Knife's Edge - Restaurant Rants & Raves

Life in a Small Town

1Earlier in the day I was wheeling the Sardine around town, chattering to him as we strolled along, "Now we're turning right, we're heading south. See, there are 4 cardinal directions, north, south, east, west. We live on the West Coast, Papa grew up on the East Coast," etc. etc., just rambling.

Tonight as I was seating some people the gentleman said, "Oh you and your son passed my house today. Sounded like you were teaching him physics or something. Talking about north, south." I didn't tell him it was actually geography, but hell, I've gotta watch what I say.

Starting to Understand My Restaurant

By reading postings on Yelp, etc. I am coming to a much greater understanding of what has been a vexing problem. Regular readers know I have often written whined about our "image problem" or of a disconnect in who we are and how we're perceived. I've had a bit of an epiphany. And of course it's something I've always "known" but perhaps was just too close to to perceive properly.

I really have three restaurants. Huh? Yes, the problem is that they're in the same location. When we opened years ago our little town was a bit more in the food Dark Ages than it is now. There was perhaps a beacon, but we weren't a place known for cuisine. I knew we would have to appeal to a broad spectrum if we were to survive. We had to do more than that though because if we merely appealed to the masses we wouldn't have survived because I would not have been happy. My strategy for walking the line was this.

One section of our menu is a feature somewhat unique to our restaurant. There is a high-profile NY place that does something similar, but I have to say, we were doing it first. There's a high-profile Paris place that does it, again, we were first. I've seen one place in SF that does it. Don't know who was first, but I saw theirs after we'd been open for years. This portion of the menu is designed to put wary diners at ease. To let them be in control. To let them know they're not getting anything too weird. It is good comfort food. It doesn't change. People can always order their favorites. It is not going to expand anyone's culinary horizons (maybe one of the sauces might) but it's a damn fine example of what it is.

Another section of the menu is pasta, which we make on premise. For the record, for the most part we use an extruder (sorry Joe Fish) because I don't have the staff to produce by hand the volume we need. Nor do I have the pricing to support the labor. In the late fall-early spring we do some handmade things because it's easier to keep up. The pasta is also on there to soothe the diner who wants some safe choices. It's there to use up odds and ends of other proteins. It's there because it's good for the food cost, and it's good for the diner's pocketbook as well. Half of them change, the other half stay the same. Some are classic Italian dishes. Some are our own concoctions.

The third section of the menu are the dishes that the cooks and I have talked about, developed according to what our farmers, fisher folk and ranchers are bringing us. These are the dishes which engage us fully as cooks, that keep us focused and help us bring focus to the non-changing items. These are what change 8-12 times a year. These are what we rarely repeat. These are what keep us sane.

These three sections of the menu are my three restaurants. They have served me in good stead. My vision for the place has mostly been realized. I envisioned somewhere a family could come, mom, dad,(who live locally) grandparents (who may or may not live locally) and college and post-college kids who live out of town. Mom and dad aren't so adventurous, grandma wants a bargain and the kids are all about debating their favorite sushi spots, noodle houses, Indian dives wherever it is they live. Crass generalization to be sure, but that's who I had in mind when I developed my three restaurants. And I see this very group often enough to know it's worked.

Then there's the "image problem". After reading good amount of on-line reviews I think I finally get part of it. First time diners with us who have done a little research have more likely than not seen or heard a good amount of raves. The raves quite often come from people who order from the third section of our menu. When the first timers order from the third section of the menu, they generally have a great time, their research is confirmed, they'll tell their friends etc. Maybe they post an on-line review adding to the chorus. When they order from the first section of the menu (and perhaps from the pastas) they have a really good dinner, but perhaps they don't quite get the "rave" experience. And they leave, not disappointed, but not wowed and their on-line remarks reflect that. When I read comments like "our entrees were above average (I've had better)", or "it's not fancy food" I can feel pretty confident I know which "restaurant" they chose.

The opposite side of this is people who have had scanty info about us, maybe a recommendation from the hotel, or a shopkeeper, who decide to check it out, even though they're not 100% confident in the source. When they order from the third portion of the menu, they're wowed. We get comments like, "pleasantly surprised", "what are you doing in this out of the way place", etc. And they'll often get on-line and shout about it. Again, when they order from the first section of the menu, they have a really good dinner, perhaps better than they were expecting, but they don't become evangelists. There are also the people who just want "normal food", who manage to miss all the normal food we have in the first section and order something a little out of their comfort zone from the third section, sometimes they like it, sometimes they don't.

So, you're thinking, why not just scrap the first section of the menu, if people aren't raving about it? Ah, but people do. They're generally not people who write on-line reviews, put things up on Facebook or MySpace, so they aren't immediately visible. They are the people who come back again and again for the same dish they've had since we opened. Their raves are in the continuing dollars spent and the word of mouth they spread.

What I really need to do is figure out how to best guide the first timer to the "restaurant" that suits them best. Sales are about evenly divided between the three menu sections overall, I'm not sure how it breaks down for first timers. The menu is clearly not the best guide, because we would not have this "image problem". Now that I'm looking at things from this perspective however, some ideas may come to light. As always, I'd love to hear yours.

BTW, there's one review on Yelp that I think nails us.

Sick of Being Sick*

We're falling apart around the Haddock household. A few weeks ago I was amazingly ill from (I believe) an infected, impacted wisdom tooth. The oral surgeon only removed the crown of the tooth, as the nerve was wrapped around the root and removal of the entire tooth could have caused either my lips to go numb, or for one side of my mouth to lose taste. Neither sounded like an appealing option. Leaving the root in however, creates its own potential problem. It's possible my body may decide that the root is a foreign object and try to get rid of it.

