TheFoodTutor

Ditto on spinach and artichoke dip. Hot bacon dressing. For that matter, spinach salads. Broccoli-cheese soup. Fried chicken tenders. Fajitas! Oh god, I could go on and on. But as others have pointed out, all of these items sell really, really well. Is something really out of style if the majority of people still line up to buy it? Agreed. Oh, if only this were a fashion that we could outlaw.

Yes! The perfect challenge! Some suggestions have been raised as to vegetables in season: Fiddleheads, English peas, fava beans, asparagus, early tomatoes. . . Why not a vegetable plate for mystery basket night? Some artisinal grits perhaps? Really good vegetable plates can be a great way to express creativity. I'm just sayin.' Looking forward to it.

You are also, apparantly, really hot. Thanks for the eye candy. I needed that. Whew! What were we talking about? Oh, afternoon snacks, yes. Um, cheese and crackers. Peanut butter - by the spoonful, yup. Cream cheese stuffed celery. And my gazpacho. Gazpacho is great, because you can put just about anything in it, make it fat free or top it with sour cream, and you can get a dose of fiber (I sometimes puree my veggies with skins on, for fiber and nutrients), and depending on how much you eat, you'll get at least one of your vegetable servings for the day. If you don't have time to make gazpacho, you could have a V8 instead, but the gazpacho is definitely worth it, and a week's batch takes little time to make and keeps in the fridge nicely.

I am coming to accept that I am in a minority with this, but my dad is the slowest eater in creation, and I simply loathe sitting with the remains of my meal before me for 20 minutes while he finishes. So does my mother. It doesn't matter at all how good or bad the dinner was, I don't like to have to look at it while waiting for my dad to finish. I don't think he feels any more or less rushed if my mum and I do or don't have plates...he takes as long as he takes, and we're used to waiting for him. I don't think you are in the minority on this one. In the area where I live, it is the standard in all but fairly upscale, white tablecloth restaurants that plates are removed as they are finished. If you are in a non-tablecloth restaurant, and you have an empty plate before you but your companions haven't finished, if your server passes by your table and does not start clearing, I can pretty much guarantee that within a minute or so, a manager will call her aside and whisper, "Can you pre-bus table 15 for me?" Most servers have worked in casual places long before they ever got to the big time with the fine silver and white tablecloths, and the idea of pre-bussing will be so ingrained in them that learning to wait and only remove the plates when everyone at the table is finished is actually one of the hardest bits of training in fine dining. In their heads, all these servers usually hear that nagging little manager's voice telling them to manicure the table. What's also amazing is that, while the servers are struggling with the fight against instinct, the patrons are, more often than not, having problems with it as well. There are far, far more casual restaurants than formal ones, and they have far more numerous diners in them, so the upscale experience is actually quite unusual for a lot of people. So the patrons will sit and get a little antsy, wondering "Why in the heck doesn't my server come over here and take my plate?" And the server keeps watching, and waiting, until finally the patron starts stacking dishes and pushing them to the side, or better yet, picks up the plate and motions at the server with it. And at that point the server has no choice but to take the empty plates. I'd have to say from my experience that the people who want all the plates cleared at once are the minority, by far, but that aspect of fine dining still must be learned, so that the server can try, against most customer's wishes, to maintain that standard.

