Read Drink & Be Merry

Everyone who drinks wine has one.  Many who don’t drink wine have one.  That bottle of wine that you have been saving for a special occasion.

It may have been bought on a trip someplace exotic or mundane, a gift for a special event or from someone no longer with us.  The bottle that represents a memory that you are now saving for a special occasion.  But as time goes on a couple of things start to happen.  After looking at the bottle sitting there for a couple of years the occasion needed to open it becomes so important that you pass over opening it in the hopes of finding just the right moment.  What will come first?  The ‘right moment’ or vinegar.  Wine is a living thing and has a youth, a prime, a maturity and, yes, a death.  What a waste it would be to save a memory and then try to relive it by opening a bottle you have kept too long, adding a sour memory to your more pleasant one.

With all that in mind, someone smarter than I, created something called Open That Bottle Night back in 2000.  The idea is to actively look through you wine cabinet and find that bottle that needs to be dusted off and enjoyed before it’s too late.  The date for 2009 is Saturday, February 28th.  So I encourage you and someone special to put aside an hour or so this weekend to enjoy that special bottle of wine before it is too late.

Oh, and just in case… have an extra bottle set aside and ready.  It would be a shame to have no other choice than vinegar.

A while back I asked Chris, owner of Can-Can, about the number of children that I would see at Can-Can.  It didn’t matter what time of day I was there, brunch, lunch or dinner, there always seemed to be kids in the restaurant.  His reply was that they had tried to make the place family friendly from day one.  They had only started out with two high chairs, gone up to 4 and then to 8 and were considering needing more.  This is a bit surprising considering the menu has only a couple of kids items for lunch and brunch and none at dinner.  It succeeds, however, with good food, apps and sides that kids will eat and enjoy, and a staff that treats kids with respect.  The bonus is I’ve never seen a kid melt down or cause a scene in the place – they all seem to be well behaved and schooled on how to act in a restaurant.  No screaming kids like I’ve seen at Casa Grande or some of the chain places.

So, at the tender age of 4 weeks, we bundled up Elias and trucked him down to Can-Can for a Saturday dinner – his first real night out.  We even warned Can-Can that if things looked like they weren’t going well we might need our food to go.  They told us we were welcome regardless and the noise level on a Saturday night would drown out a crying baby.  Turned out it didn’t matter.  He slept through dinner, woke up for dessert and quietly had a bottle as we finished.

For dinner we had a slew of our favourites for appetizers and starters.  Nothing new here.  But, here in the latter part of winter, the ever changing menu offered us some new choices.

M was thrilled with the new Saturday special.  She spied what she called a ‘German’ plate and had no further need to look at the menu.  Pork cutlet, bratwurst, knackwurst, sauerkraut over corned beef, potato with parsley and a dollop of grain mustard.  A German plate at a French restaurant?  No actually Alsatian, no theme issues here.  She thought the knackwurst was ‘ok’ but really enjoyed the brat  and thought the sauerkraut was outstanding.

Another new dish on the menu was braised lamb.  I’m a real fan of braised dishes but a little hesitant in ordering them in a restaurant.  The time involved typically means the dish was made well in advance and can often taste as if it has been sitting on a buffet steam table for far too long.  If it wasn’t the meat comes out tough, from too short a cooking time, and has not had the opportunity to absorb all the flavours from the braising juices.  This was done perfectly.  Meat falling away from the bone, the fat slowly dissolved into the meat to give it the signature rich taste of a long, slow braise.  Umani!

Finn had his usual gougeres and then a dish of macaroni and gruyere.  Our dinner guest was in the mood for meat.  Can-Can has a steak frites dish that is good but can sometimes disappoint.  The strip steak is a little thin and mere seconds (or too long under a heat lamp) send the meat from medium rare to overcooked too often.  The pommes frittes also tend to shed some of the salt applied to them making the steak a little too salty.  It does make a good lunch dish and can satisfy that meat craving but I tend to pass on that choice for dinner.  I recommended that L get the hanger steak – a thicker and more flavourful cut that doesn’t rely on a sauce for taste.  She ordered, it came out beautifully sliced with mashed potatoes.  A perfect medium rare it satisfied her craving perfectly.

So, after coffee, after dinner drinks and dessert the another nice evening ended at Can-Can.  As we left the table next to us exclaimed that they didn’t even realize there was a baby as he had been so quiet (unconscious) throughout the meal.  We’re not ready to declare Elias a baby that can go out anywhere, like we did with Finn, but we are optimistic and will take it step by step.

OK, so Foodie and Jack have dueling blog posts about the minefield that is tipping in America. On one hand you have Jack who would be happy if you tipped at 150% of what you ordered after having multiple items disapear from the check and on the other you have Foodie who would thinks it’s all a racket and will have every dollar pried from his cold, dead hand. Tiny exageration, but then you have the prevailing notion provided a while back by a local ‘artiste’ who said waiting tables was a job that could be done by monkeys. Of course this is the same guy who longs to return to an earlier era of civility and priviledge so he could live a life of cultured leisure provided by the sweat of others.

Sad but true. There are a lot of people out there that think waiting tables, or tending bar, is a job that could be done by our simian cousins. Actually, if a waiter has done his or her job right it should seem that way. You shouldn’t be aware of all the work and chaos that has to occur to get that drink and plate of food to your table. It should all be seamless.

