Nothing is for free….

The restaurant I currently serve at doesn’t give complimentary (free) bread with the meal. The owners also decided on a la carte (not included in the meal price) with the dinner salads and I have been hearing a lot of complaining from most of our older customers. I am confused. We sell sides of bread with our meals and most meals come with hot garlic bread on the side, but oldies (old people) love their bread and expect it, when they arrive at the table.
There are many fine a la carte restaurants in the world today, where they sell every item on it’s own. Many of these reataurant’s customers write rave reviews about the food and actually know and enjoy the fact that they can order a 14oz rib-eye with no baked potato, but a side of sautee’ mushrooms, instead. Isn’t that catering to the customer’s needs? Some people do not eat their bread that comes with their meal. Honestly, many of times I pre-bus a table for dessert and find the diner’s basket of bread still sitting where I first placed it. What a waste. I am so lost on this subject. Really, what’s the right answer to these frequent diner complaints about free bread?  May I take your order?

One recession coming right up…..

It is a strange day when I go to work and end up cleaning the walls, because there isn’t enough business to fill the dinning room seats.  Servers in Alaska make most of their money in the summer months when tourism is high, but winter months are filled with locals trying to beat the cold and go out and socialize with one another. Winters are a good way to reconnect with the local clientele. This past summer has been much slower then summers before and this winter is starting off slower then ever. What’s the deal?
With the stock market falling, debates between potential presidents taking place and American’s future up in the air, people are staying close to home. The restaurant industry is starting to feel the recession taking place around them. When American families are trying to pinch pennies, five dollar coffees and eating out at fine restaurants is the first thing to go. Server all over America are starting to feel the pinch. As a server I love going out to eat, but I have had to make cut backs also and that’s going out to eat at expensive restaurants. “In the lifespan of casual dining, we haven’t seen economic times like this, says Marc Buehler, CEO of Lone Star Steakhouse, which just closed 27 of 179 stores” Hard times are on the restaurant Menu. Restaurant recession? Some restaurants are trying to keep customers coming in by giving deals (Buy one get the second free) and budget friendly meals, but I am afraid their missing the bigger picture for servers. If the price of the bill is lower, but the customer is still getting the same amount of food and service, the tip will reflect the smaller bill amount. The server is giving the same service, but is getting a smaller tip. More work less pay is being heard around the world by other server bloggers.
This is a very unsure time in my life and also every other American. May I take your order?

Why tip? Part 2….

I was looking at the New York Time Food issue where they brushed the topic on tipping, “Why Tip“?. I thought this article brought up many good points. Why tip? Why not have a automatic service charge? What a wonderful point! The article talked about a restaurant San Diego called the Linkery that has done away with tips all together and make their customers  pay a mandatory 18 percent service charge. I have worked in many restaurants where the back of the house (kitchen staff) and the front of the house (Servers, hostess, and bussers) never really see eye to eye on alot of topics. Some cooks simply do not care that your table has been waiting for 45 minutes for their food. They don’t care because they’re aren’t seeing any of your tips from your tables, so they don’t care if you get a tip or not. Chefs do make more hourly wage than the servers, but the servers are bringing home the big money at the end of the day. This difference in income makes for a unbalance in power. The chefs become resentful to most service crews. It’s just the way it is? I have seen the unbalance in all of the restaurants I have been employed at. Making a mandatory service charge would change the unbalance between the chefs and the servers.
I honestly don’t know if they made a mandatory service charge if I would still serve tables, because I work at a restaurant now where we kick back to the house three percent of our sales (to the back of the house). Most restaurants do not employ this house rule. l would not serve tables anymore because I would not be making the money that I am use too. Where I’m employed now has a great system, you tip the house (Chefs, bussers, and hostess) a portion of your total sales. This is so the back of the house sees some of your tips, but the restaurant does not have that mandatory service charge. So at the end of the day the money I make is all up to how hard I work. This topic is a double edge sword to me. I think that is a a wonderful point and would help run a restaurant as a team, but they would be taking money out of my pocket. What’s a server to do?
Tipping is very old fashioned, but it’s the way restaurants in America have done it from the beginning. Many people don’t like change. Change has to happen one restaurant at a time. Here is some audio from a local server on automatic service charges. 

May I take your order?