The only thing that I can add to this heated conversation is that there is a little hidden money in restaurants that can be tapped to go toward "everyone making more money" theoretically, and I've seen it in practice, so I think there is something to be gained from the philosophy originally stated in the premise of this thread. Namely, anytime you have employees standing around, there is money to be gained. Anytime you have employees standing around, bored, while other employees are going down in flames behind a wall of weeds, there is definitely money to be gained. Anytime there is something inefficient happening anywhere in this lean business, there is money to be gained. And that money can be found through cooperation. Here's a great example: I have worked in fine dining restaurants where servers would enter the dish pit, coming from bussing a table, and they find that they must stand in line behind other servers, who have also bussed tables, and these servers wait for 5 minutes or more, with hands full of plates that need to be scraped, waiting for the other servers to scrape and be done. Now, I work in a restaurant where we don't do that, and I can't tell you how much time we save. When I come up on the dish pit, full hands, I tell the next server, "Drop and Go!" He asks me, "What do you need?" Sometimes, I tell him I need nothing, but that he should go run food. Sometimes I tell him to drop an iced tea at 8.2 (table 8, point 2). Sometimes I tell him that they need bowls or ramekins to the line. Meanwhile, one person is scraping, and everyone else can do something productive, rather than waiting. Tables turn faster. People get better service. Everyone makes out for the better. There are lots of ways to implement these things. In this situation, the cooks know that our servers are allowed back on the line to back up china, and they welcome this, rather than telling us FOH grunts to get off the line. Believe me, I've worked in places where backing up china to the line was a full time job, so having servers do it every time they pass through dish is saving you an hourly employee, more money to go around. Cooperation between front and back does save money and provide better service. The compromise between the original post and people who say it cannot be done is in the details of implementing this, especially in upscale dining, because this is where the greatest divide exists (granted, because at that level, you look for more professionals dedicated to their specialization.) Now, most servers can do prep, and perform many BOH functions, but asking them to memorize how to set up the mise for each station in addition to what they know for FOH can be a little much. On the flipside, asking your line cooks to memorize the wine list and keep abreast of all the changes therein each week, would also be a little much. But there are ways to take this idea and work it into something profitable which will also be a good dining experience.

Seems like you get a fresh napkin at Seeger's rather than a re-folded one, though that could have changed since my last visit. You're right on that point. I actually forgot about it, but I think I had a total of 3 napkins on my visit to Seeger's, since I visited the WC more than once. Joel's bathroom is nice, and once you've figured out the sink, it's a piece of cake. Before that, it's frustrating as hell. Silk has the same sort of sink for their restrooms, also marble with the same mechanism to trigger the water, and theirs is a communal sink for both the Men's and Ladies.' We sure do have cute bathrooms around here.

therese has quite aptly described the situation here. Seeger's is an elegant, sumptuous pleasure to experience, even at a price of around $300 or more for two people. Extravagantly amazing food, but you will pay a price for it. And the service is well, eh, not up to par for what you get in the whole dealio. Ideally, you'd have time and money to do both Joel and Seeger, and maybe hit the Dining Room at Ritz Carlton as well. But, given this choice, I'd probably go for Joel if you want everything done pretty much correctly, and you'd like to save a little money. Go for Seeger's if you want it all, want to experience the "Full Monty" and a few hundred means nothing to you, compared to the satisfaction you get from having your transmission repaired, which can cost easily twice as much, and no one will thank you, fold your napkin, or escort you to the restroom with flair. Seeger has more talent, so it's just a matter of how well you value that.

I'd jump on board. I'm a good line cook, and a good server, and can easily move back and forth between front and back of house. However, moving the staff around that frequently, and making menu changes that often would be incredibly challenging, even for a dream team of really talented people. It sounds like a Herculean task to orchestrate. Not that I wouldn't be up for it. It's just that finding an entire team who'd all be on board would take a lot of doing. Good luck.

Hey! Doing just fine, aside from my lovely city shutting off my water again. When are they going to figure out how to do a little construction without sinking entire buildings? Ha ha. Just another day in Atlanta. Muss & Turner's is actually good enough that I've been there twice, and it's nowhere near my neck of the woods. Their groceries are expensive, but their sandwiches are outstanding. Do you think the Clermont is closing early for Blondie's sake? She is getting close to retirement age, you know. You should make a point of getting there while she's still around.

I am very much in Rogov's camp on this one. Pretending to be on a cell phone so that you can use a recorder of some sort is too conspicuous. I prefer not to use my cell phone in restaurants, so this would not be in line with my regular behavior. Now, I have two very easy ideas for note taking in restaurants. You can certainly sneak off to the restroom to jot things down, but then it depends on how often you need to take notes, and whether you want to appear to have a bladder the size of a pebble. But, if you are in a casual dining restaurant, you can bring a small college textbook and a notepad, and appear to be studying, or you can bring a tourism guide, and appear to be making notes as to places in town to visit. In either of these cases, no one will ever think to try to look at what you are writing. And beyond that, if you are in a really nice place like The French Laundry, I wouldn't feel a need to take notes, actually. I simply ask for a copy of the menu, and looking over it later will call to mind all of the details of every course. At the price point of this restaurant, it's not unusual at all to ask for a menu, so no one should think twice. Incidentally, when it comes to taking pictures of the food, actual food critics send a crew around at a later date to take a press photo. Only foodbloggers and culinary students take pictures of the food as they are actually eating it.

