There’s a pretty funny story in The New York Times this morning, in the Business Day section, by writer Harry Hurt III, who attends a class at the New York Bartending School. The instructor, James Bumbery, is described as “tall and lean with round horn-rimmed spectacles and a dark green beret” who has “over a decade of hospitality industry experience.” Over a decade of hospitality industry experience! That’s a confidence booster! I think I would prefer to be instructed by a short guy named Guido who learned his craft in the brothels of Montevideo in the 1950s.

In any case, the article made me wonder what the criteria are for a great bartender, the kind of bartender who keeps you coming back to the same bar.

Of course a great bartender knows the recipes and techniques for preparing many cocktails and highballs, so a meticulous memory is essential, but the same quality applies to any bartender, whether great or ordinary. Any bartender should know the different glasses and garnishes appropriate for the range of cocktails and highballs; any bartender should know that cocktails with fruit juice are shaken, but cocktails without fruit juice are stirred (Are you listening?) No, there’s something more to a great bartender than merely the knowledge of the bright and gratifying panoply of cocktails and other intoxicating drinks. A chemist — or, dear god, a “mixologist” — can turn out a perfect Harvey Wallbanger.

The great bartender, on the other hand, must lightly balance a seemingly paradoxical set of qualities. He — or she, but I’ll get to this issue in a moment — must display tremendous speed and dexterity and power of focus while, at the same time, maintaining an effortless aura of congeniality and engagement that, on the other hand, must never seem too intimate, too confiding or cajoling. A bartender may be conversational, but he must never commit to a topic; a bartender may be sympathetic, but he must also be detached. The bartender is not your shrink, not your college room-mate. And in that sense, the customer must not ask too much of the bartender, must not entice the bartender to step across the line of service into the morass of servitude or, even worse, the skittish realm of Friendship.

The relationship between bartender and patron is cordial but formal; each party knows his duties and the pleasures that attend them. That’s what makes going to an excellent bar with a great bartender such a rewarding part of life.

I mentioned the issue of women bartenders. There’s no reason why women can’t be great bartenders except that most men, being congenital jerks, bounders and cads, won’t let them. Men react to and challenge women bartenders in ways that they don’t react to or challenge male bartenders, and that situation upsets what should be the comfortable dynamics of a bar. It’s rarely the fault of the female bartender; it’s usually the fault of the male patron who tries to impress her. Look, you’re not sitting in a bar to impress someone; you’re sitting in a bar to enjoy a drink, a contemplative moment, a conversation with friends. So no hitting on the bartender!

Guido wouldn’t put up with that shit for an instant.

Cartoon images from topshelfservices.com.

So, a few nights ago we’re at a fine-dining restaurant, and the way we know it’s fine-dining is because the place is a sea of snowy-white linen, the tables are set with multiple glasses and pieces of silverware; there are flowers and shaded lamps on the tables, the lighting is subdued, the chairs are upholstered in red velvet and the waiters wear those traditional short white jackets with ties. And entrees are $27 to $39. It’s very old-fashioned for a new restaurant, which it is, and on this week-night only three tables are occupied.

The waiter brings the menus and hands me a wine list and asks if we would like something to drink before dinner. As I usually do, I reply that we’ll look at the menu first and then order wine. The wine list is pretty high-toned, and I decide on a bottle of the Hendry Pinot Noir 2005, Napa Valley, at $78, a marvelous wine, as it turns out. But that comes later.

The waiter returns and we order dinner and the wine, and off he goes. We nibble bread, sip water, chat and so on. A few minutes pass and I’m wondering where the wine is, and then the waiter shows up with the amusette, you know, the little “free” offering before the meal that’s designed to show you how generous the chef is in a restaurant where entrees go up to $39. O.K., fine, it’s an amusing and tasty little thing, salmon, I think, but still we have no wine, and when the waiter clears the plates I say, “Could we get the wine soon?”

“Of course, sir, the manager is looking for it.”

Looking for it? This does not bode well.

More minutes churn their way into oblivion, and when the waiter shows up this time to change some silverware, I say, “We’d really like to have the wine.”

“Yes sir, of course, but — ” and here he lowers his voice a trifle ” — the manager is very busy right now.”

Very busy right now! In a restaurant where only three tables are occupied? LL and I gaze at each other with wild surmise, and large thought balloons bearing the words “What The Fuck??!!” appear over our heads. This is completely a new one on me.