Stews to Soups

I was reading on News Miners website today about Stews, in the article “Beef and beer stew: A sure-fire party pleaser“. What are Stews? Isn’t stew, soup? Don’t old people make and eat stew? I found what I was looking for at “This stews for you“. The article says  “soup is thinner than stew”. It says “Soup is for folks who are not feeling well. You never hear, “I brought you some chicken stew for your cold.” Stew is for hearty appetites. The stew can always has a picture of a lumberjack on it”. Both of these articles go onto write about the best stews and how to make them. I want to find the allusive stew and I also want to know where somebody can go out in Fairbanks and get a good bowl of Stew and not to be mistaken with soup.
I came to a conclusion when asking around town, Ester Gold Camp! I asked many people and they all said that Ester Gold Camp has really good reindeer stew. The gold camp is only opened during the summer months in Ester, Alaska. Many tourist find the stew a little different because the main ingredient is Santa’s best-friend, but they find that reindeer is very delicious. The stew is thick and rich. Everything that a good stew should be! I just wished that Fairbankans could enjoy it on a -40 below night. Fairbankans best bet are the Diners around town. Most make stews daily in the winter time, to beat the chill out of you. The Cookie Jar Restaurant makes a good beef stew. The stew will warm you from the inside out. May I take your order?

Hello, Can You Hear me? Hello!

“Sir, what can I get for you”? The man points to a item on the menu and shakes his head yes. As I walk away, I hear in a loud tone “Did you get that”? I turn back around and start to reply to the man and he isn’t talking to me but is on the phone. I continue to walk away and can still here the man talking loudly. This is a common situation in the restaurant world.
Many people come into have dinner by themselves and still have a lot of business to attend too with other people and the cell phone is the only way to make that possible. I love my cell phone, I just do! So I can understand that the man has issues to attend to, but when is it just plain rude? Cell phones are a new big world for most people and many people just don’t know the right etiquette for cell phones. In the article “Where are all the Wireless Manners“? posted by CNN.com states “A recent poll by market research company Synovate showed that 70 percent of 1,000 respondents observed manner-less technology use in others at least on a daily basis”. When eating by yourself it is alright to text other people, but make sure your phone is put on the vibrate option instead of a loud ring-tone. Texting isn’t fine when dinning with other people and that’s a whole new set of rules. I will write about dinning manners with other people in another post.
I think when people are on a business trip and are dinning alone, they may want to pick and choose where they decide to eat and take that important call. A place where people are celebrating their 50th anniversary and are trying to enjoy a nice expensive dinner, isn’t the place for your loud phone call. You may want to try eating at a low key restaurant, if you’re going to have to take important phone calls, maybe Wendy’s.  A good choice is “take-out” so you will be taking your phone calls in your hotel room and not in a fine dinning restaurant. If it is all possible turn your phone off and enjoy your one hour of dinner by yourself. No matter how you look at it, it’s just plan rude in almost all situations.

Get a Room….

When it comes to Public Displays of Affection, when is it too much? As a server, I don’t exactly enjoy watching couples at my tables making-out in front of me and the families at nearby tables. Hey, it makes me uncomfortable. I once worked at a restaurant that had little enclosed booths where people could have their dinners in somewhat privacy. I have walked in to many situations where people had stood on their chair and unscrewed the light bulb above their table, for even more privacy.  I always felt like I was interrupting their private time. Almost like I was walking in on them in their bedroom, weird! I believe that unscrewing the light bulbs is a bit extreme.

When reading a article by the New York Magazine titled “Public Displays of Affection: Sex in the park, on the street, in a cab, at the bar; exhibitionism isn’t just a fantasy in New York.” I came to conclusion that people are becoming a bit more bolder. The article states  “According to the book, having sex in a public place is a common fantasy. An Elle–MSNBC.com survey conducted last year found that 22 percent of Americans had done “it” in public in the preceding year. But almost everyone we spoke with in New York had a tale of public or semi-public lewdness. Which leads us to conclude—admittedly unscientifically—that the rest of the country is bringing us down in the polls”. At the restaurant I currently work I find myself serving couples that slip into the bathroom together before their entrees arrive and I have to ask them to please return to their tables. This makes me very uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong: I love serving tables where the couple is clearly happy just being with one another, or the old couple that just enjoys one another after 50 long years. When does it cross that thin line of adorable to raunchy?
I think that kissing in a restaurant is fine to a point, just try and not to over do it! Making out in public is fine, it is your right, but you should ask yourself “When does it make the others around us uncomfortable?”

May I take your order?