I asked the surgeon if it might be more likely that this would happen given that I already had an infection there. He assured me my chances of it happening were just the same as anyone's; the prior infection shouldn't be an indicator. Guess what?

I woke up Wednesday evening shaking uncontrollably, feeling remarkably like I did before the crown was removed. There are a couple of differences though. This time I have a cough and sore throat. Also, the Sardine was ill a few days before with possible ear infection and possible viral infection in the throat. So it's conceivable this is something different. The oral surgeon is an hour and fifteen minutes away. One of the drawbacks of our location is lack of specialized medical care. I called him and of course he was reluctant to diagnose over the telephone. I went to my regular dentist's office, only to discover he was gone and wouldn't return until Monday. His assistant called in anti-biotics, so we'll see what happens.

In the meantime the GM, who has been dealing with a stressful family situation, has developed mastitis. Between the Sardine being ill, and my being ill, her routine has been disrupted and only added to the stress. So, here we are, parents on pain pills and the Sardine now feeling better and raring to go.

The only good thing about this all is I've got a lot of reading done. For those who notice, the "Recently Finished" sidebar has grown considerably.

I have to rave about "Happy in the Kitchen". MIchel Richard demonstrates a wonderful sense of humor and playfulness, grounded in classicism but always questioning its tenets and looking beyond in ways that make sense to me. Much modern cooking does not make sense to me. Perhaps it's my hippie upbringing, but adding things to my dinner made by Dow Chemical just seems wrong. How is the use of methocel fundamentally different from Mssr. Richard's use of gelatin? I can't answer that. I could say because gelatin is a naturally occurring product. I could say because I am familiar with gelatin. I could say that even though I practiced better living through chemistry as a young man, I do no longer.

Ultimately my line in the sand is the famous one about pornography. I know it when I see it. Cooking something sous-vide makes sense to me. "Cooking" something with liquid nitrogen, does not. I am happy there are people out there expanding the boundaries of cuisine. I know useful information will come to me because of their experimentation. But I'd much rather eat a meal cooked by Michel Richard, than  Ferran Adria, based only on examining their printed works.

I also have to praise Frank Stitt's Southern Table. It's hard to mess with tradition. How do you honor something, while updating it in ways that work? Others may disagree, but for me Southern cooking is our country's most identifiable and strongest regional cuisine. As a lad I lived up and down the Eastern seaboard, Texas and a bit in the Mid-west and it was in the South I found people passionate about their food. Sure, there were a few rabid barbecue enthusiasts in Texas, which though in the southern part of our country is not the South, but what we think of as a European attitude toward food and hospitality was only found in the South. Northern California in the post-Chez Panisse era has caught up but at a time when most of our great land was a culinary wasteland, people all over the South were eating well.

Mr Stitt's book takes the best of lessons learned from Richard Olney and Jeremiah Tower, leaving aside their arch bitchiness, fuses that with the spirit of Michel Guerard, but without the proclamation of inventing a new cuisine and stirs that into a pot of collard greens and ham hocks. He is grounded enough by his sense of place to know when to leave things alone and intelligent enough to see how to modernize a dish without compromising it. Too often attempts to gussy up Southern food just fall flat, like the dishes I've had at Blue Jay Cafe in SF. Adding a bunch of zucchini to red beans and rice does nothing for either the zucchini, or beans and rice. Mr Stitt however succeeds. At least on paper. Perhaps one of our frequent fliers like Fatemeh may have dined at Highlands Bar and Grill and have a different tale to report.

OK, back to healing.

* Gratuitous late 70's punk rock reference.

Definition

My strategies for summer seem to have worked. Our number of people who sit down, mess up the table and then leave because....we don't have (clam chowder/fish & chips/kids menu/whatever) has significantly declined. I would say it's only happened about 4-5 times this summer, in the past it used to happen 4-5 times a weekend. Adding a ton of steak choices helped also. We used to have only 1, usually a hanger or tri-tip and the set in their ways steak eaters wouldn't try them.

It's been an interesting summer though. The GM's absence is subtly felt (please don't take this as an entreaty to return to work sweetie). She is good at furthering and maintaining connections with the mostly female front of the house crew, and her organizational standards and abilities greatly exceed mine. She is much more capable of seeing the bigger picture at a glance. Fortunately, we've been together nearly 14 years and I have been able to internalize a small portion of those qualities.

Her absence is forcing me to define my role. Am I a front of the house guy now? Am I a chef? What does the business need me to be? What do I want to be? I find I am liking both, for different reasons. And while the chef in me wants to be in the kitchen, the owner in me knows there is no real substitute in a small restaurant for the owner out on the floor, dealing with the customers. The chef in me wants to think the food is what's important. The owner in me knows that how people feel when they come to, experience, then leave the restaurant is what's important and the food is a rather slender piece of that.

I will need to spend a month or so in the kitchen. My whelmer's last day is Friday and I'll need to get the new guy integrated as part of the team. The new guy is actually a returnee. He's worked for us before, is the cousin by marriage of my most solid guy and the brother-in-law of one of the dishwashers and the other really solid Mexican cook. Unfortunately he and his wife are on shaky ground. I've asked all of them if that is going to be a problem for any of them and they've assured me it won't be. Regardless, I have the opportunity to redefine the kitchen's outlook in a way that wasn't possible with the whelmer on board and I need to make the most of it.

We'll be changing a few desserts this weekend. I'm thinking about a pound cake or angel food cake with grilled peaches and basil, blackberry crisp with brown butter gelato and some type of cool (temperature) chocolate.