Knife's Edge - Restaurant Rants & Raves

Food Therapy

I would love to tell you what's been happening in restaurant life but I have had an unprecedented weekend off. Friday night we went to a dance concert that the GM's 1st ex-stepmom (one day we can get into her convoluted Northern California familial tree) puts on every year. She's a dance teacher and the show is a recital for her students. We normally go to the Sunday matinee but since we were leaving town we didn't have time. We had a blast, the little tiny kids were cute in a heartwarming/heartbreaking way and some of the older dancers were really wonderful. Two of the performers from the circus who did our 6th anniversary did a duet on the trapeze that gave me whiplash just watching it.

Food content: Had dinner at our local Thai restaurant. I love one of the owners. She's a very positive Thai woman. A few years ago while Fish & Game were visiting a number of local restaurants checking invoices to see if we were using poached (that's caught illegally, not gently simmered) fish she called me and asked if they had been to my place. I told her yes to which she replied, "OK then they're not just picking on Asians." The other owner (her husband) is a nightmare and thankfully wasn't there.

Then last night I went to mom's to see Donovan. She's the facility manager for the venue he played and has been very excited that he would be playing in her backyard. Donovan was some of my lullaby music as a kid and it was really sweet to see him with her. He did a decent show. If I hadn't had the music ingrained in me since early childhood I might have been a bit bored but I was glad to go. Plus, even though I knew this it was really easy to see the connection between Donovan and early T. Rex, particularly since Donovan had a conga player with him.

Food content: I wasn't entirely away from the restaurant these two days. I did prep in the morning and afternoon and had dinner before I left. Mustard mopped Eastern Carolina style spareribs with potato salad. I left during our first hour of service and a customer had already asked one of the waiters if the pig was from Eastern Carolina. I'm all for COOL (country of origin labeling) and knowing your sources but come on, this is getting out of hand. At Donovan I saw the owners of the pizza place across the street from us.

Got home way too late. Got up way later than I'd like. Anyway, we're off to SF and i think we really need this little break. The GM and I have been at each other for no reason, constantly. Not unusual, we live and work together and spend most of our time in a town which is beautiful, but small and sometimes stifling. We have noticed though we rarely have any conflict when we're out of town. I'm sure it has a lot to with not having to make decisions that affect our livelihood or our living space. At any rate we both recognize the need to regroup and realign. And the best way to do that is at the table.

With that, it's time to pack.

Orwell In The Kitchen

No this isn't a post about the book "Down & Out In Paris & London" although if you haven't read it you should, along with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and after reading them realize that things haven't changed all that much.

This is actually about the ads I've been seeing on craigslist. There are number of restaurants here and elsewhere looking for "rockstar" line cooks, or a "rockstar" breakfast cook. I'm fairly confident they're not talking about someone who drinks a lot of Rockstar energy drink. I'm also fairly confident the qualities they're looking for are something like, super-organized, always well-prepped, good attitude and works really fast for really cheap.

Now there are certainly exceptions but in general rockstars get paid vast amounts of money to look good, perform sporadically, date models, make a record every two or three years and little else. Oh and have a lot of prima donna attitude while doing so. What these people are really looking for is a roadie.

Note: This is not a slam at working musicians, who have one of the hardest jobs imaginable. If you don't think so try driving yourself across country in a crowded van with 4plus other people, to play shows for a handful of drunks, hoping there will be gas money to get to the next gig and a place for you to try to get some sleep, which you won't because after the show you are expected to further entertain people at their house (or if you are approaching rockstardom, a hotel) and figure, quite wrongly you'll get to sleep in the van, not remembering that that plan hasn't worked for the previous 3 days.

Solstice Blues

Today my morning starts with a complaint email. The gist of it is that our portions are too small. Which is really weird because one of the most consistent comments we get is that the portions are quite large. Either way is no good as far as I'm concerned. I want people to leave well-fed, but not stuffed.

Anyway, the woman allows the food was great, but they only got 3 slices of bread, her husband's pasta was meager and had only 8 baby shrimp in it. Funny, yesterday I was posting how the linguine dish is the one we keep on the menu for people who don't like food. She tells me the next night they went up the street to a veritable shithole, spent about the same amount of money and " we were so stuffed we didn't even finish our meals." Then she lets fly with the ultimate. "My family is in the same business as you...". Whenever anyone alludes to being the restaurant business on any level, to justify their complaint I know they are full of it. Usually this is the excuse given by the "ex-waiter" (read, someone who waited tables at a chain restaurant while going to college 20 years ago) to not leave a decent tip.