Wine 101

I recently served a bottle of red wine to a table of five business men. The man that ordered the wine was the person I presented the bottle to. He took a very hard look at the bottle through his glasses. He than replied to me “That will be fine”. I continued to open the bottle of wine at his request and proceeded to give the man a sample of the Cabernet to try, before I started pouring wine for the rest of the men at the table. The wine splashed around the glass violently as the man swirled it in front of his nose to smell. He then picked up the cork to smell it, he took the deepest, longest smell in and says “That will do”. I walked away from the table wondering what had just taken place. Was there rhyme or reason to what the man did? Is there a point this?

In the article “A Guide to the Tableside wine Presentation: What to Expect when Hosting a Dinner” they state that “A wine presentation at a restaurant is a chance for the host to see if the wine is spoiled. It’s not done to determine if the host likes the taste of the wine”.  I have walked up to a table with a bottle of wine and had the completely wrong kind of wine, but the wine was made by the same vineyard. In these cases the wines look very similar. This saves me from opening a very expensive bottle of wine for a table that never wanted it to start with. When a server presents a cork it is for the customer to look at and make sure the end that is facing the wine is wet and the side that is outside is dry. It shows that the wine is stored in the proper way. “A Guide to the Tables-side wine Presentation: What to Expect when Hosting a Dinner” says that “If the wine is stored upright for a long period of time, the cork can dry out and the wine can oxidize. If the cork is wet on the end that was outside the bottle, it means that there is a hole in the cork.”
After the corking many people want there wine to be poured to everyone, but the person that ordered that bottle has to sample the wine. The swirling of wine is to make sure there is not any cork or other stuff that may have found its way into your glass. ”It’s not proper to reject a bottle of wine if you simply don’t like it. Once it’s opened it’s yours.”
So there is a science to sampling wine, but lots people make a show of it. I heard from another server that “Wine is like technology. It is always changing and you can never know everything there is to know about it.”

Are you a good person?

Yesterday I was serving a well behaved family of five. The family seemed to enjoy their experience at the restaurant and ate all of their food. When they received their bill they slipped a piece of paper in the book with their credit card. My first thoughts were that it was a business card (which is very common for people to leave), but when I looked closer I noticed that it was a religious pamphlet, “Are you a good person?”.
I receive these pamphlets every few months and every time I am a little more disappointed than the time before. I understand that some people want to help and inform the people around them. I just wished that people would take into the context the situation that they are trying to save me in. I am at work and trying to make my money for my next semesters tuition. I get it, they’re trying to be helpful, but I don’t go to their place of employment and give them reading material when they are at their highest stress level.
When I receive these pamphlets I always wonder why they decided to give it to me in the first place. Why do they think I am lost in the first place and need their guidance? May I take your order?

Chinese food in the Arctic Circle

Who would have ever thought that Chinese food in the Arctic Circle would be a wonderful experience? In Kotzebue, Alaska there is a little Chinese restaurant owned and ran by a family that has wonderful Chinese food named Empress Chinese Restaurant. In the article “Kotzebue Restaurant Tips by extremist”, says “Mongolian Beef was fabulous, and she made it extra spicy as I requested, it came with steamed rice, and she did not have kimchee, so she improvised and served me fermented turnips along w/jalapenos.”
When visting small communities through out Alaska try somethng different because you never will no what to expect and maybe very happy with thinking outside of the norm. May I take your order?

Request the best…

Many customers fail to realize that they can request to sit in the section of the server that they prefer.  As a server I love being requested. It makes me feel important and that I’m doing a good job. When you build a relationship with a server that makes your experience pleasant. Then request them the next time you make your reservation at that restaurant. I have many repeat customers. Most of my customers even know my last name and my dog’s name. I can remember my repeats drinks and have their drinks waiting at their table when they arrive.
The article “Top 8 Tips for Eating Out with Allergies”says it best, “Treasure a good relationship.” They are right! If you enjoyed your experience tell your friends and always let the server know you’re going to back to the restaurant and request them. This makes the server want to please you every time you dine at their restaurant. This is a good thing.
I have served tables before and seen them return to the restaurant and have the new guy serve them. Many of these people have said to me while leaving “We wish you were our server.” Well request me. The hostess can not read your mind and if you enjoyed your first experience then why chance it the second time around.
When I go to my favorite restaurant I always request the same server that makes my dining experience great. I am going to spend the same amount of money on dinner if my service was just fine or wonderful. I don’t chance it or leave it up to the hostess. I make sure by requesting that I have a good experience by always getting the best service. I look at it as getting more bang for my buck. May I take your order?