TheFoodTutor

Well, the tipping system here seems to be very flawed, frankly. I work in a tipped profession, on top of owning my own business, and the tipping habits I see, based on working in an extremely busy restaurant that does an enormous amount of business doesn't seem to support the idea that patrons tip based on the quality of service. There are lots of good examples. For one, there are many times that I might split a check 3 ways for a single table. All 3 people were sitting in the same spot, with the same server at the same time. All 3 received identical service, and sometimes identical dishes (which would seem to alleviate the necessity for split checks, but no matter) and all 3 gave the same smiles and nods in response to questions about how everything tasted, whether everything was exactly the way they wanted it. One person writes in the exact amount of a 15% tip, one writes in an exact 18%, and the last writes in 20% - all three of those amounts being printed in a handy tip guide on our checks. What's the difference? Obviously, the tipping habits of the guest. This happens over and over and over. As a server, I don't just ask, "Is everything OK?" because I don't believe that our food and service are just "OK." I ask, "Is everything perfect?" "Is your steak cooked perfectly to your specifications?" "Do you have everything that your heart desires?" This goes above and beyond a normal quality check, and I really don't need management to do 100% table touches - which is something I've been required to do as a manager in the past, and it's very hard to keep up with, on top of other managerial duties, if you work in a fairly busy restaurant. And yet, as a very good server, I do get stiffed on occasion, and sometimes I just get really crappy tips that amount to being stiffed. Not always. Not enough to make me think I'm not good at what I do, but enough to know that there are some people who have absolutely no manners who eat in restaurants. I got stiffed a couple days ago, and this one is a pretty good example. I had a single gentleman dining alone on a busy evening. He ordered a glass of wine, a caesar salad and a medium-well filet mignon. I put in his order, brought his wine and offered water as well, since we don't have mandatory water service, but I assume someone might want it while drinking an alcoholic beverage. I noticed when he got his salad, and he was just over half-finished eating it when his steak arrived. He sent the steak back, told them to keep it warm, and finished his salad. Sending his steak out too early was really a kitchen problem, even though it wasn't really overly quick. When he finally got his steak, I stopped by the table and asked how everything was, and he replied that his steak was now overcooked because it had been kept warm in the kitchen. I looked at the steak, and it was a little closer to well than medium-well, but it wasn't really dried out or burnt. I offered to have a new steak prepared, since his mid-well steak had arrived quickly enough to suggest that the kitchen was churning out pretty fast. He declined. Further, I asked if there was anything I could do for him. Clearly he wasn't satisfied, but he declined anything I suggested. On a further visit to the table, he said, "If you want to do something for me, you can get me another glass of wine." I told him that I could bring him another glass of wine, but didn't have the power to comp one for him. I offered to bring a manager to remove any charges on his bill that he thought appropriate, and he still declined. His bill came to $40.40, and he left $40.50 and shot out the door. I'm inclined to think that he wanted an excuse to stiff me, and I gave him every opportunity to have a fully satisfactory experience. And these people, who want an excuse to stiff a server, thereby getting a discount on their meals, do exist, and it's part of why we have this tipping system in this country. I think a big part of the reason why people engage in the passive-agressive behavior described is because of the tipping system, that allows you to pay what you feel like paying. I cannot begin to expound on the number of bad automotive maintenance experiences I've had, where I paid sometimes $200 for diagnostic services that cost me a whole day, sitting in a shop, only to find out that my problem was prohibitively expensive to fix, on an older vehicle. You'd better believe I raised hell, since I don't have a choice about paying that $200, whether it took 10 hours, as opposed to the stated 5, or I had to go home without a car and come back the next day. By comparison, the service people get at restaurants is splendid, even when they're the sorts of people who don't tip at all, ever, period.

Drinking early in the day, are we? Well, at least it boosts your post count. I find that the combination of rosemary and pine nuts with popcorn is especially good, but I also like cumin.