So I replied. And while my first draft was full of educational comments letting her know that unlike some restaurants we make everything in house, that rock shrimp are exactly that, not baby shrimp, that portions are weighed for consistency, that for two people we serve 1/4 of a loaf of bread, that they were certainly welcome to ask for more bread, that we are actually one of the more affordable restaurants in our area, at least among those which serve anything approaching quality, I didn't send it.

My response?

"Mrs. X: I'm sorry you felt the portions weren't adequate. This is the first time I've ever heard this complaint in our 6 plus years of business. If anything we
regularly hear the opposite, that our portions are too large. Personally I'd like people to leave well-fed but not so stuffed they couldn't finish their meal.

Please accept my apologies and the next time you visit us introduce yourself and I'll make sure you are well taken care of."

In other words, just like the chef in "The Big Night" I want to see these people if they ever come back.

Her reply.

"Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my email.  It shows
that you definitely do care about your patrons.  I am sure that this may
have been just a one time incident so I will tell my husband.  The next
time we are in your town we will stop by and try your restaurant again.
Thanks again,"

So I did the right thing. Because these people aren't interested in education, good food or anything else. They just want to make sure they are rolling down the stairs when they leave.

The part of her reply that really gets me is the "it shows that you definitely do care about your patrons". No lady, I'm in this business to rip people off. To take their hard earned money and give them garbage in return. Granted, I like to think I have a misanthropic streak so wide it extends a foot above my head but the reality is I just want people to be happy. Yep, I am what they call a "people-pleaser". Which is from where the misanthropy stems.

This is how it is every summer. People who want huge plates of crap descend on us. Boy, I love to complain huh? In the winter there aren't enough people. In the summer they're not the right kind of people. People like other restaurants more than they like ours. Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat some....andouille, which has to get in the smoker before my vegan masseuse gets here.

Happy solstice all.

Stars, Puzzles, Plowhorses and Dogs

The ham hock on the current menu is the puzzle. The menu categories are: stars, puzzles, plowhorses and dogs. A star is a highly profitable, highly popular item. A puzzle is a highly profitable but not very popular item. A plowhorse is a highly popular but not very profitable item. And a dog is an unprofitable, unpopular item. In other words I'd make money on the hock if people would only order it. Smoked pork osso bucco perhaps?

I try not to keep dogs on the menu and the puzzles are usually items I really love and not just for the low food cost. My peasant background shows through. The stars of our menu are usually pastas. We keep a couple of "safe" ones on the menu, like linguine with lemon-garlic butter. A former sous chef used to joke that it was food for people who didn't like food. Not exactly true, but perhaps for people who aren't very adventurous.

There are allegedly all sorts of ways to engineer the menu. I've read theories about "sweet spots', whether people read the first item on a list or automatically skip over it, that the eye travels in a "Z" pattern, that the eye travels in a backwards "Z", that pictures sell dishes, that there are descriptive words that make people order.

Let me tell you. None of these seem to work for us. Perhaps these strategies do work for chains or places that might as well be chains. After 6 years of owning a restaurant and a good few more writing menus, I still have no idea what entices people to buy certain dishes.

A chef's ego will want to say that the food sells itself. In other words, the dish is so good that just seeing it on the menu will compel all diners to order it. The restaurant owner knows though that the food is the smallest portion of a restaurant's success. That very vague catch-all term "service" is what really makes or breaks a place. We know.

When we opened in mid-winter, we had no idea how many covers we'd be doing. We had a "soft" opening, no big announcements, etc. but we were slammed for the first month or so. We had no plan for service (the GM hadn't taken over the floor yet), we were understaffed and it hurt us for years following that. There are still people in town who won't come to our place because they came 6 years ago and had to wait for their food/service/drink whatever. Mind you, they rarely tell us this, we only find out about it in a roundabout way, but that perception is still out there.

