Gallagher's Travels: Food Talk

Editorial Opinion

First I’d like to express my rather "strong" personal opinions about the restaurant business.

My experience is from both sides of the house. Like a good portion of the population I’ve spent time in the hospitality industry including waiting tables from diner to 4 star, banquet, hostess and even coat check!

Good Food - Bad Food

Perhaps it is the area where I live or the markets, although I try them all, but too often I’m disgusted with the quality and condition of available food products.

It seems like a percentage of everything you bring home is bad. The fruit that looks so perfect stays rock-like never ripe or what does, turns up badly bruised. Frozen packages have been thawed and refrozen at least a few times, fresh fish is slippery and smells. A new experience was fresh mozzarella cheese from an expensive specialty shop that was sour!

I dream not of hot fudge Sundays but European markets with their little stalls of pristine locally grown and produced wares. Unfortunately supermarkets like the dollar stores are proliferating all over the world.

How many times can you go back? When I’m at the offender store, I never seem to have the sales slip and then how much time and aggravation for an item that costs less than $5.00?

Here is the motivation for this late sleeper to leap out early Saturday or Sunday mornings in search of farmers markets. Never having been a big fan of "prepared" food of any kind - my belief is additives cause baldness among other problems. It's time to experiment further with an expansion of my cooking skills into creating even more basic foods from scratch.

Last year I bought an old Greek cookbook and discovered a great use for extra milk, Panir cheese. So simple a child could make it - well I did mess it up once - delicious, fresh and fun to add to salads and other dishes including popular Indian recipes.

A number of years ago in this same vein, I took a class on foraging and discovered the intensity of wild foods. Just a small amount is highly energizing and satisfying. These aren’t empty calories but pure nutrition that tastes better then you would ever imagine. I love wild spring violet leaves and flowers.

Never having a weight problem beyond perhaps eight pounds, I have still followed a variety of eating disciplines in search of the magic wonder foods. Some like macrobiotics, vegetarian, and lacto-vegetarian lasted a long while others including raw foods and juice fasting only a few days or less.

After the mozzarella incident I’ve decided to try more cheeses than just Panir. Searching the Internet, especially my favorite Epicurious.com, I discovered a great site www.fiascofarms.com with its cheese making recipes and supply leads. I plan to launch into the ricotta for a warm-up and then mozzarella.

Statistics show a growing crisis regarding the declining health of Americans due to obesity of adults and children. If you travel to other parts of the world, you'll be over come by the huge size of Americans and how easily they can be spotted by their girth in any foreign country.

Start to research what you're really eating. Read beyond the labels. Don’t be over concerned about calories - eat the purest, freshest most natural food you can find and you’ll be satisfied with less. Energy levels will rise and weight will fall. You’ll live longer and better. --Mary Gallagher

www.fiascofarms.com
www.epicurious.com
www.localharvest.org

***Update

Hoping to avoid a wait, we ran over to the Carlyle Grand (see previous review under Virginia Restaurants) for an early Wednesday dinner after driving in from New Jersey.

In spite of sauce stinginess, the fried Calamari appetizer continues to be the best I've eaten absolutely anywhere. We had unique and tasty main course salads with a small assortment of bread and rolls from "Best Buns" the Carlyle Bakery next door. A little soft and doughy for my taste.

And yes, BEST OF ALL team waiting did not fail my cemented in stone belief of presenting the thoroughly worst possible service. Like clockwork our main courses came out before the appetizer swiftly presented by a total stranger. A pleasant but clueless young person who had no idea which dish went to whom and actually may have wandered in from a neighboring restaurant. Luckily our cold main courses did not receive the alternate crispy or soggy treatment sitting under a heat lamp for thirty minutes. Can’t quite recall who provided additional bread but it took a hostess to refill our water glasses.

What can I say except consistency even in ineptness is possibly reassuring to some diners. And once again, my mantra, is it so difficult to write orders in a clockwise or counterclockwise manner? This simple formula adopted by the entire staff allows anyone to correctly serve the table.

Apparently the fish wife shout "Who’s da trout?" is all you’ll get at these prices.

Tipping

Server tip income, at the better establishments, may be surpassing that of freelance writers among other professions. A few years ago only people from New York City tipped 20%. Utah and similar areas hung at the 10% line but they were always gracious customers. Now someone is purporting that 20% is the new bottom line.

Personally, I tip based on the service given - no service - low tip. Recognizing that it is not an infrequent problem for slow or uneven service to be a breakdown in the kitchen, a good server will give his customers some explanation. "Gee whiz, I’m sorry but the stove just blew up, the pies fell on the floor and the chef ran off with the hostess."

In disastrous delays, like a lost entrée, a complementary house salad or appetizer to share will provide soothing balm to the raging savages.

Then again some wait staff like to stand outside the kitchen and have a cigarette or phone their friends while your coffee has gone cold or dinner is dehydrating under the heat lamps. I have been known to stride into a kitchen prepared to pick up and serve my own meal or coffee and then the other neglected tables. Organized rebellion is always an admirable choice.