Just briefly adding to this topic, though it's hard to add to what therese has to say, because her opinion is so educated. I agree totally that it's the affluence of our society, and while genetic factors are involved, obesity comes from our sedentary lifestyle. There are some hard jobs to have, and I happen to choose to have one of them, which keeps me fairly thin on top of the fact that I don't actually eat as much as it would appear that I do, because I indulge on occasions and eat lightly when I don't have time to stop and eat a full meal. And I go to the gym regularly. So I have always been thin, but I weigh less than every single member of my family, outside of my nephew who was just born this year. Everyone else in my family is somewhat heavy, and the genetic predisposition is definitely there. Some of these people are even unhealthily obese. I desperately want to agree that people who are overweight have no choice in the matter, but all of the scientific data seems to point in the opposite direction. Atlanta, where I live, is a very overweight city, because everyone here drives to where they need to go. There is virtually no usable public transportation and bicycles are unwelcome. People don't even walk 50 feet from their cars into the mall, and you can see it in their waistlines. But I've visited Washington, D.C., and that is one thin city by U.S. standards, let me tell you. Parking is at a premium, the public transportation is great, and people really, really love to bike there. I saw lots of sleek denizens the last time I visited. I see a correlation. But maybe that's just me.

Actually, I don't know where to begin. I have seen 5 people steal 16 wine glasses from a private room in a fine-dining restaurant, and they weren't even drinking any wine, so they plucked the wine glasses that had been removed from the place settings off the sidestand and placed them in their sleek, black, to-go bags for easy removal from the building. I have seen people take pepper mills and salt shakers, very large sugar caddies in the shape of Marvin the Martian, bottles of condiments of various kinds, and basically just about anything that's not nailed down. Bottles of wine are a great thing to snag on your way out the door, with your takeout bag in hand, apparantly. The thing with women taking money out of their husband's tip while walking away from the table seems especially despicable, and I know it happens, but I haven't actually caught someone in the act. And taking a tip off another table is much worse. Whenever I leave a tip in cash as I'm leaving a restaurant, I try to hand it to the server personally with a "Thank you" just because I know that a busser or another employee of the establishment could try to pocket it, or another patron could swipe it, as they are sitting down at a dirty table that hasn't been bussed from the previous guest. At seat-yourself types of places, it's even possible to grab the entire amount of cash left by the previous patron, for their tab and their tip, and then sit there and pretend that the last person walked out on their check and you have no idea what happened. It's a good thing that these sorts of comps don't happen that often at the place where I work, because it's an especially bitter phenomenon, for both the server and the restaurant owner. And the employees of a restaurant certainly do steal. The percentage of the theft varies widely between fine dining and casual. The more casual the restaurant, the more that you will see patrons thieving, because there are far more patrons than employees. The more upscale a restaurant is, the more you will see employees stealing a good deal more, because the average server or cook is only serving a relatively small number of people. I had a roommate who stole a couple of filets from a fine-dining restaurant where we both worked, and on the night he brought them home in his pockets, I'd like to be proud to say that I told him I would not partake of stolen goods. Instead, in spite of my generally pervasive morality, my response was, "Thanks for making dinner, roomie!" In my defense, we were working for an employer whom I hated, and still do not care for much at all, because of their general disregard for honest business practices. Still, it's not a behavior I condone to steal from anyone.

I think the "not worth the calories" response is the way I tend to think, because I have restricted my caloric intake in my lifetime. If you've ever been on a diet of any kind, you tend to look at your daily caloric allotment as a budget which you must stay within. Free food is never really "free," and many times it's not worth eating. All You Can Eat doesn't mean you should eat all you can. So that's where my weirdness comes in: Since I eat like a person who's been on a diet, and being on a diet seems such a normal part of American culture, how is it that there are people who've never, ever been on a diet in their whole lives? Sure, if you have a high metabolism and you've never needed to, that's understandable, but the people I've known like this actually do discriminate a bit, so I still don't get it.