Alpharetta? Wow. I hope you like traffic. No, seriously, I'm here to offer you another option, rather than simply asking, "So, how much do you like this job?" There is a possibility that you could be better off living more centrally, and if your job is a typical 9 to 5, you'd be driving outward from the city in the early part of the day, which means that you'd be in the opposite direction of the general flow of traffic. Believe me, paying attention to the flow of traffic will make all the difference in your quality of life here. Consider renting long enough to observe traffic patterns, before you lock into buying a home. And definitely spend a lot of time looking, observing the route between where you will live and where you work at different times of the day. If you will be working in the East part of Alpharetta, you can access it from 141, and that means you could actually get an apartment on Buford Highway while you are deciding where you will eventually live (BuHi goes through Alpharetta as well). Not something long term, but there are even some decent apartments over there (though most of them are cheaper and a little run-down), and it would give you a nice taste of an interesting part of town with lots of ethnic restaurants. That's the area where I got my first apartment in Atlanta. And Buckhead is a convenient place to live if you work up the GA 400 corridor, since you can get on easily here. There are a few real estate deals to be had in outlying areas, but I generally disagree that Alpharetta is far enough out to offer a deal good enough to make it worth living out there. Locals call that area "Bloomin' Onion Acres," because the most likely restaurants to succeed are big chains. And you will pay the same car insurance rates to live in the 'burbs, plus you'll spend enormously more on gasoline. Good luck, and contact me when you get here. I'll give you the full tour.

This seems an odd question to me. Am I the only person who works in a place that has a rigid system for order taking, where all orders are written down with the exact same abbreviations, and using a pivot point system? Pivot point works by starting with the first person to your left from the greeting point of the table, and that is position #1. Then you go clockwise around the table to number positions. Depending on the place where you work, you either do or don't count empty chairs as a seat. Then, we all use the same abbreviations, exactly the same way, so that if I need to do something else, I can actually hand my order card to a person at the POS and let him ring it for me. Here's a typical order: H-Rib W, Pot-E no A, > That's a Hawaiian Ribeye, Well done, baked potato, loaded no bacon. The little crook at the end tells me it's a Lady, so you hit the Lady key, so ladies can be served first. Simple, huh?

One of the restaurants where I work is Restaurant Eugene, definitely upscale and, I have to say, simply one of the best restaurants around, but then, I'm biased. The other is one of a group of 50 restaurants, and I see they have a location in Hackensack from their website, so while it's a good restaurant probably not a unique Atlanta experience for you. I'll PM the name of the restaurant to you, and you're certainly welcome to stop by, as it's pretty close to where you're staying. It would be certainly very neat for you to see places like Little 5 while you're here, and The Vortex there is even cooler than the one in Midtown. I really hope you stay long enough to get a taste of the city. Oh, and while it will be convenient to your hotel, and it will look tempting, you might want to avoid the Buckhead location of Au Pied du Cochon. My experience with this place was really iffy, and reports from others have been pretty bad as well. Given that it's open 24 hours, I'm sure they're still doing plenty of business, just by being the only place open in the middle of the night, but I don't suspect it's gotten better.

Is it still open? Where is it? I'm not a native, so I don't know. Another neat thing to see, sort of halfway between Buckhead and Downtown is The Vortex. If you check out the website, you can see that they have a very humorous list of restaurant policies on how to not act like a fool when dining there, and they have very good burgers. From Buckhead, it would be fairly simple to reach by hopping a Southbound bus down Peachtree, though you may hit pockets of bad traffic on the way there. But then again, you could just think of it as a little sightseeing tour through Buckhead and Midtown. I'd have to say I far prefer the food at The Vortex to The Varsity, and the atmosphere is more hip. Edit to add: Disregard the website's usage of the term "most unique," as it really is a cool place, grammar aside.