A servers eyesight should be good enough to notice the Band-Aid on top of your salad, copious amounts of kitchen string in the mashed potatoes, a giant cockroach garnishing the top of the prime rib, or missing and incorrect food. If the Creme Brulee turned to scrambled eggs, or the shrimp reek of ammonia, please, discourage me from ordering it. These are a few examples from my personal experience in highly rated restaurants.

It is true, wait person wages can be less than $3.00 an hour and their real income is the tips. Like any type of self-employment, the real world says, no work no money.

True torture for me is banquets. Go to a gigantic banquet in a hotel and try to make a slight change to your plate. "Please leave off the gravy I'm allergic to many things" or ask a question "Do they use dairy products in this sauce"? You might as well place a call to Elvis.

The plates are all set before the server ever sees them. Unlike regular wait staff they have no interaction with the kitchen. Robot-like they pick up the courses in a specified order. You could have been served by a conveyer belt. Anything out of the set plan is an inconvenience, time eater and frequently never done. I have a hard time understanding why one person cannot be assigned to run from table to table to make sure the special requests like milk, tea or in my case espresso are handled.

Banquet staff are very well paid and the tip is guaranteed. They do work fast and hard but for personal service or really hot food don’t expect it. Even the popular stations with pasta or various ethnic choices are only re-heating food in a sauté pan.

The worse scenario is team waiting. Every seven minutes or less, a happy beaming new person appears who is unaware of even one word of your conversations with the three previous happy beaming persons who have approached your table. Or each member of the team thinks someone else has already been there and you sit waiting and waiting. No team member ever knows the order the food is to be delivered in. I resent paying any amount of money for a meal where the poorly trained server stands and shouts who ordered the fish? Basic wait staff education should teach the writing of orders in a clockwise manner and thus anyone could deliver correctly. Ask "May I have mayonnaise? " and thirty minutes later another new face shows up "Who wanted the mayo?" Do you tip all or none?

Sometimes I tip bus help even though I know they get a share of the waiter’s tips. If they clear a table near mine and don’t slam the dishes into a pan or on the tray, that is such considerate refreshing behavior, I think this person deserves a reward.

Check your bill in other parts of the world where the tip is frequently figured in. Although you are certainly welcome to leave a small additional amount.

Ambiance

Music in many restaurants is too loud. Another reason not to go back. Perhaps if you’re really young and concerts haven’t blown out your hearing yet or you read lips it’s all right but not for me. I’m here with friends or on business, if we can’t hear each other it was a wasted trip.

I (politely) ask that it be turned down and if they refuse as in the case of deafening decibels at the well known high end Frog and the Redneck restaurant in Richmond, VA, no return trips and no recommendation to friends. It was so disturbing I don’t remember the food. Staff explanation: the owners want it this way.

At Café Paradiso in Dupont Circle in D.C., it is impossible to hear the person at your tiny table for two but acoustics bounce the conversation six tables away perfectly intact to you. Great pizza if you like to eat alone or do takeout.

Speaking of pizza, in a round about way, I believe in hot plates. I serve all hot food at my own house on hot plates and not because they sat under a warming light for 20 minutes.

A few years ago, we were eating at Bistro Bistro in Arlington and our hot pizza appetizer was always cold. I sent it back and it still came out cold. Well "ta da" frozen plates. The server said "we cannot serve food on hot plates as you might get burned". I found that an inventive excuse for a badly run kitchen.

Praise to those restaurants and other establishments that have banned cell phones. I’m ready to ask for a smoker in exchange for someone whose life is such a void they need to loudly broadcast its boring details to strangers in public places.

Have you noticed how seating is frequently designed for bodies other than human? Like on planes. I am a very small person and if the chair is uncomfortable for me, especially wicker or rattan AKA clothes destroyers, imagine anyone over 6 feet. Apparently owners forgo sitting in their own establishment for three hours.

One four-star hotel in Washington remodeled their dining room at great expense. The staff discovered that anyone over 150 pounds could not fit into a booth. The benches and tables were too close together and anchored. If the customer requested a booth, the hostess faced a seriously embarrassing dilemma on how to say, "You’re too portly" to an average sized person much less anyone with a large girth.

Low lighting, deep shadows and carpeting that disguise stairs and other decorative ideas look great until someone falls. Mysterious symbols or names for Men and Women?

Not returning is the primary protest power we have in any unfavorable situation. The high rate of restaurant failure is seldom due to a lack of cooking skills. New ones open and the fresh choices never end.

Let me make a brief mention of safety and emergency exits in restaurants. Many things in a home or commercial kitchen are flammable. There are open flames, explosive potentials including grease and numerous other hazards.

Review the location of exits and when possible sit near to one. I don’t want to sound paranoid but how many times do you read of people trapped in restaurant and nightclub fires unable to reach an exit. Eat out with a fireman once and you’ll always sit near an exit.

Never would I eat or drink in a basement facility of any type.

Gallagher's Travels

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***Update

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