pierogis with a hangover on Avenue A, cabbage soup with bits of chicken and lots of dill at Kiev after playing CBGB's, the Greek diner on 17th St after Max's Kansas City, first discovery of sushi, stuffed derma and monumental deli sandwiches at the 2nd Avenue deli, pizza all over but especially at Stromboli on 2nd Avenue, Indian food on 6th St, where one side of the entire block was nothing but Indian restaurants, gyros and Italian ices, Philly cheesteaks, sausage and peppers sandwiches at the Feast of San Genaro, fried calzones, all the wonders of Chinatown.

After moving to California I was exposed to a more real version of Latin American food and all kinds of Asian cuisines. Going to cooking school solidly grounded me in French technique and a trip to France made me fall in love with Paris and French food.

So, is it any wonder I can't make up my mind what to put on the menu? I'd love to have a restaurant for each of the things I really love which are (at the moment), Southern food, Eastern European-Slavic food, Jewish delicatessen, all kinds of Asian cuisine, Charcuterie and Mediterranean. But I don't have enough money for that and there aren't enough customers here to go around so until/if we decamp these will have to be on hold.

Tonight's Special is...

Quick note on last night's specials. 12oz Rib eye with Hoisin-Red Wine Sauce (spice rubbed with cardamom, clove, red chile flake, sesame seed, cinnamon, cumin and mace) and Sauteed Skate with Butternut Squash and Beets and Sherry Vinegar Jus.

Surprised the skate sold at all. Didn't do a tremendous amount but it moved. The steak of course sells itself.

Also had a Potato-Asparagus Salad with Steelhead and Black Olive Vinaigrette. Sold out but didn't have many to start. Actually I sent two out to a table of old friends. Well, one of them was an old friend, the owner of a  Napa Valley winery whom I had worked with in North Carolina. It was really great to see her, albeit for a few minutes since we were busy. We're overdue for a valley jaunt, so maybe this spring we can get together with her, her husband and two young ones.

Some kinder words about the sous chef

Had a good night with the sous. I realize I've complained a good bit about him so I feel I need to clarify a little. He's at heart, a good person and I recognize we have more in common than either of would probably want to admit. We're both loners to a degree. We may have a number of acquaintances but let's just say our home phones are not ringing off the hook. We were both outsiders at school, having that combination of intelligence and willingness to display it which isn't endearing to our peers. We're both mama's boys whose father's were gone early on. We've both at various times sought solace in drink or other substances.

We have a number of differences as well but that's not the source of conflict. Although superficially I'd like to work with someone who had a lot of the same interests, either musically, artistically etc. that's not really important.

Also, some of the things I lay at his door are really mine. The level of disorganization belongs to me. I often wish I had been wise enough to take a job with a really precise chef who would have given me hell about organizing. Some of his dealings with coworkers are in part my fault as well. The sous position is extremely tough because I expect him to run the place but he has no real level of authority.

So what's the problem? The involvement with food, his level of personal responsibility and the seeming lack of pride in himself. Every menu change I ask for ideas and over 3 years I can only think of one concrete idea he's put forth. He's really intelligent but uses that intelligence mostly to make jokes and puns. It would be so refreshing to see him apply that to a more positive creative outlet. I'm just not sure if he's interested in cooking professionally anymore. And I'm not sure he'd be aware of it if he weren't. He doesn't seem to read much about current happenings in the food world and he never seems to go out to eat (not that's there's much around here anyway). He at times has interest in food but usually relating to his dinner (sometimes the food for a coworker). I've tried to coax the interest out but have given up. I'm sure he would come up with a lot of interesting things if that fire were rekindled.

I'd also like him to just be able to admit a mistake without an excuse. One of my more valuable lessons in cooking school came not from an instructor but a fellow student (who is the chef of a place about 15 miles south of us). Whenever any of us made mistakes we all came up with a bunch of lame excuses. Except Steve. He just said, I'm sorry chef. I messed up.

And lastly, be aware of other people's space. We've never been able to click in a seamless way on the line. He always seems to be in the way (and so I'm sure I'm always in his way from his point of view) and doesn't seem to use peripheral vision very well. Being in a small space is like dancing, the movements have to be fluid.

