November 1988: Not My Job

I am a waiter and I am a dancer. Do you wish service or an entrechat douze?

Conundrums breed and multiply. Nobody, it appears, can get a fix on service. Lots of scalp scratching going on; ditto, dumbfoundedness. 

“Without quality service, my business is doomed,” says a restaurant owner.

“I’ve had to cut back on my hours because I can’t find enough qualified employees to wait my tables,” says another. Imagine.

In a large conference room at the New England Culinary Institute, seated at long tables, operators and the press debate service. It is often a heated debate. It is damp and autumnal in Montpelier, Vermont.

Fran Voigt, president of the Institute, has prepared an agenda. It includes “Trends.” Also, “The Competition.” Nobody wants to talk about the competition; everyone, it appears, knows who or what that is. Apparently, talking about trends is a waste of time, too: all conjecture and uncertainty Nobody knows what a trend is or how to define one.  Service is on everyone’s mind. Nothing else matters. The agenda is inconsequential. This is the argument—never, by the way, disputed: 1) You can talk “trends” until you’re blue in the face; likewise, “competition.” 2) If you’re running a restaurant with lousy service, sooner or later trends won’t make any difference and your competition will bury you. Service is on everyone’s mind.

“What can we do about service?” Voigt asks. The emphasis is on “can,” as if to imply that it’s already too late. The question is enough to trigger the discussion that lasts all day. At times, as you will see, it is anguished and querulous; at times vindictive; sometimes sardonic and macabre. The give and take is nonetheless instructive.

There are 40 of us here today. Some have a grasp of what it takes to provide service. Others, merely a gasp. We address nearly everything that has anything to do with service, including, most importantly, what to do with the people we hire to provide it. We avoid the obvious: say what you will about service, do what you will to glamorize it, it is not a profession. It is a job, which is what it will be forever and ever.

At a café in Paris

Never mind what it is in Europe where it is in many cities a profession. It is a job here because restaurateurs think that’s what it is and treat it as if that’s what it is. It is, to boot, a minimum-wage job—correction, when tips are included as a percentage of the pay it is a half-a-minimum-wage job which should give you an idea of its value. It has no self-respect, no dignity, no value, no worth. Only a handful of owners think it has any of the latter; and, those who do, make every effort to endow it with some of that. To most owners, this is what service is: it (please note the gender neutral pronoun) takes the order from the customer, delivers the order to the customer who pays for it after he or she consumes it. No big deal. A basic function: simple, frills-free. Does it deserve enhancements: a title, more pay, a bonus, a slap on the back? “If that’s what service is all about, how are we then to instill in it a sense of worth or stature or importance?” asks Voigt.

Says a restaurateur, “We treat most service people like newspaper boys. Peddle the plates. Do a good job and we’ll pay you something for doing it. Not much, mind you, but it’s all we can afford. So, be thankful. Do a good job and if you do our customers will give you something extra, especially if he or she likes the way you look and talk. And, because we are kindhearted, you may keep that something extra, unless we think you don’t deserve all of it in which case you’ll have to share it with everyone else who works here.”

Smile, get the food out on time, talk good like a waiter should, serve from the left (or was that “from the right”?), pick up from the right (or was that . . .), say, “Thank you” and “please,” be charming and never wear stuff that might offend our customers. Tattoos? Cover them up. Piercings? Get rid of them? Perfume? Need you ask?

“It is, too, a profession,” argues a restaurateur. “It is not just a job. We indoctrinate our service help. We welcome them as family into our restaurant. We tell them they must know our food and the ingredients that go into it; they must know wine; they must know what the table service is for and where our food comes from. Our guests today are very smart. Our waiters must know how to talk to them. Not a day goes by when they are not challenged by someone or something. Every day as restaurant owners we hope to mitigate that challenge by making them comfortable at the job.”

“I’m impressed,” says someone. “How long is the average waiter with you?” “We’re happy if he stays two years.” “You’re kidding.” “Two years is a lot.” “And then what?” “He’s off to a real job.” “I see; and what do you pay him or her?” “Half the minimum wage.” “I see.” “Plus tips, of course.” “Of course.”

What are we going to do? What will we do? Futility feeds frustrations.

“We don’t know how to hire or whom to hire,” says another restaurateur. “We are inept at hiring. We have no idea what to look for.”

“What do you mean, ‘What to look for’? I didn’t know we had that option,” says a friend. “The employment situation in Boston is so tight, hotels are between 10- and 25-percent below staff. We don’t have the luxury of looking for the right person. We’re lucky to get someone, anyone. A person. We’ll take the first warm body that walks through our front door with or without a resume.”

Still another chimes in. “Have you any idea what it’s like to have someone on the job so incompetent that when the time comes to fire him or her, you can’t because it’s impossible to find a replacement? We can’t afford turnover when we have to turn over.”

Scapegoat Time at the Roundtable: “Here’s the real problem,” says someone who used to be a waiter. “For many kids, their first experience in foodservice—like mine—is working fast food. Assembly-line food; assembly-line service. Push a button and out comes food and service. The idea—the only idea—is sales and profits. Kids get turned off of foodservice forever because of the shabby way managers (for the most part ill-trained or never trained) treat them at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. Doesn’t matter which one you name. Name one, you’ve named them all. Could be Burger King or Pizza Hut. Kids want no part of a foodservice career.”

“It’s not just limited to fast food,” says a reporter. “I’ve heard horror stories about waiters mistreated at midscale restaurants from Olive Garden to Cheesecake Factory. I’d be willing to bet, were it not for their being ill-treated, that some of them, when they were hired, were thinking of a career in foodservice.”

Now, it’s getting rough. More anguish; more hedging. A lot of people are scared.

“I don’t have any answers. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Go figure,” a friend whispers to me.

“How come,” a writer proposes, “foodservice has all these celebrity chefs, but no celebrity waiters?”

“Easy,” says a food writer who has never been a waiter. “When you endow a person with celebrity you acknowledge her intellect, her creativity, her authority and influence, her presence, her clout. Her ownership. That’s what celebrity is: a celebration of skills and talents for all the world to see and admire. There will never be celebrity waiters, never be a profession of waiters, until foodservice strips the job of its stigma and invests it with those qualities.”

“Ownership,” says one. “I think that’s what I heard. Am I right? That is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Who among us is willing to give ownership to waiters? To empower them? A chef, I can see. A waiter?”

“This worries me more than anything else,” a restaurateur says. “I’ve got a great chef and a great menu and fantastic food. If my people up front are no good, if they have no idea what the menu is all about or, if they do, have no idea how to talk about it with customers, they can easily destroy what the chef and I have worked so hard to create.”

Pay is pitiful. Not so, says a restaurant manager bragging about one of his waiters. “He’s got a condo on the lake; he gets a kick out of driving inebriated customers home in his Mercedes. They like him so much they ask him to sign the menu.”

Great! As an editor, here’s what I’m thinking. We’ll do a story about this kid. We’ll call it, “The Waiter: It’s not a Job, It’s a Lifestyle.” We’ll point out how great it is to be a waiter; we’ll throw in other examples of great service just to shore up our argument, like the maître d’ at the show lounge in Las Vegas who’ll show you to a good table if you slip him 20 bucks; a really good table for 50. Thanks for sharing your story about the condo and the Mercedes. Must be hundreds like it. Right?

Waiters are the Rodney Dangerfields of foodservice.