adegiulio, your post made me laugh out loud. Especially the "divorced her in my mind" bit. But that and the comment from munchymom made me remember that there are certain situations, where food is scarce and likely to be crap, and people are likely to be hungry, so munching on what's there is hard not to do. Airplane trips are exceptional for this, since there's so little entertainment outside of the nasty little bit of food served on plastic trays. What are you supposed to do on a long flight, unless there's a good movie, good reading material, or the lucky event of a cool peson sitting next to you? But then, obviously she had you and chose to devour the food anyway. Good idea to cut your losses and move on. A resourceful woman would have brought something yummy and shared it over a delightful conversation with you. And I do want to add that I don't like to waste food, even if it's bad food. On the occasions that I buy something bad, I try to feed it to animals or suffer through eating it or use it to fertilize plants or something. And I'd never think of offending a host by not eating the food they prepared. I usually just take a small portion and explain that I'm really not that hungry.

This is what I love about eGullet. All the food confessions. In spite of my high-brow tastes, experience with fine-dining and general food-snobbery, I still have a few strange things lurking in my food preferences, stemming from my upbringing. Here's a shocker: I like canned asparagus. Yup, I'll eat it straight from the can without even heating it up. I haven't had it in a few years, since good asparagus is available much of the time where I live, and I can give it a quick blanching and serve it with hollandaise, but I know that I could go to the grocery store right now, buy a can and just open it up and eat it. No butter, no nuthin'. Just a fork. But I'm still not really going for the canned pasta. I had a friend who liked Beef-a-Roni, and that kind of made me blink a few times. I guess it's the processed food and the sweet tomato sauce that steers me away, because I haven't even really tried it, and the thought makes me feel kinda pukey.

My new favorite eGulletteerer. ← Are you single? Oh, wait. I just remembered that I'm not. Well, anyway, we could just have dates for the purpose of gustatory pleasure. I'm cooking tater tots tomorrow night. Be there or be a parallelogram. (how's that for nerdy?)

I was looking at another thread, and this thought occurred to me as a potential for a new thread. I have had the dubious pleasure of knowing a few people in my lifetime who, admittedly, love to eat, but they also admit that they don't care what foods are placed in front of them. My former in-laws, from my last marriage, were these sorts of people. A can of beans, microwaved and placed on a plate? Sure. A soup made of canned chicken stock with a few diced carrots and celery? Gimme some. Sandwiches made of American cheese slices with winter tomatoes? I'll take three, thanks. Some "chocolate-flavored" candies, made with imitation chocolate and waxy, hydrogenated fats? Heck, yeah! Dessert! Oh, and would you like a beer? I've got Milwaukee's Best Light? Yup, gimme one of them, too. It's not like these people were low-income, starving, or in any way didn't have access to better foods. And they're retired, so they have time to cook, but they didn't see any reason to do so, and actually felt bitter about occasions where they were required to cook and serve food to guests. It's kind of like they felt the whole science of good food preparation was too difficult a topic to handle, in a practical sense. And they're smart. Really smart people who are intellectual nerds. But they would be unhappy about the fact that they were overweight. And I just couldn't help but think, "How can that be?" I mean, I eat. I love to eat. But if I'm served something that's not especially tasty, I'll eat until the point that I'm satisfied and stop eating. Then maybe I'll box the leftovers, or let everyone else eat it, and it's only the occasion that I'm served something so deliciously good that I can't stop when I'll stuff myself past a point that I find comfortable. To their credit, I noticed that they like to occasionally splurge on Godiva chocolates, and I asked them why, if they don't care what food is placed in front of them, would they spend a considerable amount of extra money on that higher grade of food. Their response was, "Food? We're not talking about food in this case. We're talking about drugs." That was a rather charming answer. So, is this a uniquely American phenomenon? I picture people in other countries eating sub-standard food at times, but just to the point of satiety, and not to the point of gaining weight. Am I the only person who has seen this sort of thing? Actually, there is another corrollary to this topic, concerning people who go out to restaurants when they are in a bad mood, which is something I'd never do, as I really like to enjoy my food. But I'd really love to see your responses. Do you know people who don't care a whit about food, and yet they eat more than they obviously need to fulfill their daily caloric requirements? And if so, why do they do this?