We see this happening with a new Mexican place in town. I feel for them. Not just because I've been there, but because there are already a number of Mexican places in town. If the new folks don't get it together soon, they'll go under. We were lucky. There were not a lot of options with similar offerings when we opened.

At this point I'm confident saying our service is the best in our area, thanks both to the GM for her training and to our intuition in hiring people who care about others. We're also fortunate in being able to train people from the ground up. We rarely hire experienced waiters. Not necessarily because we don't want to, but because there are so many pricier options in town they rarely apply. Little do they know our waiters make good money, because the prices, combined with good, caring service, entice diners to leave a bit more on the table for the waiters.

How Much Is Enough

I spent all day yesterday in a planning session/business meeting for our county's promotional alliance. I'm still not sure how people think they are accomplishing anything endlessly rehashing the same thing. Granted, I'm no stranger to saying the same thing in three different (hopefully verbose) ways as the GM will gladly tell you, but I do take action.

Among the wasted day though was a good analogy from a branding firm that made a presentation. It concerned a restaurant that had a mediocre oven and poor or no signage. Three scenarios, same budget, same food. Fix the oven, do nothing about the sign. Public perception, a cheap place to bring the family. Fix half of the oven (yeah, I know, how do you do that) and put up a nice, large, carved sign of a Chinese boat (the example was a Chinese restaurant. I didn't have the heart to tell the guy that an oven wasn't the best piece of equipment to choose for his example). Public perception, a much nicer place, leave the kids at home be prepared to spend 2-3 more dollars for your entrees. Last scenario, do nothing about the oven, change the entrance to somewhere off the street, build an impressive awning and put a small stone near the front with a bronze plaque with the restaurant name on it. Public perception; a special occasion place, be prepared to spend another 3-5 dollars on your entree.

Now it doesn't take a marketing expert to see both the validity of this analogy, as well as the holes in it but another comment was quite interesting. Someone asked the question "what did people think of the food?". The answer from the branding expert? "They thought it was better when they paid more."

Now I am pretty much the opposite. My critical faculties become more acute as the Franklins start flying. My guess is many of you reading this may be the same. But I think this is because we are interested in food and dining and while everyone eats and has likes and dislikes, many people are willing to be led and told what to like and why.

This was brought home in our recent dining experiences. As I've reported before our area is extremely limited in palatable choices. There are number of places one could go but not too many we frequent. Fools that we are, we rarely have food in the house. OK, fool that I am. The GM actually makes an effort to stock the cupboard with things she can eat on her day off. However, on our mutual day off we have our litany of choices, all of which are basically the lesser of many evils.

We went to place which for us is rather pricey. We shared an app, I had an entree, the GM had 3 side dishes. We don't drink so, no wine and on this occasion not even a bottle of sparkling water. $80 for the two of us. Granted we're high tippers (the training the poor girl who waited on us received wasn't her fault) but I can guarantee you we didn't eat a $40 per person meal. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't worth the price.

The next day when I came home from the meeting, I wanted a good meal. So I went to our place. And I'm happy to report my crew did an outstanding job and I'm hyper-critical, looking for fault (at our place, I'm pretty lenient at others). I reflected on the analogy I had heard earlier in the day and saw the truth in it. The place we went to the night before, is busy consistently. We're reasonably busy ourselves, but I think they are doing more covers and since their prices are much higher, they're grossing more.

The GM and I have a theory about the middle. We're too expensive for the cheapos and not expensive enough for the snobs. Not that we're really willing to change, because there are some people who get it. But I know the analogy is right. If we charged more, we'd be perceived as being better. Or rather as good as we are.

Stars, Diamonds, Track Suits and Ties

On the heels of my post about the three diamonds from AAA comes this from the NY Times about Alain Senderens chucking his Michelin three star Lucas Carton and this from the SF Chronicle about Dennis Leary's Canteen where I had lunch a few months ago with ced from Le Blog de San Francisco.

The Times article points out much that is wrong with the Michelin system, mainly that in order to maintain your star(s) an inordinate amount of cash has to be spent on flowers, silverware, extra staff and other things which have no bearing on what's on the plate.

The Chronicle review asks why a Rising Star chef would ditch his job to slave away essentially by himself, doing breakfast, lunch and dinner in a lime-green diner. Elsewhere in the Chronicle food section is an article about the demise of dressing for dinner.