Try this on for size: “Until you construct a justice system that treats people the same way, that gives them the same rights, that gives them dignity and a voice in the growth and evolution of the operation, you will always be courting misfortune brought on by backbiting and mutual distrust.” Michael Kay said that in our October issue. Kay is the president of The Portman Hotel Company. He is wise beyond his years. I think he knows how to work with people who report to him. He trusts them.

Here’s something else that symbolizes what being a waiter is all about. A waiter punches a clock. When was the last time you saw a chef do that?

My son, the chef; my daughter, the chef. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? How about my son, the waiter; my daughter, the serving wench?

Let’s you and me find dignity in service. You go first.

Dancer: Rommel Canlas; Paris café: Elena Dijour/Shutterstock.com

August 1989: The Pepper Mill

                                                                         Yevgen Romanenko

Here’s Molly O’Neill. She’s a prominent Big Apple newspaper writer. She writes for the New York Times.

What sort of writing is tough to figure out. According to a vaguely-worded blurb in my program notes (I'm at a prestigious food event), she was “formerly restaurant critic for New York Newsday now with The New York Times.”

“Now with the New York Times” as what isn’t clear. Here’s what I think: she’s either the new restaurant critic of the Times; a summer replacement for regular Times restaurant critic, Bryan Miller; or someone who just writes about food and dining-out for the Times. Try getting past the phone maze there for an answer to simple questions like who’s who or who does what, and you’d think you had just called the head chemist at Coca-Cola to ask about the soda pop’s formula. Before the phone-call filterers at the Times will connect you (fat chance) to the person who may (or may not) be able to answer my questions, they want to know who you are, what you do, what company you work for; and (the part I like best) “what may I ask is the nature of your call.”  Whatever it is that O’Neill does (the “whatever” part being the “nature” of my call), my program notes tell me (I’m paraphrasing here) she eats out a lot; at least 25 times a week, and writes about it.

O’Neill is a charming person, but she has some strange notions about what constitutes dining out.

It was at the Aspen/Snowmass Food & Wine Classic, sponsored by American Express’s Food & Wine magazine, that I dropped in on a panel and heard O’Neill and three others chatter on and on about “Sensible Strategies for Service: Solving the Big Problem for the 1990’s.” Tall order, right? You bet. Fulfilled? Not by a long shot.

The panelists dealt with the petty constituents of bad service, rather than the broad-sweeping essentials of a fix; worse, they dealt with everything anecdotally as if the anecdotes in and of themselves, each so absurdly improbable and bizarre as to be extraneous to the discussion, would suggest solutions. Panelist after panelist would preface his or her example with a variation on this apology: “You’re not going to believe this, but . . .” Several people in the audience had anecdotes, too, each itching to share his or her story and that didn’t help one bit. They were like first-graders waving their hands frantically to get the attention of the teacher. The panel dragged on and on until everyone, thankfully, ran out of anecdotes; and the panel out of time.

Face it, no one has the foggiest notion of what a “sensible strategy for service” is, there being as many foggy notions as there are restaurants. I mention that to let the panelists off the hook. If no one, let alone restaurant operators, knows what to do about bad service, how can we expect the panelists to come up with solutions or to analyze what it is about service that makes it good? Their only option, as noted, was to recount incidents of bad service, leaving attendees hanging, wondering what to do or how to deal with it.

On the other hand, untold thousands of chefs, owners, and restaurateurs can tell you what happens when you have a sensible strategy for service in place: bountiful sales and profits; bountiful traffic and customer counts, bountiful happy returns. But, if their life depended on it, not one of them could explain what a sensible strategy for service was.

Jimmy Schmidt of Detroit’s Rattlesnake Club, one of the panelists, took a shot. “They don’t return for the food,” he said, “they come back because they’re well taken care of . . .” He did not elaborate; did not explain what he meant. Well taken care of may be the protocol at Schmidt’s restaurant, but having been to restaurants where the food wasn’t good, but the service was, I doubt if I’d  return to any of them just because I liked the service. As long as we’re on the subject, can we not all agree to retire the mantra: “Good service can rescue a mediocre meal, but bad service can ruin a great one.”?  I expect good food and good service (or reasonable facsimiles) whenever and wherever I eat out. Good service, lousy food. I’m supposed to return? I don’t think so.

And so it was that the panelists, in trying to “solve the big problems for the 1990’s with sensible strategies for service,” couldn’t; and instead became bogged down in a slough of service clichés, sketchily and indifferently (ho-hum) enumerating service indiscretions while admitting there wasn’t a strategy you could put in place to deal with them.

Among the panelists, O’Neill was the worst offender, chewing on clichés like a dog with a bone.

Before taking bites, she set her table with a most improbable premise, upon which she then served a glut of leftovers.

Premise? According to O’Neill, customers don’t have a lot of time to eat. Hurry up, please, it’s time. They resent delays that interfere with the task at hand which is to shovel food from plate to mouth really fast. Hey, lookout, wow, serve me fast or don’t serve me at all.

As far as O’Neill was concerned, we had entered The Golden Age of Gulp and Gobble. The Epoch of Dash Dining: from cocktails to coffee in blank seconds flat. Last one to clean his plate is stuck with the check. Shut up and eat your spinach. Beat the clock.

I’ll concede O’Neill this: her premise may work at lunch that, for most (exception: power lunchers), is a timed event—a fuel stop, as it were. But dining? Nope. Dining, let us remind her, is a leisurely, unclocked event. Dining is a treat. One does not treat fast.

O’Neill, however, forged ahead; and, building on her flimsy premise, went on to spout the following service flaws as interminable interruptions to the rhythm of her chewing as if they were Pepto Bismol inhibitors. Full disclosure: I have taken liberty to embellish truths; to provide implications based on her declarations. Truths in italics are O’Neill’s; implications and embellishments that follow, mine.  

If you are my waiter, she proclaimed, I do not want to know who you are. Don’t bother introducing yourself to me. If you are my waiter, Bruce, please keep it to yourself and move on quickly to the business at hand. Don’t waste my time with goofy greetings. You may think you are Bruce, but you are sadly mistaken: you are just a waiter. My for-the-time-being-in-the-moment waiter.

You waste my time, too, with a recitation of specials. Don’t do that. If the restaurant has not bothered to print them and their prices as an insert to the menu, then it’s up to you to come to my table equipped with a reasonable facsimile. Hand it to me. Give me a minute or two to look it over and I’ll tell you if there’s anything on it that I want.

If I need to know what’s in a dish, I expect you to know. Don’t tell me you have to ask the chef or the manager. Don’t do that. That’s another waste of my time.

You may hover if you wish. That’s OK, but try to be discreet. Because I am always in a hurry, I like hovering, but I don’t like to keep looking over my shoulder to see if you’re doing that. As noted, I eat and run. I expect you to know what I need when I need it and to react accordingly.

Do not, she concluded, bother me with pepper mills.

Her enumeration of complaints elicited the appropriate buzzing and self-conscious chuckles from an audience of mostly restaurateurs, consumers and reporters who should’ve known better. For me, however, her arguments— assembled as they were upon a premise suffering from an overdose of presumption—were exemplary of questionable absolutes, more to be pitied than laughed at.

So, let’s get specific.