I know it when I see it

The farm to table backlash has started. I've been noticing articles in the glossy food press, mentioning chef/farmer connections with derision. As in the new Food & Wine

Behind every other plate of glossy Brandywines and Cherokee Purples I'd ever been served, I could hear a chef bragging about the cool farmers he knew. All that reverence for seasonal produce got so boring after a while that I wanted to round up every heirloom-tomato salad on earth and set them all adrift on an ice floe......

Granted, it's tiresome to incessantly hear the source of ingredients. That's one of the reasons we don't trumpet that on our menu. It doesn't mean we don't know farmers or that we don't buy from them, but we do it because that's just how we think things should be done, not because it's a marketing angle.

5 or so years ago I attended a Chef's Collaborative conference at the CIA in Hyde Park. One of the bigger topics was how to get the mainstream media to focus on organics and sustainability. It appears we've succeeded all too well.

This happens to anything which garners a lot of ink. People who have no idea what they're doing jump on whatever bandwagon is being touted and the principles of the particular cuisine become cliched. Remember kiwi slices everywhere? After the cliche comes avant-garde (which may just be a return to sound principles).

Take molecular gastronomy. Many of the things are interesting, certainly edible, but I don't know about palatable.

He'd turned the sloshy, sloppy tomato salad into something taut, rigorous and new.

Taut and rigorous I like in writing, not food. Most of my life is enough of an intellectual exercise. I need dining to be a sensuous experience. Yes, these types of chefs address this with atomizers, springs of herbs entwined in the forks, changeable lighting and focused sound systems, even dining  in complete darkness or eating sushi from a nude woman. Nice gimmicks, PT Barnum would be proud.

I'm not saying this movement isn't valid. My feelings about it are complicated. Good new ideas are being introduced and I do agree in essence with the following although not the execution.

"We know we can get awesome shrimp. That's not good enough for us anymore. How can we manipulate it? We're still dealing with the same ingredients, but we sit down and say, 'What's a shrimp?'"

Any chef at all should be doing this. Coaxing the best from your ingredients is your job. However, I am more interested in the definition of manipulation as "the action of touching with the hands or the skillful use of the hands" not "shrewd or devious management, especially for one's own advantage."

Where to draw the line between innovation and idiocy? Like Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . but I know it when I see it .

In the meantime I shall try to stay true to the course, whatever that is, of cooking to the best of my ability food that interests, stimulates and nourishes me which won't confound my customers.

Food's Better. The service....

Went to a friend's place last night. A little uneasily. Over the past few years his food has been pretty flat. Very pricey as well and we always left feeling underwhelmed and I a little sad because I didn't know how to tell him.

He sold the place but was retained as chef and I don't think I had had dinner there since the change. I used to go more often because we had a trade agreement but I don't have that privilege with the new owners. We'd had breakfast and had hit or miss service but the breakfast was decent and there aren't many good spots for breakfast around here.

So I was relieved in that my dinner was really good. The GM's was OK but as she said partly her fault since she had a dish with black trumpet mushrooms which aren't exactly favorites of hers. I think being relieved of the pressures of owning the restaurant, combined with having to stretch himself to do a lot of special events and special menus last year has opened him up. The new owners have been quite aggressive in marketing as well and it's always more inspiring to cook for a full house.

The service however was pretty funny. We have a pet peeves list we share with our waiters. It's basically our standards of service and starts with things like "Don't greet people with a number (2 for dinner ?), "Don't use the term guys." (How are you guys ?) and ends with "Don't ask people if they'd like change." (Assume they want their change, unless they directly say otherwise).

It was as if they went down the list and did the reverse of as many of them as they possibly could. From our "how are you guys?" greeting, to "Hi, I'm Rachel. I'll be your server tonight", trying to serve mineral water with ice,  resting the bottle on the rim of the glass while pouring (at least she didn't pick the glass up from the table), not clearing properly to asking if "everything was alright"...
The GM asked where their new training techniques were coming from. I replied "TGI Friday's"

To be fair, except for the greeting (from the host), our waiter could have been doing all these no-no's on her own initiative. God knows our waiters sometimes do things which we've told them not to do. Or don't do things we've told them to do.

But I don't think Rachel had enough initiative to be making those decisions. So I'm somewhat back at the same quandary, except this time I can say something because it's no longer my friend's place and the problem wasn't with the food. The service wasn't necessarily bad but from our point of view comical, because it was so counter to how we would like things done. If they want it that way, fine. We're talking stylistic difference but when your top priced menu item is $37 I think a certain level of elegance is expected.