“But,” the waiter continues — and he really is a nice and polite young man and none of this is his fault — “I know he’ll get the wine in just a minute.”

What happens in just a minute is that the waiter returns with the appetizers, sets them in front of us and rather furtively hurries away, trying to maintain his dignity. We sit there with arms folded. At this point THERE’S NO WAY IN HELL that we’re going to take one bite of food without the wine. Then a man, the manager, practically runs into the room and leaps in front of our table. “Ah,” he says gaily, “you want the wine!”

“Yes,” I say, “we would like the wine very much!”

“Of course,” the manager says, “I will be right back.” And off he scurries, and indeed returns in a few seconds with the wine under his arm. As he opens it he explains that he had to search for the wine upstairs, that it was the last bottle and difficult to find and so on, none of which explains WHY IT TOOK HALF AN HOUR TO GET THE DAMNED BOTTLE OF WINE.

Which, thank Bacchus and all his pards, turned out to be absolutely lovely.

The waiter comes to the table to ask if we want coffee. The usual discussion ensues: What types of coffee does the restaurant offer, are all the choices available in regular and decaf and so on. The waiter takes the orders and then asks, “Will you be needing cream and sugar with that?”

What happened to the days when an order for coffee meant that the waiter automatically brought to the table a little tray that held the cream and sugar and the other accessories with which we decorate or alter our coffee? The service would take different forms. In a diner, you would be brought a little metal pitcher for cream or milk and a little metal canister, usually holding sugar or sugar-substitute packets. In a fine restaurant, a silver tray might hold a silver bowl of sugar cubes, while the milk or cream pitcher would also be silver and have a lid. These luxuries fascinated me when I was a child, especially the sugar cubes wrapped in paper, because when you unwrapped them, the paper kept its tiny neat folds and you could play games with it. Not that my family went out to eat in restaurants frequently, or ever.

Anyway, before I get all teary-eyed with nostalgia and fantasies about lost childhoods, let me say that the seemingly polite question that we hear so often now in restaurants, “Do you need cream and sugar with that?” is merely another way in which restaurants abdicate their responsibilities toward good service and erect a wall of faux-etiquette between waiters and customers.

And then the check comes. Now obviously the vast majority of checks in restaurants are paid by credit card; that’s the way of the world and the expense account. But occasionally I’ll pay with cash, slipping those greenbacks between the covers of the fake leather booklet. What happens nowadays is that the waiter picks up the book, turns slightly and then says, “Will you need change back from this?”

Well, honey, it’s not a negotiation. That question, disguised as polite concern and a way to save you, the customer, time, is such a naked plea for a tip that the waiter might as well get down on his or her knees and say, “Please, please, please!” It’s really a form of intimidation. Why take time to figure out a proper tip, is the theme: I’ll just keep the rest of the money.

No, waiters, take the booklet the way you’re supposed to, keep yer mouth shut, except to smile pleasantly, and bring back the change. Then the diner can figure out the tip and leave the appropriate amount.

Yes, I know, waiters have a hard life, and I’m not being ironic about this — all you have to do is listen to their horrific tales to understand — and, I hasten to add, the points I gripe about in this post are not the fault of the waiters; these are management decisions to deliberately diminish the quality of service.

But the tone of a restaurant, the pace of the meal, the cordial yet detached relationship between waiter and patron, the unspoken yet always fulfilling round of little details that comfort and assuage: These all need to be maintained in order for diners to have a successful experience in a restaurant, whether chomping on a grilled cheese sandwich at Mom ‘n’ Pop’s Road House or slicing into foie gras at La Maison de Upper Crust.

Service with a smile, dude!

Image of the happy waiter is from ckm2005.ucsd.edu.

One of my colleagues at the office related this incident:

He and three friends had gone to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday. The restaurant is a fairly sleek and contemporary place that serves upscale French bistro fare. It’s moderately expensive and fields a good (and more expensive) wine list. The chef is well-known in town for his talent and affability.

The group ordered martinis, and my colleague had taken a sip or two — in other words, he was not inebriated — when, in making some expansive gesture, he knocked over his cocktail glass and spilled the martini. He used his nakpin to sop up the liquid, called over the waiter, explained what had happened, and asked for a new napkin, which the waiter promptly brought.

At this point in the narrative, I interrupted and said, “And of course they replaced your martini.” A statement, not a question.

“Uh, no,” said my colleague. “The waiter asked if I wanted to order another one.”