Customers, when dining out, become part of a most agreeable ritual: thoughtful service and the savoring of food and drink. There is—be advised (and, as noted)—no rush to any of this. Throughout, there are pauses to drink in the subtle flavors of the restaurant’s ambiance. Between bites (and often with their mouths full) customers have been known to talk to each other—aimlessly, perhaps, but, more than likely, matter-of-factly, romantically, or even pedantically (especially, if they’re power-dining). Dining no longer is a prelude to some other event: a concert, the theatre, a ballgame. It is the event. For many, dining-out has become the evening’s entertainment. We like to take our time.

The pepper mill? It has no place at The Upscale Place, but it does at The Midscale Place or any other restaurant where it’s an unexpected, but appreciated, part of the service. The same goes for cold forks presented with the salad course. That’s a certifiably nutty cliché, but still a service amenity cherished by those who appreciate the thoughtfulness of the gesture, even though the fork warms immediately to the touch. With the pepper mill and the fork, we’re talking form not function—a perception of value. Cold forks at “21”? Not a chance. At La Villa Tarantella and Enoteca? Of course. Who’s to object; what’s not to like? 

Specials can be delivered with all of the nervous apprehension of a 5-year-old playing a talking tomato in a school play; or, lovingly, as if praising shamelessly the brilliance of the chef and the craft of the kitchen for collaborating to create such a spectacular special; or, can be spoken credibly and convincingly with all of the élan and eloquence of an actor playing to the last row of the balcony. However, give O’Neill her due: a list of specials, handwritten or printed, is a nice touch.

What about the waiter who takes time to introduce himself? What are we talking about here? Manners? Boorishness? A breach of service ethics? What service offense does a waiter commit who cozies up to the diner? Well, I suppose it is offensive if cozying is affected, sleazy, indifferent, matter-of-fact, an innuendo. But if cozying is pleasant and sincere, warm and thoughtful, even flirtatious, it breaks the ice. More importantly, it establishes a trust between waiter and diner that should strengthen as the meal progresses.

We want O’Neill to know this: Service is intrusive and annoying when it is redundant, ineffective, overbearing, and unsolicited; when it is a conditioned reflex. It is a pleasure when it is attentive and gracious, when it responds intelligently to every request with useful explanations and clarifications; when it arrives at the table with introductions, pepper mills, recitations or a list of specials and more.

Does any of this make sense? Sensible strategies for service? It’s a start. But pay no attention if all you want to do when dining is to eat and get the hell out.

June 1995: Tang on the Moon: A Modest Proposal for Some Warning Labels

                                                                                                            iQoncept

Maybe you’ve seen it? That list of safety tips and regulations hotels place in your room? “Do this, do that; don’t do this or that; check this, close that, place stuff here; don’t place stuff there; watch; observe, report.” Each tip a warning: restrictive and threatening. All indemnify the hotel against guest naughtiness and indiscretions, thoughtless or deliberate—just like the Ten Commandments, when observed (or if observed) shield our souls against sin. Or, so we’ve been told.

My take? There ought to be more of this stuff in hotels and every other place where consumers no longer are guests, but potential litigants. And yet . . . and yet: however acceptable and necessary these strictures, warnings and cautions may be, it saddens me to have to ask: is it beyond the realm of sensible thought and responsible behavior to presume that all of us past the age of puberty should know what we’re doing when we find ourselves in situations and places familiar and recognizable? 

Enough already. Here are warning labels, precautions and clarifications. We’ll start with restaurants.

Warning Labels, Precautions and Clarifications for Restaurants
►This is a napkin. Tuck it under your chin or place it on your lap. It will catch and, in most instances, contain whatever you spill there. If you decide not to use a napkin and, somehow, you soil you clothes, please tell us. We have an ample supply of club soda set aside for just such emergencies. Also, nearby is an excellent dry cleaner.

►Handle menus carefully. We have bandages for customers who suffer paper cuts.

►Everything we serve is deliciously lukewarm. If your food or beverage is neither hot enough nor cold enough for you, please visit our ice machine and/or microwave stations. Before using either, please sign one of our disclaimers absolving us from frostbite or radiation. They are available from your waiter. Exceptions: coffee is hot, water cold. But you knew that. Right?

►We subject all of our prepared food to photofluorography. It tells us instantly if the dish you’ll be eating contains pathogens or something else it shouldn’t, like, for instance, a hank of hair.

►We measure and weigh our portions carefully before your order is cooked and plated. If it appears someone else has a larger portion of the same dish you ordered, please bring it the attention of your waiter and we will make amends promptly by either adding something to your dish or taking away something from his.

►With every course your waiter will supply you with a list of its ingredients. If you notice there are ingredients that shouldn’t be there or that you are allergic to, please let us know and we will do our best to remove them after consulting with our chef: after all, it is his recipe. By the same token, if you think there are ingredients that should be there but aren’t (allergies be damned), please let us know and we will add them after consulting with our chef: after all, it is her recipe. A word to the wise: if, indeed, you do suffer from allergies, please let us know of them at the time you place your order.

►We identify menu items high in cholesterol with the symbol of a bleeding heart. The bursting blood vessel symbol identifies items high in sodium. Neither is a warning. Each merely is something thoughtful we wanted to do for you.

►We no longer serve alcohol.

                                                     Gustavo Fazao

We didn’t lose our license, you lost your right to drink it or so say the ever-vigilant police who occasionally set roadblocks just outside our restaurant. We used to worry about your imbibing and the amount you imbibed; we used to worry about third-party liability. We don’t worry anymore.

►Our executive chef is a lawyer; our maître d’, a doctor. Our waiters are dietitians. Need we say more? We are prepared for every contingency.

►Salt is white; pepper, black. If you have any questions about their use please consult our menu lexicon. A copy is available at the hostess stand. It lists everything you’ve ever wanted to know about foods indigenous to our planet and beyond (i.e., Tang on the moon).

►We provide a 12-inch thread of dental floss free of charge. Toothpaste and toothbrushes are available from vending machines in the restrooms.

►This is an after-dinner mint. No charge. Please remove its wrapper before you eat it.

►The doggie bag used to be a good idea. Not anymore. We don’t provide them, so don’t ask. Food in transit breaks down and could cause food poisoning when consumed later. 

Warning Labels, Precautions, and Clarifications for Hotels
►Please! One person only into each compartment of our revolving door.

►In the top drawer of your dresser, you will find a Bible. The Gideons—a religious sect—hath put it there. If it offendeth thee, giveth tongue to the front desk and we shall removeth it from thy chamber.

►Do not kill or maim while you are with us. Do not steal from us or a guest. Do not covet your neighbor’s room or anything that may be in there such as personal effects or a spouse.

►Do not do anything blatantly illicit here or when you are in your room. Affairs are your business. We turn the other cheek. When you checked in and asked for an extra key, we did not ask why. A list of perversions outlawed in this state and the penalties incurred if performed is available in a plain brown wrapper from our front desk, no questions asked. 

                                                     Photographee eu

►The bed is not a trampoline. It is for horizontal activity and assorted dalliances not otherwise forbidden by the sodomy laws of this state.

►The bottles of shampoo, lotion, and conditioner in the bathroom look like the teeny bottles of liquor in the in-room mini bar. Do not confuse the two. We ask you to be ever vigilant: when you unscrew the cap on a bottle, know what’s inside and what to do with it.