You’ll never know about the arrival 2-3 hours before opening to polish silver and glass ware. To fill the sugar caddies and salt and pepper shakers. Coffee stations set up and ice tea brewed. A couple hundred napkins must be folded for various purposes, lemons cut for fish and menus checked for stains. In some places the front of house staff is required to double as prep cooks. Cutting veg, soup and salad stations and the joy that is raw bar. Live lobsters unpacked or garlic butter made. All for an amazing federally mandated wage of 2/3 of minimum. Except that was 2/3 back in the early 80’s. As the minimum wage has increased restaurants have gotten exclusion waivers and the wage has remained at $2.13. As the cost of Latin American immigrants has gone up many of their duties have been foisted off on the lowest paid people on staff, the waiters.

I’ve heard often how people wish they worked in a restaurant so they could eat the wonderful food everyday. Bullshit. The staff is fed whatever is left over from a special that has been running for the better part of a week or ‘bribe food’ provided gratis by food suppliers vying for the chefs business. More likely you get a plate of frozen prepared chicken wings, pasta with a sauce that expired yesterday, or a ’stew’ of tough meat that has been marinated in vinegar to cover the flavour it acquired after being forgotten in the back of the walk-in. For his trouble the owner pockets a $10 deduction per staff member.
Note – I have worked in a couple of family restaurants where, while we did not eat food from the menu, we actually ate exceptionally good and interesting food.

You won’t know the careful dance that is played with the dingbat hostess so the waiter get’s a fair share of decent tables and doesn’t sit empty till the height of the rush when she ‘remembers’ you exist and seats your entire station at once leaving you spinning in circles.

You’ll miss the fun of trying to get to the crowded bar and get the bartenders attention to get your cocktails (that you’ve ordered one at a time because it’s too much trouble for everyone at the table to make a decision at once). No offense to Jack, but if it’s busy the bartender makes more off the customers at the bar then the herd of waiters clamoring between the brass rails. The smart waiters bribe the bartenders not with cash but pilfered food. Since a bartender often misses or has to rush through the daily ‘meal’ to take care of the early birds they tend to appreciate this.

With drinks in hand you will now interrogate the waiter on the details of the menu. A good waiter will know how each sauce is made, all the details of each plate. A mediocre one will at least be able to bluff. And while every waiter can be stumped on a detail they will at least try to make you feel like that is an important question that must be answered.

Once you have placed your order, with all the dish changes and substitutions, you will never know what is about to happen to your poor server. For some odd reason the chefs will always think that all these changes to their dishes were made, not at the request of the diner, but at the waiters behest. You will never know the string of obscenities and insults hurled at the waiter so that you can have something that isn’t even remotely on the menu. That’s OK, that what the waiter is for.

If at anytime during the meal something does go wrong you should never know about the waiter begging the dessert chef for something under the table for you or trying to get the manager, who is more interested in hitting on the 18-year-old hostess, to at least get involved and make things right.

You should never know any of these things. You are there for dinner. The waiter is there to make that a relaxing and comfortable evening. And when you are gone you won’t know about the extra hour or two cleaning up the messes left behind so that the place will be ready for another day.

For all this, and more, you leave them a tip. Please don’t think, however, that they keep all of it. If you leave a tip by credit card the house may keep up to 5% of the tip, or even more, to cover credit card costs (even though it’s less then 2%). Food runners, bus boys, bartenders, bar backs, even the occasional manager takes a share of that tip. If you leave a substandard tip who do think has their tip cut? The waiter. Everyone gets their share regardless. It is actually possible for a waiter to lose money on a table – not a happy prospect. Then there are the state and federal governments. They base your income estimate based on sales percentages. Got stiffed? Tough titty. You still get to pay taxes on the table.

So, how do I tip. I start at 20% and work from there. Somebody order ice tea and asked for lots of refills? That’s worth more than 20% of 2 bucks so I’ll add to the tip. Special requests or making the waiter run back and forth? Couple of more bucks. Waiter standing around chatting when I’ve got hot food but no silver? Subtract a couple. Rarely have I tipped less than 15% and I’ve only stiffed two waiters in my life. Usually it comes out to more than 20% and I don’t subtract for the sales tax. That’s just chintzy and I assume that part is going to all the support staff. Hey, I’ve even given Jack a bad tip and he gave me a free drink. Of course I was low on cash, told him I owed him a drink or two and provide him with a free book every now and then.

In Europe waiters make a living wage, and have benefits. People tip but the waiters do not rely on that to live. Could that work here? I doubt it. The current system is too entrenched and the odds of the owners paying professional waiters their worth is slim. RVA Foodie may hate pretentious waiters but I can only imagine his reaction to dropping a couple of bills in a nice eatery while being served by an ex-McDonald’s counter girl who is snapping her gum and rolling her eyes.

I loved waiting tables. It was controlled chaos at it’s best and my job was to ensure that you were blissfully unaware of all the work, politics, and just plain bullshit that went on to provide you with a nice an relaxing meal. I think everyone should be required to work a year in a restaurant – preferably one in a tourist resort – before they are allowed to eat in them. Sure, some aspects of the job a monkey or even Meade could do, but you really wouldn’t like the result.