All right, this is a simple incident, an accident that could happen to anybody, and I certainly don’t think the restaurant should replace the spilled cocktail of a knee-walking drunk (if such has not already been ejected from the restaurant). But the good will, the rapport that would have been established by replacing my colleague’s spilled cocktail would have been enormous, perhaps incalculable. It’s the sort of unspoken but deftly performed gesture that brings customers back and earns loyal patronage, compared to which the cost of a jigger of call-brand gin and a smidgeon of vermouth is nothing.

We posted this story on the food and dining blog at the newspaper where I work (and which is not connected with biggerthanyourhead.net), and I was surprised by how many responders said, essentially, “Let the guy buy his own drink! Why should the restaurant pay for his clumsiness?”

Well, O.K., you can take that view, but I think it’s ungenerous. No, one doesn’t want our fine restaurants filled with people who sip half of their Cosmopolitans, knock them over and expect a free replacement. I think the ideal is that we would never expect this sort of magnanimity but that it would be extremely gratifying if it happened. And waiters would appreciate the tip such generosity generated in turn.

 

A restaurant much like the ones you patronize.

The waiter comes to the table, hands out menus, takes drink orders and so on, and then announces that he will recite the roster of specials, the dishes that the chef — or as the chef is known in the restaurant, “Chef” — has created especially for your enjoyment this evening.

A bit of throat-clearing, and he begins:
“First Chef has prepared an appetizer of pan-roasted day-boat scallops on a bed of fresh micro-greens and cucumber coulis with a, um, a, uh, black cherry-wasabi vinaigrette. Another special appetizer features seared organic foie gras with, with, um, a Granny Smith apple-port wine reduction and, uh, gosh, what was, oh, right, caramelized Szechuan pepper-corns. The entree special is, uh, let’s see, um, o.k., got it, whew, ha, the entree special is a fennel-and-violet-encrusted Chilean sea bass with, um, yes, basil-buttermilk smashed Yukon Gold potatoes and, well, damnit! I mean I thought I had this down pat, I mean, I swear, an hour ago I was rattling this shit off like one-two-three, it’s with, wait, wait, ah, baby asparagus and a Meyer lemon-Savennieres demi-glace! Yes, I did it! Yes, I said, Yes, I will, Yes!”

Let’s call a moratorium on this sort of command performance, which demands that waiters memorize long lists of special items, requires diners to sit patiently as the recitation winds on, and then we still have to ask what the details are since we can’t remember them: “What was the sauce with that elk again?”

Chefs cannot, I suppose, help wanting to break out of the strictures of the menu and show off their talents for inspiration and spontaneity, but the burden on the waiters who have to recite the specials for diners sometimes seems unbearable. I have often seen waiters tuck crib-sheets inside their order books and glance surreptitiously at the list, but they always seem embarrassed if we catch them peeking, as if they have failed in some way.

I say, go ahead, print the specials on a card and let waiters read them, especially at restaurants where the specials seem to go on and on and we gradually dissolve in a haze of boredom and forgetfulness.

Better yet, print specials on cards and insert them in menus or have waiters pass them out so we can read them for ourselves.

That’s why computers and printers were invented.

The waiter swoops down and says, smirking, “Is everything wonderful?”

Or, even worse, “Is everything perfect?”
Well, not much is perfect in this imperfect world, but could we diners please be afforded the courtesy of making our own judgments about the food and the restaurant and the service without these blatant elbows in our ribs? Asking “Is everything wonderful?” isn’t an expression of concern for your dining welfare, it’s a form of coercion. The courteous response is a simple, “Everything is fine, thank you,” not, “Hey, it’s a bowl of onion soup, how wonderful can it be?”

Though that’s the whole point.
This actually happened a couple of days ago at lunch in a really nice restaurant, you know, white table clothes, menus printed on heavy paper, a certain air of casual solemnity. The place serves French bistro-style food but with an edge of creativity and interest. I was eating an onion and black olive tart with smoked salmon and fresh greens and having a glass of the MacMurray Ranch Pinot Gris 2004. Everything was good.
The young waiter veered toward the table, loomed and leaned over, beamed and said, with an interrogatory lilt: “Yummy?”

Yummy!

“You got it, Ace,” I said, “and my right foot in your tummy!”

Ha-ha, no, I didn’t. I said, of course, “Everything is fine, thank you,” but I mean, really, a restaurant isn’t nursery school. Could we please be treated like grown-ups?