►The bathroom is a very dangerous place. Use caution before entering and especially while within. Rules for appropriate bathroom use, etiquette and/or behavior are posted above the sink, tub, and commode. As a courtesy to others sharing your room, please remember to lift the seat. That’s not one of our rules; it’s just something nice we think you ought to do.

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January 1996: All About Slogans

                                                                                                      lliana Mihaleva

Here’s my New Year’s resolve: To rid the world of slogans. Not slogans like “The Buck Stops Here” (that’s a fine one) or “Loose Lips Sink Ships” (sort of a fine one), but the slogans you find plastered throughout the offices of corporate America, that you find peddled in the ads of men’s magazines whose demographics appeal to managers who crave the enrichment of slogans to help them define themselves—a quick fix, as it were—because (you see) they have difficulty letting you know who they are or telling you exactly what it is they do or telling you what you may think it is they do.

Slogans are the smile faces of the millennium; the bumper stickers of the boardroom. We’ve replaced what we used to learn in school, at home and at work with modern-day Aesopian morals, beautifully printed and framed and hanging everywhere, Big-Brotherlike (this is who and what we are and what we want you to be). They are supposed to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, yet do little to boost productivity, morale or excite performance. They are, matter of fact, upon close examination, rather depressing. How about this enhancement: “The true reward of a thing done well is to have done it.” Words to live by.

Restaurateurs I love and respect have told me (no kidding around) that they use slogans as part of their training programs. They frame and hang them all over: from the lobby to the restrooms, slogans galore. I’ve been told some managers use them instead of a training program. “Wanna know what we’re all about?” a restaurant manager asks me. “Check this out,” she says, pointing to a slogan hanging above the employee timeclock: “A day without smiling is like a day without sunshine.” You read a slogan once, that’s it. Reading it twice or more doesn’t impress the impression more or make you more aware of what it is you should be doing (“smile, or else”). It certainly is no substitute for training.

Regardless of how vapid slogans are and how ineffective they are at communicating anything substantial, don’t lose sight of this: men love slogans, women don’t care. Men need slogans, women don’t. Women express sentiments better than men. It’s a communication thing. Women say, “I’m sorry.” Men need something cribbed from a greeting card, a slogan.  If you ever see anything like the following in the office of a woman, call the paramedics—it’s apparent her estrogen has been strangled by an overdose of testosterone. Here it is: over her desk hangs a picture. It’s a lovely photograph of mountains, a lake, a sunset, and a bird with a generous wingspan. Printed across the photo in a typeface that would make a calligrapher weep is this: “Soar With Eagles.”

If your restaurant is cluttered with slogans, take them down, except one: “Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning To Work.” Slogans are for the birds (not a bad slogan, by the way).

Next month: mission statements. I feel about them as I do slogans. But, if you think you ought to have one, here’s the best one I know of. A friend of mine saw it at the Mustang Ranch, needle-pointed (quaint, I thought) and framed: “Our mission is to make you ecstatically happy and us some money.”

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August 1993: The Ultimate Employee True/False Test

I see by the Associated Press that this retailer, Target Stores, which deals tangentially in food and food services, has lost a lawsuit filed by a group of job-seekers. They were offended by a written true/false test they had to take that included questions so bizarre you had to wonder what sort of employee the company was looking for.

Here are some of the true/false statements from the test: I believe there is a God. I am fascinated by fire. Evil spirits possess me sometimes. I would like to be a florist. I believe my sins are unpardonable.

See what I mean?

I’ve got some advice for Target and other companies that ask prospective employees to take aptitude or psychological tests: keep them simple, non-threatening, gender-neutral and, above all, work appropriate.

I have here a few modest examples for those of us in the restaurant industry.

True or False

The French fry is a form of capital punishment in Paris.

The guillotine is a lean piece of rabbit combined with forcemeat of eggs.

We believe the name Eggs Benedict to be unpatriotic.

Better? Eggs Patrick Henry.

Or, maybe, Eggs Richard Nixon.

The dearly departed, but never mourned, McLean Burger tasted only slightly better than the container it came in.

Pizza is the delight of the working class.

                                                                   jugky61

Pizza (right) with duck, chicken, arugula, caviar, and sun-dried tomatoes is the curse of Beverly Hills.

Once you find out what kale is, it won’t make any difference. The same goes for kohlrabi.

Other than the fact that one is chilled and the other isn’t, there is not much difference between a red wine and a white one.

Red wine with fish.

The Harvey Wallbanger was an imposition on our sense of taste.

Macaroni and cheese used to be, but aren’t anymore.

You could say the same for grilled cheese.

Time permitting, you can input all of the recipes in the world on your Kindle.

Degustations are a waste of a chef’s inspirations and a guest’s time and money.

Medallions of veal are what cows wear around their necks to celebrate the birth of a calf.

Tagliatelli, Pene, Ziti, and Lunache sleep with the fishes.

Celebrity chefs are figments of their imagination.

So are restaurant critics.

Today’s trends aren’t. Ditto, fads.

A fried egg on a hamburger is a fad. So are crafted cocktails.

Customer service is earned, not given.

Good waiters know intuitively the tables that (and the people seated at them who) have earned the right to good service. The best of the good waiters get those tables.

American cuisine is forks on the left, knives and spoons on the right, don’t talk with your mouth full, and keep your elbows off the table.

All stalls in our restrooms have locks. And toilet paper. Do not be afraid.

The average kitchen in America consists of a refrigerator, a stove, a sink, and a microwave oven.

No one knows what the stove is for.

Nobody knows how to cook anymore.

More cookbooks were sold last year than in any year in history.

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Afterthoughts: Cain on Black

 

                                                              

I suppose right about here would be as good place as any to write a few more things about Herman Cain (in addition to what appears in the essay that follows) as in how we met (of marginal importance) and do I still talk to him (no) and maybe something about his 9-9-9 run for the GOP nomination (nope). However, while he was still a contender, I thought his points of view on race might be of interest to those of us following his campaign; that they might add another dimension to his personality that followers, supporters, mudslingers and cynics would appreciate, so with the help of high school buddy, Wilton Sogg (RIP, Wilt), a lawyer who once dabbled in PR, we contacted the news producer of the local NBC affiliate, told him about my essay, “Herman Cain and the Color Black,” (below) and would he like to read it with an eye to creating (my suggestion) “you know, an inoffensive and apolitical segment based on it.” He said he’d ask his boss; and if he liked the idea, he’d get back to us. Never did.

Photo by Juan Camilo Bernal/Shutterstock.com

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March 1991: Herman Cain and The Color Black

Herman Cain, president, Godfather’s Pizza (Omaha), is at the Ritz-Carlton (Naples, FL) addressing a conference sponsored by SFM (Society for Foodservice Management). SFM is an association for foodservice operators who feed employees in company food courts, cafeterias and executive dining rooms.

After his speech, which is about focusing on what you do best, he takes questions. Lease Plimpton, special services manager of MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Lexington, MA), and this year’s SFM president, asks one. Plimpton is white. “Based on our conversation last night, when did you stop being black and become regarded as a competent person?”

Herman Cain pauses a long pause. He’s not so sure what to make of the question. He twirls and twists it in his mind. The answer he gives is about attitude and performance; about focus and determination; above all, making sure that what has to be done gets done. He talks, also, about his blackness. He thinks he knows what Plimpton is asking even though he believes she has phrased her question clumsily. “I’ve never stopped being black,” he says. “I never forget it.”