While I wish people would dress for dinner, my idea of what is appropriate may be different from others. It would be nice to see people put some thought into how they present themselves but that no longer means jacket and tie for men and no jeans for women. I think it does mean, comb your hair and don't wear a track suit if you're not actually exercising. But this is a distraction from the point. The point is the rules have changed. But some of the institutions haven't.

As Kudzu pointed out, you don't eat the decor. Yet in guide after guide, review after review much attention is given to the physical space. Granted, as a diner I'd like to feel comfortable, hopefully at ease and confident I'm eating somewhere where basic standards of cleanliness are being upheld. Kudzu's tale of Buster Holmes' wharf rat reminded me of this recent story . I also enjoy those over the top Kuleto creations like Farallon but it's certainly not essential to my enjoyment of the food.

I also really don't care about the flatware, unless it's a three-tined fork. Hate those. I don't assess the linens for thread count and if the glass isn't a dribble glass I'm happy with it.

Let me get back to dressing for dinner though. Just as it is now appropriate for diners to dress casually, it is equally appropriate for restaurants to present themselves casually. However, casual by design is quite different from casual by negligence.

What I'm getting at is why the hell is any of this still part of the equation when either critiquing a place, or deciding where to eat?

There are some relatively recent concepts in reviewing I agree with, like giving noise ratings. If I'm going out with friends I see all the time, I might not mind shouting a little. If I'm having a reunion with people I haven't seen for years, I want to be able to converse. I think these days people are more concerned with whether they can park nearby, if the place takes credit cards and if they are on schedule with their reservations than they are about the color of the walls or whether tablecloths are present.

Restaurants should be personal representations. Just as your appearance is a personal reflection so is the color of my walls. The best of corporate restaurants, as in places like Fog City Diner, Mustard's (before the buy-back), or any of the Lettuce Entertain You group in the Chicago area, come up with a person or persona and the restaurant expresses that person or persona. Indifference to the details is a crime. Attending to the details while breaking the rules is not.

Luminescence

I seem to have this bizarre way of putting out streetlights. No, not by throwing rocks at them, but by walking by them. It happens to my mom too. Not all lights obviously, but every night, walking the dogs at least one goes out when I walk by.

Diamonds Are Forever

Pretty damned close on finishing the menu. The sous came across with 3 ideas one of which we're using, a salmon spaghetti with kalamatas, basil, capers and lemon. My strongest line cook who would be sous if he wasn't so shy and actually spoke English bought himself a cookbook with recipes in Spanish and went wild with dessert making on my days off. I'm glad he's interested but he left us with little butter and eggs for the weekend so I'll have to stop by the store this morning.

So we've got all the things I mentioned previously plus lamb with gorgonzola-cherry popovers, halibut with hush puppies, spicy slaw and tartar beurre blanc. On the pasta front, wheels with salami, mozzarella and marinara, tagliatelle with Vidalia onions, bacon and cheddar cream, pappardelle with chicken cacciatore. Still need to get together a couple of apps and we're good to go. I didn't come up with a compelling vegetarian/vegan option. Still thinking about it and if something wonderful strikes we'll add that also.

Found out we're going to be listed in the AAA guidebook with a three diamond rating. While my ego wants to say we really should be in the four diamond category after reading their description of the rating here, I have to admit we're in the three diamond category. Particularly taking into account the last sentence of the four diamond description. The only problem is once this out there it's hard to change, at least for the better. In other words, even if we were to substantially upgrade certain elements of our experience to the level of four diamond status, it would probably go unnoticed by the AAA staff. We would probably have to shoot for five diamonds to maybe achieve four.

Not that this in any way changes what we do or who we are. We used to call ourselves the neighborhood restaurant that overachieves. I still feel that way and never want to lose the neighborhood feeling. Unfortunately, that sends a mixed message to some potential diners, like those last night who thought the statement "we welcome well-behaved children and parents" on the menu meant it was appropriate to let their kid scream and create such a commotion the GM had to ask the child to tone it down (after two other tables left and one requested to move due to the noise). The offending family got offended and canceled their entrees and left the waiter no tip on the $20 or so appetizer tag. In fact all of her tables last night were problems. We hope this is not an indicator of summer.