I agree with your consumerism suggestion, and that really is the case, but I'll disagree with the comment about diets. There have been lots and lots of fad diets that have been about selling books, not food, and generally selling an idea. In the case of the late Dr. Atkins, I've read his books and I genuinely think that he started his movement based on a desire to improve the health of the people who would follow his plan. And he was ridiculed by much of his profession, dietitians and the general public for well over 20 years for it. In the earlier years, he lamented the fact that there weren't enough people interested in low-carb eating for there to be a market for things like low-carb ice cream, but that the grocery store shelves were filled with low fat ice creams. I find it supremely ironic that much of the overwhelming popularity of the diet has happened since his death, and he hasn't been able to see this success. And I agree with Fat Guy that trend watchers the world over saw this coming long before the specific article mentioned in the New York Times Magazine. I, myself, wrote about it on the Internet as much as 7 years ago and who am I? Basically nobody. And the general conclusion of the article is also wrong. Many of you who are upper-middle-class and above, or who travel in educated circles, see lots of women who seem to be afraid of food, so they just pick at a small salad and totally shun dessert. But I see plenty of grossly overweight people who aren't the slightest bit afraid of fat, carbs, calories, chemicals or genetically modified anything. I wait on them every day, my friends. There is no shortage of people who are not afraid to ask for as many as 6 sides of dressing for a single salad. And that's the salad they're having before getting a huge steak with a loaded baked potato, and bring extra "loaded" on the side, please and thank you. That's just the segment of the population I wait on, however. The one thing they do seem scared of is food that hasn't had the living daylights cooked out of it. Make that extra-extra-well-done, thanks. Burn the crap out of it.

I've had this, and one good way to do the ravioli is with a disc of fontina cheese, or some other mild white cheese with a little integrity, underneath the egg yolk. It makes it easier to handle the ravioli without it breaking and falling apart. There are quite a few good combinations I can think of, but I know that shaved truffles or truffle oil make a good addition to the finished ravioli.

The Vortex here in Atlanta offers tater tots as an option for a side item, and I was eating them one night when I realized that they must be deep-frying them, because they were exceptionally crisp, hot from the oil. This, along with my favorite method for cooking chicken wings, turned out to be part of my ultimate decision to buy a deep fryer. It really is a fun thing to have around. Sometimes I like to dip my tater tots in mayonnaise.

OK, I'm feeling the love on the tater tot thread, but I'm not digging the canned pasta. Spaghetti-Os are just plain nasty. I might could be talked into eating chicken and stars if I were sick with a cold, though.

Mandolines are great for making digit carpaccio. I sliced the nuckle of my right thumb almost clean off. The circular bit of cartilege and flesh was hanging by a thread, so I slapped it back into place and wrapped it up tight. It healed pretty well, and now I just have a circular scar to remind me not to do it again. I'm pretty sure I will anyway, though.

These foodblogs always seem to motivate me to go into my kitchen and whip up a replica of the beautiful pictures I see. I made Laksa's congee, which involved some prep and cleaning up my counter after my rice cooker bubbled over. Then I made Anna N's meatballs, which involved an insane amount of beating, and then resting from the beating. But this week I just have to go to the store and buy myself an avocado, cut it open and eat it. How clever and considerate of you to think of something so simple, Susan! Thanks for blogging!

I made these with him, so I can answer this one. We started with a large log of bulk chorizo that I bought at the farmer's market, cooked and crumbled it in a pan and then drained the grease, which was a lot of grease. We added flour, enough to pull everthing together, and rolled the chorizo into the size and shape of a cocktail wiener. Then breaded through 3 bowls of flour, then egg, then cracker meal. Fry in the deep fryer until crisp. The hot croquetas are then served with a very simple cream sauce made by whirring roasted red peppers with sour cream in a blender. Very simple, but very tasty, and they make a nicely neat passed appetizer.