The question, says a woman seated next to me, is “not politically correct.” It is, she thinks, inappropriate.

Forget inappropriate. “If you ask me, the question doesn’t make any sense. Here’s what I’m thinking,” I tell her. “It’s convoluted; and I’m being kind. Let me see if I’ve got this right; here’s what Plimpton wanted to ask, should have asked: ‘Will you be regarded as competent only when you stop behaving as a black man; does not your blackness get in the way of your message, of who you are.’  Or something like that. Is that it or am I completely off base?”

“I don’t think she realized what she was saying,” says the woman seated next to me.

Some think the question has insulted Cain. The question is questionable.

What does Cain think? Following the meeting, on a flight to Washington, D.C. where he will attend a meeting of the National Restaurant Association Board (he is a member), he whispers to an associate, “I thought the question was racist.”

Plimpton’s question has struck nerves. Some members are offended by it. Others feel it is totally out of place. Still others say it is in poor taste: they dredge up past instances of Plimpton’s poor judgment and timing.

“They want my head on a platter,” Plimpton tells me.

Not quite. Heads will not roll. What the association board decides to do is not a matter of concern here. What is, is whether Plimpton (or anyone), regardless of expediency, has the right to disrupt the gentle order of polite discussion with antithetical thought.

(Associations, by and large, shun controversy. Confrontation is their cross: it defeats their purpose and irritates their members, who must—at all costs—be spared unpleasantness. Disturbing their comfort zones antagonizes and alienates them. Confrontation and controversy place a pall on association conferences. Palls at conferences undermine association objectives. Associations will have none of that. Associations do not want their members to squirm. They lose members when they allow that to happen and that leads to flimsy attendance at conferences and both to a loss of revenue.

Which is why, when they plan their conferences they try to design a program that underscores the positive. Nothing wrong with that, provided one accepts, as a condition of conference behavior, an agenda brimming with sanitary discourse: how to wipe out your competition and live happily ever after—that sort of thing. Face it: conferences are pep rallies. Members love them. Associations thrive because of them.)

I ask Plimpton about the question, about the part that referred to the “conversation last night.”

“Exactly. We talked about blackness, we talked about whiteness.”

I ask Cain the same thing.

“Right,” says Cain. “Based on the discussions we had at dinner, I knew exactly where Lease was coming from. In retrospect, she should have asked that question in private. What ticks me off is that it’s important enough to be discussed openly, except that some people don’t know how to discuss it.”

Or, don’t want to discuss it?

“Right, don’t want to discuss it.”

Says Plimpton, “I found out at dinner that Cain’s father, Luther, was a chauffeur for Coca-Cola in Atlanta. I asked him if he had seen Driving Miss Daisy, because my cousin says it’s full of stereotypes. Herman said that that movie isn’t about my father; that movie is my father. I found out later that executives of Coca-Cola had a list of four employees who were never to be fired. One of them was Cain’s father.

“I left the South because I was determined that my children would not be brought up in an environment where color is a barrier,” says Plimpton. “Cain and I talked about that over dinner. You know what he said? He said ‘I prefer to live in the South because at least there you know where people are coming from.’

“I remember being introduced to Herman at the conference. He wanted to know more about me. ‘Where are you from,’ he asked. When I said, ‘Mississippi,’ I could feel him cringe.”

Cringing is the knee-jerk reaction triggered by years and years of waspish racism. Plimpton’s drawl and her birthplace are prima facie evidence of her bigotry, right? It’s enough to send a caution to Cain that if he plans to say anything at all to this person, he better launder it.

“I have a sixth sense,” Cain says. “When I meet someone who has racist attitudes—no matter how subtle—I can detect it.”

“If I think people stereotype me because of my accent,” Plimpton says, “I have to signal very early on that my accent should not define me.”

Back to the question. “I understand you thought it was racist?”

“You misunderstand. Not racist,” Cain says. “It took me a split second to understand what she was asking. It was, keep in mind, poorly phrased. I think she was nervous when she asked it. What it was, poorly phrased or not, was thought-provoking. Not racist. But her question backfired because, as you know, there were some people there who weren’t sure what Lease meant or who didn’t know how to discuss it or, as you noted, didn’t want to discuss it. I could have answered Lease’s question quickly: ‘I have never forgotten that I am black,’ but that would have been flip. I wanted time to reflect on the best way to answer her.”

Whites—all kinds: trash, uptight, liberal or conservative, redneck, rich or poor, honkie—are brought up in an environment where they find it incomprehensible that a black person might succeed or might want to succeed. To be black means you cannot succeed, but if you do, you are regarded (at least inside white society) as odd; or, at best, a curiosity.

                                                                                                   Syda Productions

“That’s not exactly true,” says Cain. “Let me tell you what I think. Because whites are brought up in a predominantly white environment, they are unaware of how difficult it is for someone brought up in a black environment to fit into their environment [right]. If a black person succeeds in a white environment, whites regard it as a novelty. White people don’t expect a black person to succeed. It’s so rare that when it does happen white people don’t understand how it could happen. How is it possible for a black person to make it considering all of the obstacles he or she has to hurdle? Furthermore, a black person has to be better than average to succeed on an average level.”

We live in a cultural quagmire. It does not matter what color or sex you are, what God you worship, what causes you champion: we are conditioned to believe that our desires, our accomplishments, even our ideas must parallel standards of excellence and conduct ordained by white Anglo-Saxon males; and where deviations from these standards are regarded suspiciously, often contemptuously. 

We judge black people not on the basis of ability or potential, but on how white they are. We let them know, matter-of-factly, that if they intend to succeed in the white male world, they must renounce their blackness—their culture and their heritage; they must espouse whiteness; they must, to the extent they intend to coexist inside the white business ghetto, dress white, talk white, eat and drink white, walk white, play white. And, when that happens: when black people ascend to an acceptable level of whiteness is when they are thought to be respectable and accountable. I believe that’s what Plimpton meant when she asked Cain, “When did you stop being black?”

Here’s something Danny Glover said recently. “The other day, I shocked myself. I was thinking about taking on a role and I found myself questioning, ‘Is this a part for a black man?’ Then I realized that’s crazy. This is a role for a human being. That’s what’s important.”

Blacks are not alone.

Women who perform brilliantly, who succeed beyond their wildest dreams, are never permitted to savor the exhilaration of their success. They are not persons whose extraordinary efforts stand alone, that are gender neutral. They are hybrids—androgynes, Tom-men—whose achievements are compared to those of their male counterparts. Woe be unto them should they exceed the standards by which we measure white men: that sort of performance courts envy and slur; risks ostracism and censure; or, if none of these reactions is apt, perhaps this one is: exceptional performance is looked upon with wonder. Men are startled it should ever happen. They rationalize it to excuse it: it is a deviation from acceptable standards, an aberration that never should occur.

Touchy subject, discrimination. Must we know how Herman Cain, today perched at the top of his profession, copes with it, does not forget it? Yes. Well then, what does that have to do with foodservice? A lot. Does it matter one whit that a discussion of it might offend those who would prefer not to talk about it? No. Should we coddle and accommodate those whom we might offend? No. Finally, is a discussion of it relevant at any meeting which worries incessantly about a labor market that continues to shrink? Yes.

We go out of our way to avoid provocative thought because we do not know how to deal with it dispassionately.