We (or at least I) want to think there is some magic combination of price, location, menu and ambiance where these problems melt away. Do people wander into El Bulli sit down and leave because they don't offer fish and chips? They are after all near the water. I know there will be people who have no sense of public deportment no matter what you do, but we seem to get more than our share of them. If a three diamond rating helps to discourage ten of those people a year, I'll be thrilled.

PS- After initially posting this I read this also from AAA. As far as the food goes, we're four diamond, as far as most of the service, four diamond. Decor however, three.

Late Spring Menu

In the midst of menu change today so I'll keep it brief. Still don't know exactly what we're doing but have some ideas.

I've ordered quail which will probably end up as an app with cornbread stuffing. It's too expensive for us as an entree. The tilapia may morph into something with jambalaya as the starch but it may be a little overwhelming for the fish. I was planning on doing some sort of romseco type thing with the halibut but I found out the other day that a friend who has a place down the road is using romesco on his new menu. Funnily enough, I was the one who introduced him to the sauce after a quick stint at Savoy in NYC. Salmon I'll be pairing with white bean hummus and a kind of agrodolce sauce although it won't be called that. It's getting to be big steak time. During the warmer months we attract a certain type who can eat nothing but steak and they never seem to see the hanger steak on the menu. Or least they don't see it as something they'll eat. So we often put a larger steak on for those folks. This time around I'm thinking a NY strip with a grilled Vidalia onion chopped salad. I've also got ham hocks brining and will do a red beans and rice thing with them.

Yes, I'm heading South (mostly) this time around. That still leaves the pastas. I'll need to put some more thought into those today.

As usual, I asked the sous for input and have received none. His birthday is coming along in a few days and I'm considering giving him the book "Think Like a Chef", since that is what I would like him to do. What I really need to do is write a job description and go over it with him.

Right now though I need to eat. More later.

Peer Recognition

Last night a skinny little woman came in and proceeded to EAT. She started off with green pea pancakes with grilled vegetables and black-bean sesame sauce, then a salad with roasted beets, Laura Chenel chevre and honey-lime dressing, then pecan-crusted tilapia with spicy greens and fried oysters, a glass of sparkling wine and a glass of zinfandel. Then she ordered three desserts, a lemon verbena panna cotta with rose gelee, a strawberry shortcake with balsamic-pepper ice cream, and a chocolate sampler that had a truffle lollipop, cocoa-almond financier, white hot chocolate with a chocolate beignet and a kind of german chocolate deconstruction with a macaroon and chocolate sorbet.

The GM thought she was a reviewer. I didn't but kept my eye on her nonetheless. After she finished desserts I said to her "You keep eating that way, you'll rot your teeth." She laughed and confessed she was a pastry instructor from the semi-local (2 plus hours away) culinary program at the junior college. She said all the desserts sounded so good and she was really happy to see thought put into them. I let her know that wasn't always the case for us.

About a year and a half ago I read yet another review of some restaurant which said the dessert didn't measure up to the rest of the meal. This is a pretty common thing for I'm sure a few reasons. One may be that most modest places can't afford a pastry chef. Another may be that pastry demands concentration, patience, a certain level of precision and (hopefully) dedicated oven space, all usually in short supply in your average testosterone-driven kitchen. At any rate, it was a crime of which we were guilty and I decided to change that.

I'm still a long way off from where I'd like to be. At this point our pastry has caught up to the early 90's (about right for our area since we're usually about 10 years behind the times on most things). I still think our stuff is too sweet but that may just be me. I should also be incorporating more herbs and savory elements into the desserts but the pesky self-editor keeps jumping in telling me "you can't do that. No one is ever gonna buy that." Although I try not to listen it's hard when you're the one paying the bills.

Then this morning I got an email from Alison Barshak of Alison at Blue Bell. She's another person who in a very roundabout way got me into blogging. Not that I know her. I was reading some trade magazine, it might have been Food Arts, I don't remember. The article was about chefs and technology, specifically the internet and she mentioned, among others, Gastropoda. After checking it out I was both amused and appalled but realized that I have the same bitchy streak running through me and that by not expressing that portion of myself I was holding onto stuff I shouldn't.

As it turns out, I'm far less bitchy on the blog than I thought I'd be. Maybe I should work on that.