Entries tagged with 'hospitality'
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As times get tougher, for restaurants and everyone else,
more establishments have started to impose steep fees for missed reservations.
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Last week, I learned that many believe a server should never address a customer about a tip. Others chimed in to agree.
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I have never before said a word about a tip. Maybe my thank yous are slightly more emphatic when a tip is extremely generous, but I’ve never approached someone in the reverse situation and asked what was up. But Friday night, I felt different.
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Los Angeles Times The Los Angeles Times profiles four waiters who, among them, have provided more than 100 years of service to diners: Vladimir Bezak, Sergio Guerra, Pablo Zelaya, and Manny Felix (who "has a smile as big as an iceberg wedge"). They are the types who know you dropped a fork before you need to ask for another. They remember the hold-the-onions request without writing it down. They are a rare breed of "veteran career waiters," and even though they work at Southern California celebrity hangouts, "if you’re expecting any juicy stories, forget it—when pushed, they all fall back on the famous discretion of a great waiter.” This was a feel-good piece, and a refreshing one, without a...
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In today's New York Times Julia Moskin lays out in clinical, terrifying fashion the awful current state of the restaurant biz in New York and the rest of the country. Although Moskin has dug up some truly terrifying statistics (between October 2008 and January 2009, the New York restaurant business lost more than 10,000 jobs, and nationally the restaurant industry has cut more than 100,000 jobs since September), I didn't need to read them to know that things are bad all over. What have you noticed where you live? Here's what I have observed and heard from many well-known chefs and restaurateurs about their collective plight: Servers have bigger stations with more tables and diners to take care of. The...
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On this week's Chewing the Fat,
Alton Brown talks about what he discovered about the whole notion of hospitality when he hit the road in Feasting on Asphalt.
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Chicagoist has a really fantastic interview with Grant Achatz of Chicago's highly-acclaimed Alinea, talking about all sorts of things like his philosophy as a chef and restauranteur, and how his creative process works in his kitchen and with his colleagues. This was my favorite thing to read: C: What food-related websites or media do you keep an eye on, for ideas and feedback?GA: I do it a lot less now, but I used to be really into all the blogs, like eGullet, LTHForum, all of those. I don’t read them so much anymore, I don’t know why. I feel that some of it is that they’re losing some credibility. There’s a lot of good, honest material there, then there’s a...
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The Washington Post's Joe Yonan has a short but great Q&A with NYC restauranteur extraordinaire Danny Meyer up today: "Let's say I get a salmon dish at Union Square Cafe, and it's not too salty, it's not under- or over-cooked. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but I'm disappointed with how it all comes together, and I think, "eh." What should I do?" "Tell me. Please tell me. And have the confidence to accept my suggestion for a solution. I have a choice. If it's a $25 entree, I have $8 or $9 invested in it. Would I rather save that $8 or $9 and have you go tell the world "eh"? Or do I make sure you leave the...
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Restauranteur Danny Meyer is best known for running eleven of the best places to eat in Manhattan, including Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, The Modern and the Shake Shack; his latest is Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. 37 Signals has a great post up, Danny Meyert: Hospitality Is King, with excerpts from the book, an interview and a speech he gave at NYU recently: "The customer is not always right. While the customer is not always right, he/she must always feel heard." Meyer said his business strategy is built on both good service, defined as the technical delivery of a product, and "enlightened hospitality," which is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient...
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