If we find ourselves challenged with real ideas, we react emotionally, sarcastically, or not at all. We namecall, we ridicule, we tell the foulest of dirty jokes, we character assassinate. We clam up.

Instead of encouraging controversy, we shrink from it, equating it with substandard behavior. And, God help us, when someone has the nerve to inspire us with a stimulating idea, as Lease Plimpton tried to do, we are repulsed. 

Stimulating ideas flourish everywhere. We don’t like to discuss them; we do not tolerate them; we hate to admit they exist.

What gives? What’s wrong? What’s the problem? Inside our warm and cuddly industry minorities predominate. We brag about it. Why is it we don’t like to talk about it?

Herman Cain: Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock.com

August 1984: The Wrong Stuff in Four Parts

Part 1. No secret: a lot of newspapers can’t afford a legitimate (I use the adjective advisedly) restaurant critic (below right). But that doesn’t stop them. They think their readers want restaurant reviews. They think if they print restaurant reviews, the restaurant ads will follow and they will sell more papers. So, they search the staff for someone to write restaurant reviews. Would you like to know how someone on a newspaper becomes a “restaurant critic?” This is how: from a pool of wordsmiths, the publisher selects a beat reporter who eats out a lot.  Usually (don’t ask me how I know this, I just do) it’s a single woman who knows exactly what goes into a BLT. Now, naming someone “restaurant critic” just because she eats out a lot is like Ronald Reagan naming Mick Jagger Secretary of State because he’s been everywhere, met everyone, and logs more air miles than migrating Arctic terns. 

                                                             Helen Adamova

Unfortunately, hand-picked beat reporters who eat out a lot don’t know much about dining out (just read their reviews), have no idea how cooks prepare a meal or what goes into it. By the way, when they review a meal and try to decode what’s in it, they don’t take the time to ask the chef—afraid to blow their cover or too embarrassed to ask or both—so they make things up. Furthermore (and this may be most important) they sadly lack a perspective of gastronomy and its history. I know of one critic—she remains nameless—who thinks a beef Wellington is what Napoleon dined on before he was exiled to Saint Helena. Other writers—the real restaurant critics (those hired and paid to do just that)—aren’t much better than the beat reporters doubling as restaurant critics. By the way, none of this deters restaurants from advertising, even those that have yet to be reviewed. As regards the latter, the newspaper promises it will review their restaurants. Eventually. But, I digress.

Part 2. Here’s a travel columnist, who fancies himself a restaurant critic, writing in a Midwest city magazine about how terrific dining out in San Francisco is. Among his reviews of restaurants, we bump into this amusement: “I stayed in . . . Campton Place, a new 126-room gem just off Union Square whose kitchen just may shatter the myth of wretched hotel restaurants forever.” If the critic’s specialty was the absence of pentameter in Albanian poetry, I would forgive him, but this guy’s a travel writer who, I must assume, has been around.

The myth of the wretched hotel restaurant was shattered years ago, dating at least to 1967 and the opening of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and its revolving rooftop restaurant, a design departure so revolutionary it became, in and of itself, a tourist attraction. Up until then hotels didn’t have restaurants; they had dining rooms. Hotels with great restaurants were a rarity. Hyatt said “nonsense,” decided enough was enough and, in its spectacular John Portman-designed hotel—the first of several for Hyatt—announced the time was ripe for hotel dining to come of age: to offer guests dining as good as what they might find in classy independent restaurants. Other hotel companies took notice.

Now then, unless our lovable travel critic had been hanging out all these years at The Welcome Sailor Arms and its hundreds of hourly-rate renditions throughout the country, I’ve got to believe he ate decent, even great, hotel food long before Campton Place.

(That Hyatt fell short of its objective isn’t the point here; that it tried, is; and in trying acknowledged, however indirectly and indelicately, that hotel dining was in dire need of an overhaul; and that if it were ever to reclaim an aura of respectability, would have to dump its dreary image and replace it with one to suit guest tolerances for quality; and in the process demonstrate to its competition—other hotel chains and independent restaurants—that hotel dining was alive and well. The travel writer/ columnist/critic mentioned should’ve known that.)

A complimentary restaurant review about Nick’s Fishmarket in Chicago magazine opens by slurring owner Nick Nickolas: “Despite the owner’s flamboyant public persona, the restaurant is a model of good looks.” That’s as much a non sequitor as this: “Despite the fact she’s been in more beds than an American Beauty Rose, Elizabeth Taylor’s performance was Oscar-worthy.” I mean, who needs this nonsense? OK, writers don’t like Nick, they don’t like his flash . . .his flamboyance. What the hell does that have to do with running a restaurant and the food and service in it?

Part 3. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was an 18^th Century politician who loved to write about food. Just before he died, he wrote a book, La Physiologie du Gout. He is remembered for the book, not his politics. Along comes Amie Brillat-Savarin. I assume she’s related. In one of those glossy hardbound books you’ll often find in a hotel room (the ones you’re asked not to steal) is an article she wrote: “Things That Can Ruin Your Digestion,” subtitled, “Whatever Happened to Dining in Style?” In it she takes some incredibly tired potshots at the state of dining out in America today, each of them, she reminds us, “a universal complaint.” No kidding: that’s what she wrote: “a universal complaint.”

B-S beefs about menus printed in one language only; having to buy tables from maitre d’s; pompous waiters; dimly-lit restaurants; noisy restaurants; interminable waits for the check; and—the final straw: the checkroom scam. As regards the latter (the weakest and most nonsensical of her beefs) B-S writes, “If your ‘host’ has no place in the dining room to hang your coat and hat, the checkroom service should be considered part of the amenities of the house.” Sounds about right. Here’s my solution should no checkroom be available as “an amenity of the house”: hooks throughout the dining room for guests’ hats and coats. Who needs a checkroom? Also, I’m not sure why the word, “host” is in quotation marks. But that’s not my problem.

                                                  Everett Collection

Look: My raincoat has been through hell: it ain’t fancy, but I’m still happy to tip a checkroom attendant to watch it for me (I think the tipping part is what bothers B-S). I’ll bet my next car payment that B-S owns a fancy fur coat. Maybe the next time she’s in a restaurant, she can wad it up and shove it under her chair instead of paying someone a buck to watch it. Or, maybe she can find a “place in the dining room [a hook, perhaps] to hang her coat and hat.” 

B-S’s list of amenities she expects restaurants to provide in addition to what, routinely, they do, was far from complete. The checkroom scam brought to mind others. I list them here as contemplations B-S forgot to contemplate.

The Parking and the Valet Parking Scam. Like the checkroom scam, this is an easy one: the restaurant pays for the former, doesn’t charge for the latter or, better yet, gets rid of it altogether. Valet parking is an insult to every guest, infirm or handicapped excepted; it implies you can’t do it yourself. Parking slots in the parking lot are like coat hooks in the dining room: they are there for you to use. Go forth and find one. Even when the weather is foul? Sure. Who told you to go out on a night like this?

The Getting to the Restaurant Scam. For every time you dine there, the “host” gives you a coupon redeemable at a local gas station, the amount based on the number of miles from your home to the restaurant, the EPA’s Fuel Economy Guide, and the grade of gas used. You took a cab to the restaurant? Present your receipt and the restaurant deducts the amount or a percent of it from your tab. This is known as the “Off-Premises Amenity.”