Apparently, not only have I stayed up too late, but I may have lived too long. Me, too. Nice Laurie Anderson reference. It could be you, Squeat. It's a sky-blue sky. I think I have Pumpkin Lover's bowl of sadness in front of me as well, but since I've also got the hormonal blues, I may need to fill it with some bread pudding or larb or tater tots. I'll think of something and get back to you.

There is a restaurant corrollary to this, and it's sometimes referred to as "making upside-down tea." It's when you're brewing a big cannister of iced tea, but you leave the receptacle upside-down. It's also known as "making floor tea." I've done it, and I've also forgotten to replace the nozzle on the cannister, once again causing tea to shoot out all over the floor. And people wonder why I hate iced tea.

I fall in the column of not believing that there's anything necessary or inherent in the situation that should lead to FOH/BOH animosity. I always get along with all the cooks, and of course I've worked on the other side of the line, so I don't see why there should be any problem. At the restaurant where I currently work, all of our servers take a load off of the dishwasher and the line cooks by constantly backing up china to the line. This means that when I come off the floor with dirty dishes, I drop them in Hobart, go around and pick up clean plates and actually walk onto the line to give them to the cooks. And hey, if the cooks feel like giving me a snack while I'm back there, all the better! I'm always one of the servers who makes out on little treats passed to me by cooks, no matter where I work. Gotta love those perks!

I buy any vanilla-y ice cream flavor for the cat, Arielle, and if I get him a half vanilla, half chocolate one, he'll lick the entire vanilla side down to to point where he starts to be able to taste the chocolate side coming through, and then he stops. I guess he thinks chocolate tastes icky. I tried to take a picture of him licking the pop one day, because I thought it would be a really neat thing to show, but it was very hard to hit the shutter at exactly the second that he has his tongue out, touching the pop. Do you think that the fact that I spend time feeding my cat lollipops and trying to photograph him eating them indicates that I've got a little too much time on my hands?

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia. I guess I just haven't been lucky enough to work somewhere that gives those cool incentives, but I do work in a pretty good restaurant that is constantly busy, so I don't get too bad of a deal. The comment from Shelley about extra money in the paycheck made me do a double-take. Oh, yeah, I thought, servers in Canada actually get paychecks. The kind that don't say ****Zero dollars and Zero cents*****Null and Void**** I guess it depends on which specific example you are talking about. As far as the ones for New York City, I know they have quite a few of the "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" type of restaurants there, so I lump things like $25 edamame under that category. It does sound ridiculous, though. But the average restaurant owner doesn't put a lot of effort into playing menu "Gotcha!"

I appreciate your comments, Judith, and would like to respond to them as thoughtfully as I can muster. As far as selling incentives provided to servers for "upselling," I haven't seen this or had the benefit of it in any restaurant where I worked. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but in my experience, the only benefit of upselling has been in the potential that the guest will tip on the added expense to the bill, which is a predictable factor in most people's tipping habits. I've even done extra services - such as setting up a service bar for an extra charge of $100 or so, with only the 20% tip (mandatory, as it was for a private party) split between the 5 or so servers who where serving the party. If you know of a restaurant where they provide service incentives for upselling on top of our regular tips, I'd love to hear it, since I'd like to apply there. For service staff, it's definitely a difficult proposition to offer extra bread or a refill, if the restaurant owner chooses to offer such with an added charge. Writing it on the menu might work for literates like you, but for a lot of people who choose to look at the menu in a haze without understanding it, there are obvious problems. I see evidence of people who don't read our clearly-printed menu daily, such as people who bring in a party of 40, unannounced, and proceed to ignore the fact that our menu states that an 18% gratuity will be added to all parties of 5 or more, and so they scratch out the gratuity on their credit card slips and write in what they see fit, even though they've been given good to above-average service. I've read a lot of what you've written, Judith, and I think you're decidedly cool, so tell me, what would you do?