chefdavidrusso, in which hotel in Buckhead are you staying? I actually live in Buckhead, and I work at two restaurants in the Buckhead area (neither of which fit your descriptions of something you want), and I really don't find it to be a terrible place to find things to eat, though there are definite downsides to the neighborhood. It's kind of a party district, and more than a little Ghetto Fabulous. However, there are three Marta train stations in Buckhead, and probably one of them will be convenient to your hotel, so that's why I'm asking where, specifically, you are staying. The number of Marta stations actually makes this one of the friendlier areas to be without a car, and I lived in this neighborhood, sans vehicle, for two years. So you could actually get to Watershed, since it's also near a train station. But in the actual Buckhead 'hood, there are a couple of gems here and there as well. You might want to try Souper Jenny, which is on East Andrews, and I particularly like the New Yorker Deli on Pharr. It is true that there's not much ethnic in that neighborhood, but if you'd like a couple recommendations for just a reliable quick bite that won't be too expensive, I can come up with some more. Oh, and ditto on Pittypat's Porch. I find even the thought of it horrifying. And if you hit the Varsity, take special care that they don't glop any of that disgusting "chili" stuff on anything you order.

I can find them in several stores in Atlanta, but I do have the fortune of knowing where the Indian grocers are. Monica, your Gol Gappa look beautiful, and I love that you spiked the masala with rum. I haven't made this at home, but when I do, I'll probably use rum in the spice water. The last time I had this, I ended up reading a magazine over lunch with an article about vodka pani puri. Such a neat idea! Lovely blog.

I always loved Quisp as a kid. And Count Chocula, Boo-Berry, Cap'n Crunch (the mouth cutting variety and the peanut butter.) Mosted Frini Wheats. Very tasty, but you've got to eat them quickly, or all the sugar melts off and you've just got all that yucky wheat. And I liked Grape Nuts, but I would put a bunch of sugar in them with the milk, and it made a bunch of sugary sludge in the bottom of the bowl. Now I'm more likely to eat eggs for breakfast, though. edit to fix something dumb.

I'm so thrilled that you're doing this week's blog, Monica! When I saw you online this a.m., I guessed it would be you and I started looking at your book, which I bought about a month ago, to prepare for any questions I'd like to ask. At the same time as I bought your book, I also got another Indian cookbook, and a guide to Indian grocery stores, as part of a little "project" of mine to learn more about unfamiliar foods. If you don't mind, could you identify the things on the henna table for me? I think I see some samosas, and I certainly know what deviled eggs are, but I may need help figuring out the other things. Thank you, and thanks for blogging. This will be marvelous.

It's important to note that I am not saying that I evade taxes. I'm just clarifying what the guidelines are. How to declare income whether one gets stiffed or not is a valid question, and people outside the industry don't always know how it works. Actually, there are some days that I declare more money than I actually make, because if all of my tips are on credit cards, they'll all be declared, so I have to remember to claim negative money in tipshare when I clock out. Lots of times I forget to do that. Usually Mondays. Everybody pays with credit cards on Mondays, because they spent all their cash over the weekend.

At the more casual place where I work, I print out my financial checkout at the end of each day, and at the bottom of the slip, the computer calculates several things for me: It tells me how much I received in credit card tips, dollar-wise, what percentage my credit card tips were with regard to my credit card sales (but it leaves off any zero credit card tips, assuming that I received a tip in cash), and what percentage my credit card tips were in relation to my total sales. This last number tells me a vital piece of information. If I don't claim any cash tips at all, this will be the percentage of tips that the government will see, and that will be the basis they use to decide whether it's worth auditing me. So at that point, it is up to my discretion to count all the tips I received in cash, subtract my tipshare (the amount I pay out) from that amount, and determine the amount to declare in cash tips. My employer informs me that, while I am required by law to declare all my cash tips, the amount generally perceived to be the lowest one can declare without being audited is around 10% of my total sales, because the government is aware that sometimes servers do get stiffed, and not everyone tips the same percentage. I have also been informed that being audited, as a server, is about as pleasant as having a root canal without anesthetic.

Wow! So glad there's a thread about this infomercial. A bit of it was on this morning as I was getting ready for work, and it made me laugh myself silly. I love the part where they're juicing the fruits and veggies, and the guy directly in front of the blender says, "Harumph! I hate broccoli!" And then they give him a sip of the drink, which probably tastes like dirt, and he's instantly converted to liking things that are healthy for him! Hooray! If only real life were like this! Really, though, I'm dying to see how the vegas diva likes the product. Oh, and I cannot believe it when the host of the program likens putting a little liqueur in your sorbet to being a "party animal." What planet are infomercial actors from, anyway?