                                                  Trudy Wilkerson

The Charging for Service Scam Otherwise Known as Tipping. Tough amenity to fault, but I’ll give it a shot. You’re at a restaurant. You sit at a table to eat. What you eat is prepared in a kitchen, located near to or far from where you sit. A waiter comes to your table and asks you what you’d like to eat. You tell the waiter what you’d like to eat. He or she scribbles what you’d like to eat on a piece of paper and then hands the piece of paper to someone in the kitchen. Once prepared there, someone in the kitchen hands the food to the waiter who brings it to you. The livelihood of the restaurant depends on how well this system works. The delivery system back and forth is critical to the survival of the restaurant. Is this so hard for the restaurant to comprehend? I guess it is. Because what happens next is beyond the pale: the restaurant asks you to reward the delivery system for doing what it’s supposed to do. Can you believe that? If that’s not a “universal complaint,” I don’t know what is.

The Why is the Restaurant Open Scam. The ultimate solution. B-S complains about restaurants that print menus only in one language; about restaurants where you buy tables from maitre d’s; where you suffer pompous waiters; where restaurants are dimly-lit and noisy; where there are interminable waits for the check; and, lest we forget, the checkroom scam. B-S doesn’t need any of that. There isn’t much about dining out that pleases B-S. Solution? She should make a list of all of the restaurants that displease her and not go to them anymore until they shape up.  

As for the rest of B-S’s bellyaching, it’s not worth debating. Yes, it’s true, there are restaurants that serve bad food badly, but they don’t last very long. You have to wonder why they opened in the first place.

Part 4. About reviewers who shouldn’t review. Patricia Weitzel writes restaurant reviews for Cleveland magazine. Her column is called, for the sake of cuteness I suppose, “The Edible Index.” It lacks not only index, but content. It’s not edible, either: trying to digest what passes for content can cause stomach distress. I’ve taken Weitzel to task before in this column because I think she’s sloppy and careless. A recent review of hers hasn’t convinced me to change my mind.

It begins by decrying the absence of fine cuisine in the city. This conclusion, incidentally, is based not on her observations—as you’d expect—but on those from conversations with a local chef. It’s “a meat-and-potatoes town,” grouses Weitzel, parroting, no doubt, the grouse of the local chef from whom she cribbed that wisdom. “No dandy cuisine in spare settings,” she says, as if food suddenly would attain gastronomic intensity if served, say, in a padded cell. Just meat and potatoes. 

Notes Weitzel, “While diners in Cincinnati and Denver demand California cuisine . . . Clevelanders remain enamored of restaurants with ‘atmosphere’ and mediocre kitchens . . .content with steak and ‘French’ onion soup.” “Cincinnati and Denver”? That’s it?  Did she omit Newark on purpose? Furthermore, she doesn’t bother explaining what California cuisine is.

The fact that none of her criticism is accurate bespeaks a dishonesty that Weitzel, with annoying regularity, loves to wallow in. But, her wallow-dithering doesn’t stop there. To buttress her argument (“no dandy cuisine, just a meat-and-potatoes town”), she reviews a restaurant whose ambitious continental menu offers well over 100 items, nearly 25 of them fish and seafood. Of the four entrees she chooses to write nasty things about, three are meat dishes, one’s duck. That’s sick. It’s also, as noted earlier, sloppy and careless. Weitzel writes that she visited the restaurant twice before reviewing it. Really? And sampled only four entrees, none of which was seafood? Right: sick again.

A conscientious critic would have invited to dine with her at least three other people so she’d have a chance, after two or three visits, to sample at least eight or twelve or more different courses.

Now, if the magazine can’t afford to subsidize quality reviewing (see opening comments), it shouldn’t pretend that it does. It is one thing for a critic to write vituperatively about a really bad meal in a really bad restaurant, but only after he or she has sampled enough of the menu to conclude that vituperation is the only way to describe the experience (I give you New York magazine’s Gael Greene), quite another to be scheming and shallow (I give you Cleveland magazine’s Patricia Weitzel). Weitzel and, it follows, the magazine, perform a disservice to readers. The editor ought to can her. But he can’t: she’s his wife.

February 1993: Bid U.S.A.: America, Brought to You by Taco Bell

 

The attendant hoopla surrounding the Elvis stamp got me to thinking. The United States Postal Service, of which we are all so fond, finds itself with the Elvis Presley stamp—15 years after the singer’s death—immersed in an enterprise far removed from its charge which was, the last time I checked, to sell stamps and deliver mail. Not anymore. Seems to me USPS, in exploiting a cult and peddling it, is in the ad biz. I like that. What I don’t like is what it did about it. Which was nothing.

Face it: Presley today is hotter than ever. CDs reappear on the charts, demands for videotapes of his film oeuvre are so great stores can’t keep up. TV stations air Elvis film festivals. Everybody’s cashing in on the Elvis Stamp Act. Not so, USPS.

If you were USPS, wouldn’t you have approached everybody who and every company that owns the rights to everything Elvis and advised all of them that you were thinking about releasing this Elvis stamp thing; and that in releasing it you were certain there would be a resurgence of Elvis-mania accompanied by an upsurge of interest in all things Presleyan; and that you’d expect a cut of the action? Otherwise, sorry: no stamp. Wouldn’t that have done wonders for your bottom-line, especially one swimming in red ink (at 29 cents a pop, I can’t imagine sales of Presley stamps making much of a dent in USPS’s debt)? And wouldn’t that have opened a lot of doors to companies that might be interested in cutting stamp deals a la Elvis? I have an idea: how about a Big Mac stamp that when licked tastes of a sauce remoulade? But, I digress.

As I said, the Elvis stamp thing got me to thinking.

A sign near Times Square, New York, upticks the Federal deficit (or debt, take your choice) while simultaneously upticking everyone’s share. It’s around $4 trillion, give or take several billions; and my share and yours is, I believe, about 50 grand, give or take a thousand.


Here’s my plan on how to cut the deficit. It’s called, “Bid U.S.A.” Think naming rights for a football stadium.

I’m not at all sure why Government, USPS included, refuses to sell the naming rights to its products, agencies, politicians, cabinet members, buildings and services to the highest bidder. Neither can I fathom why presidents refuse to endorse branded products. Wouldn’t that help cut the deficit? What’s the big deal? Are politicians so immune to influences that they would otherwise soil their integrity promoting a product? Of course. How many lobbyists can dance on the head of a congressperson?

What’s the difference between FDR backing Walter Reuther and Ronald Reagan, when he was an actor, telling everybody that “Chesterfields satisfy?” How come President Bush never told us what brand of pork rinds he eats? Wouldn’t you like to know that? Wouldn’t the manufacturer of the pork rinds willingly pay megabucks for the privilege of telling the world “President Bush eats our pork rinds.”?

I propose bigger fish; and you watched them swim here first. “Bid U.S.A.” makes sense and I want our Government to promote it so that all of us can benefit from it and, in doing so, watch the deficit dwindle.

Here’s how it works. The Government affixes a minimum pricetag to every product and business it uses and on every person who works for it, the price in proportion to the size and use of the product (local or global); and the familiarity, recognition, power and influence of the person. A cabinet appointment, for example, would be worth more than, say, a diplomatic post, but worth a lot less than a Supreme Court decision.