The question of whether free refills on non-alcoholic beverages are provided seems to be a difficult subject, and listing it on the menu would appear to be a good answer, but since people rarely seem to read the menu, from my observance, it definitely doesn't cover the territory. I routinely have to answer the question, "What's your soup today?" when the menu very clearly lists a calendar of soups for the week, just to make an example. And our menu is not very big, compared to other restaurants, so it shouldn't be a difficult thing to notice. Of course, the judgement call on the lemon water and iced tea refills is up to the management, and there is often a gap between management and service staff on making these policies. The front of house manager sets prices, but the kitchen manager knows how much lemons are going for these days - restaurants pay about the same 50 cents per lemon that the average grocery store charges, and since a case will contain sometimes dozens of lemons that are brown on the inside, but you don't know that until your $2.13 an hour server cuts into it and throws it away, so you can't ask for a credit from the produce supplier. So lemons and iced tea refills - another thing that costs quite a bit to the restaurant owner in terms of product, labor and glassware plus the long spoons, packaged sweeter and such. . . fall under the realm of hospitality to the guest in the hopes that the majority of guests will order more profitable items. People who order water with lemon or iced tea and a high-food-cost item, like the baby back ribs, are strongly subidized in their choices by those who choose to order a bottle of wine, spinach dip and a couple of orders of pasta. It's the name of the game, and I would like to personally apologize to those who didn't know they were playing. I'm sorry, and in a perfect world we would charge exactly what it costs to provide everything you want. Plus a service charge, so that our servers could make a living. But, you know, we're living in a very imperfect society, so this is the way restaurants do things. On the bright side, if you ask what is charged for iced tea refills, I doubt that there's a server in the U.S. who won't tell you immediately whether they're free or if there's a charge. Ask if it's important to you, and all will become clear.

That is a good point you made, CT, about how even nice, well-mannered guests can easily forget to tip on items that are comped. I have a good friend and dining companion here in Atlanta who has told me that, while she is a consistent 20% tipper, even she has forgotten about comped items at times. It's probably a good idea, for this reason, to have some indication on the bill of what the original total was before the comp. And yeah, that owner should either go on the List, or you and I can hold him upside-down and shake him to see if any "bonuses" for his waitstaff fall out of his pockets. nwyles is looking pretty much like a kindred spirit.

Well, in my case, I don't really worry about tips a heck of a lot, and that's really the truth. I wait tables, sure, but I also own my own business, I end up being employed for various other types of jobs, in a consulting position, and my boyfriend works 2 jobs as well on top of helping me run the business. I have money in the bank and I can afford to take a few days off for myself, and I deserve to, since I work a good bit. I observe people's tipping habits, and combined with their general behavior in restaurants, I look at it as a study in psychology and social interaction. So when I got a tip of $3 on a $57 tab yesterday, which was surprising to me, because the woman seemed to have good taste, I registered it with some amusement but it ultimately made little difference. I still walked with $200 for the day, so who cares? So I can assure you that no one's service suffers because I've predicted that I'll get a lousy tip. But I can also assure you that I've got a really cool database of tipping behaviors stored in my grey matter. As far as the refills are concerned, aside from the interesting difference in the tip on free refills vs. refills that are charged, it is very true that people will drink far fewer cokes when they are charged for each one. Some people seem to make a game of sucking down cokes as quickly as they can when they know refills are free, and I don't think this is really a good thing. Drinking that much soda is not healthy for you, even if you're drinking diet soda, and if it's not diet, it can add a heck of a lot of calories to a meal. Also, I don't think it's right for people to think only of the "free" refill, without acknowledging that it really isn't "free" for the server. She's paying for it in wear and tear on her shoe leather. joiei, what if the person ordering lemon water isn't a little old lady, but it's the mean guy in the cubicle next to you who always steals your office supplies and takes credit for your projects? Should I give him charity, too? In fact, why should servers be obliged to give charity more than someone in any other profession? At any rate, the people to whom I serve lemon water are rarely old ladies. At least not in my neck of the woods.