Most of the banks I've used charge me a monthly fee for having a debit card as well. I wasn't aware of the transaction fees. I suppose I could shop around for a bank that has debit cards with no fees, but since I've got several credit cards that charge me nothing, and one of them gives me cash back, I don't bother. The only time I had a debit card, the bank offered it to me with a new account, so I said OK, but after a couple months, I noticed they were charging me a fee for the card each month, and then I looked at the card and noticed that I hadn't even activated it, because the sticker was still attached, so I went to the bank and told them they could have their stupid card back. I guess I just assumed that they were all like that, and I've never considered getting a debit card since.

I'm having a hard time understanding one thing: What is the benefit of using a debit card? I use credit cards, and I find lots of benefits in using them. No fees, cash back, guarantees on purchases, insurance on paying for airline tickets, etc. I pay off my balance every month and never pay a fee. But my bank usually offers me a debit card, with a fee attached for having it and using it. Why would I want to do that? From a service perspective, there's one major difference between a credit and a debit card: If a server accidentally runs a card on the wrong table at my restaurant, the server can simply delete the authorization if it's a credit card, and the credit card will automatically erase the charge, but if it's a debit card, the bank places a hold on that money for the original authorization. So if a server makes a mistake like this, it usually takes a manager swipe to re-run the authorization, manually entering the authorization code, or some similar function. So here's a nightmare scenario I'll propose that you think on, and please, please don't flame me, because I promise that I've never done this and no one that I've directly known has done it, but I have heard of this happening on the internet: Customer comes into restaurant during Christmas season to get something to eat while shopping; screaming, cranky kids in tow. Customer proceeds to bark at server, and runs server for multiple items consecutively, repeatedly asking for one item per trip. Kids throw things at server, throw things on floor, dump sugar caddy all over table, mother ignores children's behavior. Etc., etc. Mother pays bill with debit card, and server proceeds to run the card over and over for the bill, deleting the charge and then re-running it. Bank account limit is reached at a certain point, debit card is now worthless for at least the rest of the day. No more Christmas shopping for mommy. I know, that's horribly mean. But I have to say that the hold placed on funds, coupled with the fees my bank would charge me for using a debit card make using a debit card a ridiculous idea to me. Why do people use them?

Thanks, Brooks. As for the question about upscale restaurants and credit cards, the one restaurant where I work which is very upscale fine dining - we don't do anything like 5 turns a night, and we're lucky if we can even turn our 19 tables once, because the pace of dining is so much slower than in casual places - I'd say that almost 100% of the tabs are paid on a credit card. Once you get to the point where people are spending an average of $100 per person, you almost completely stop seeing any cash whatsoever, except for the valets. Which brings me to another little gripe I have: Often, I'll have a table that pays their entire bill on a credit card, but they'll split the check 5 ways, which is fine and I have the capacity to do that, but then all 5 of the people will each whip out a $20 bill and ask me for change for the valet! And it will be my first table of the day! Holy Cow, people! How much money do you think I walk in here with every day? Do you think my pockets are literally bulging with $5s and $1s? Just my personal observation of what seems like strange behavior to me. Sometimes I tell them that I can get them that much change, but it will take me a few extra minutes, as I'll have to go outside to the valet and buy the change from him. At that point they usually say never mind, since they're getting the change for the valet anyway, so they can just as easily get it from him. The more we move to a cashless society, the more often you're going to see me hanging around in parking lots, making transactions with valets.

This is true. I recently set up a new credit account to buy some furniture, and the gentleman setting up my account read me this part of the Patriot Act over the phone. I found it somewhat horrifying to realize how many different types of employees of stores and banks are now acting as officers against terrorism. That's a really invasive law. I have noticed that most of the businesses that I frequent accept credit cards, but a good number do not accept Discover, which I find mildly troublesome, because it's my card of choice, since I get hundreds of dollars in cash back benefits every year. I even get cash back on the purchases I make for my small business. Yeah, that's a really good point. Until you've stood at the front door, and turned away hungry people with cash in their hands because you're holding a table for someone who has never spent a dime in your restaurant, and possibly never will, you don't know how incredibly taxing it is on a restaurant to take reservations. Some restaurants lose hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in potential business every single night because of reservations that no-show. That's a pretty expensive bit of "hospitality," Holly. How much money are you willing to lose to be hospitable?