Cabinet appointments. They’re worth a minimum of $20 million to whatever company bids first on it. Example: soon after President Clinton appoints a cabinet member—let’s say, for the sake of argument, it happens to be Henry Cisneros, the new HUD (Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) secretary. Government solicits bids, offering HUD and the Cisneros name to any company willing to start the bidding at $20 million. Realtor Coldwell Banker leaps at the chance, nails the bid, outbidding Taco Bell (Cisneros is Mexican, so why shouldn’t Taco Bell take a shot?). Suddenly, Cisneros is no longer just plain old Secretary of HUD, he’s Coldwell Banker Secretary of HUD. Every time HUD or Cisneros is mentioned anywhere in any medium, Coldwell Banker gets a plug and the free ride to sell some homes. I don’t know how much money Coldwell Banker spends on marketing, advertising and assorted other manner of promotion, but the HUD endorsement strikes me as a no-brainer. Now, multiply that with every cabinet post. Make any sense? Deficit begins to dwindle.

National holidays? Why not? Easter becomes . . . well, how about Long John Silver’s Easter?  Independence Day becomes DiRoNA Independence Day. Columbus Day? If I were Olive Garden, I’d bite. And so on and so on.

How about naming rights to The White House? Think about it. The Library of Congress? The Pentagon? I've got recommendations.

Who wants to support the War on Drugs? $40 million buys you that privilege. A NASA space launch? What’s more American than that? Offered to a political party during a presidential race? A steal at $100 million. Its candidate’s name on the side of the shuttle? An extra $400 million.

The START treaty? Not cheap: $1 billion. Pricey, but worth it. Think of the global implications.

Imagine: Let’s say you’re Wendy’s and it’s December 1991 and the Pentagon has just informed you, at $250 million or so, you’re the high bidder for Operation Desert Shield. Furthermore—get this—if Desert Shield escalates, you own the right of first refusal to Operation Desert Storm. Think of it: Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings—not to mention Powell and Chaney—all talking about Wendy’s Desert Storm.

What about tanks rumbling across the desert on their way to Kuwait? Do they really need an American flag or a star painted on the sides of their turrets to let the world know they’re American? How dumb is that? How about selling that space to Hostess Brands, but only if it promises to replace heraldic devices with giant pictures of Twinkies.

Consider the deficit. Consider the possibilities.

Elvis, Lefteris Papaulakis/Shutterstock.com; Coldwell Banker, Gil C.Shutterstock.com, Debt, Razihusin

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November 1994: What Goes Around, Comes Around. Sex Sells.

 

litvinchuk                                                                                                                                       

You’d have thought we’d have learned, with the passing of Victoria Station and other restaurant chains similar in concept, not to recycle themes that—given the fickleness of a consumer dead set on getting what he or she wants, regardless of what you think he or she wants—have no more appeal than a sitcom about infectious disease.

But here we go again with a bunch of restaurant concepts that profit only from sham, not substance; that have caromed off the drawing-boards of movie studios, the think-tanks of TV producers and the computers of Mad. Ave. publicists and account execs and have landed promiscuously on the corners of high-traffic intersections, inside office buildings, shopping malls and the centers of tourist traps, seducing diners: snatching dollars from the hands of the seduced, not, by the way, unaware (and here’s the rub) they are being seduced.

If ever there was a signal that foodservice is in for another heady dose of go-go sales and profits, this new generation of eateries is it. They self-righteously boast of incomparable dining orgasms, but in reality offer little more than tease and titillation, scam and swagger.

They will survive, for a while. Like Victoria Station survived for a while, until everyone grew tired of eating in a boxcar. If the restaurant is a boxcar and the menu is the same (prime rib and baked potato or surf and turf and baked potato) day after day after day, then multiple visits eventually morph into no visits.

(I told Neil Reyer, a dear friend, who happens to be Jewish, that I was writing a column about the rise and fall of themed restaurant chains, conspicuous among them, Victoria Station. He said, “Let me tell you why Victoria Station didn’t make it: I don’t know of too many Jews who want to eat in a boxcar.”)

The difference today (the “rub”—see above) is that the people who patronize these joints now patronize them willingly, knowing that they are hopping aboard a foodservice bandwagon overloaded with flash and hype. And, surprise, surprise, they love every minute of it even to the point of painlessly shelling out bucks just for the privilege of being hoodwinked. As I said, if we were waiting for some sign that the age of austerity and penny-pinching is over, all you have to do is look at Dive, the Harley-Davidson Café, Planet Hollywood, and God only knows what else is lurking out there ready to surface and capture (control?) the imagination and stomachs of consumers aching for a quick fix. The theme-restaurant rumor mill has let slip that something called a Jekyll and Hyde restaurant may open soon in midtown Manhattan. A critic was overheard to say, “Food, most likely, will be an afterthought.”

There is no accounting for taste when there is none.

                                                                                                            Oleksiy Mark

Mark my words: we will witness, before this decade runs out of steam, restaurants appealing to our obsession with sex and violence, however provisional that obsession might be. Convinced there is a market of consumers out there spellbound by the aphrodisia of violence, some entrepreneurial nitwit will roll out a chain of restaurants whose theme playfully replicates acts of violence and sex: killings, rapes, drug deals, you name it. Entrepreneurial nitwit will incorporate all of that stuff thematically.

Fat chance, you say. Fine chance, I say. Consider that the consumers ripe for this sort of restaurant are the same ones spending millions to see movies whose plots record more body counts than the Holocaust.

We have come dangerously close in the past to such a restaurant. Remember the restaurants flush with symbols of military triumphs? Never mind that they were nostalgia banks invested with designer memories of the romance of war. The fact is there is nothing romantic about war. Try talking about war to someone who’s been in one.

So, you heard it here first: on the heels of Oliver Stone’s satirical depiction of violence, “Natural Born Killers,” and a natural-born outgrowth of movies such as “The Terminator” that tastelessly mixed violence with snatches of kinky humor and sex, we bring you (fanfare, please) Restaurant Uzi, a collaboration of the NRAs: the first restaurant ever to feature random acts of tongue-in-cheek mayhem; scantily clad waitresses, their busts crossed with bandoliers holding not cartridges, but—ho-ho: Jell-o shots; service at gunpoint (“Your order or your life!”); paths to restrooms strewn with land mines; salt not in shakers, but laid out as cocaine lines in the middle of the table; TV monitors with scenes of violence from movies featuring Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and Sharon Stone; menus replete with every four-letter and multisyllabic obscenity known to man and woman; Colt-45 (and only Colt-45 until another brewery crafts a competitive brand theme-appropriate) served at the bar; and, at the stroke of midnight, virtual realities of sex, wife and child abuse, and muggings. It is to snigger, don’t you think?

Snigger this: Years ago, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in Cleveland’s Little Italy. It had three themes, all bad; the worst was a bistro that poked fun at mob violence and featured, at the stroke of midnight, a fake raid. Forget that this garbage took place in Little Italy, an affront to everyone who lived there who did not need to be reminded of the stereotype; consider, instead, that even way back then—nearly 20 years ago—someone had the effrontery to spoof violence as an attraction to charm customers. 

If there is consolation to any of this, it is this. Just as Victoria Station collapsed beneath the weight of its own inertia, so, too, will all other theme restaurants. The consumer, always searching for change, becomes bored easily: when sham upstages substance, the initial attraction of the come-on fades and boredom sets in quickly.

Wild prediction?  I don't think so. Go to www.heartattackgrill.com