jbonne

will heartily second the Vivace idea, and the salmon packs mentioned all would work. for cheese, if you can somehow manage to bring back some Quillisascut or Sally Jackson, that'd be a great WA State gift. most good cheese shops around should carry. WA wine, without saying. preferably a bottle of something you'll find hard to source out of state. i like to send guests off with a bottle of Chinook cab franc. if you have the means to bring them home, Uli's sausages in the Market are killer. if we're considering oil, i might put a bid in for the truffle oils from La Buona Tavola across from the Market. a worthy gift to bring back from anywhere.

weirdly, i have no problem with checkbacks. if there's something amiss, it's a good chance to rectify it without flagging someone down. (and there's probably a whole thread just waiting to pop about annoying flagdown methods.) if everything's fine, i still appreciate the attention. of course, the *timing* on checkbacks can be very poorly executed. but that's another story as well.

well, i'd argue they're successful because (1) there often aren't other, local options available or anywhere near as convenient, and (2) Americans have relatively modest expectations of the quality of their food. on the first, i'm sure that small operators would also benefit from having consultants to choose their location based on food and car traffic, interior color palettes, menu design, wine list, &c. there are plenty of efficiencies in applying modern business principles to restaurants. there's also lots of mediocrity and uniformity. Starbucks is also successful. that doesn't mean i think they make the best coffee or that their business model is fundamentally good for their employees, their customers or their suppliers.

absolutely, and i should preface it all by saying that (1) it's been about a year since i was last in, so everything may have changed and the problems may all have been fixed; and (2) my pretense-o-meter is set to fine sensitivity, so all sorts of stuff can set it off. (a more extreme case in point: servers trying to correct my pronounciation of wines that i know how to pronounce because i have *asked the winemaker* about it.) as prententious goes, there are far more frustrating examples to be found in Seattle. all of which is to say any recollections (1) are potentially outdated, and (2) don't rise to the level of the truly bad, just to the level of my own personal consumery quirks. first, much of my impression comes from phone calls i made to the restaurant, either to make reservations or to check hours. of course, now i can't remember whether reservations were accepted, but for some reason i recall making them or trying to make them and having an exasperating experience. (a "no reservations" policy is another gripe of mine, but i'll leave that out of it.) ditto when i checked hours and was told, rather snippily, that the hours were until 10 but the kitchen closed at 9:30. fair point to tell a caller, but the tone was so haughty and dismissive that i recall actually muttering some unpublishables after i hung up. phone calls during dinner service are obviously a pain in the butt. but it's often the savvy customer who calls, rather than just showing up and demanding service. i also recall several lengthy waits to be seated. servers in the bar area, where there's also food service, seemed curt and distracted. way better in the other room, though i still felt i was getting more explanation than i needed on the food and less than i needed on the wine list, which as i recall contained a fair amount of unusual Italian stuff. (unusual is good, btw. it just requires some detailed explanation.) i always enjoyed the food -- and lately i've been craving that sort of pizza, big-time. my frustration was that the focus on freshness almost by definition limited my options. problem there being, if i'm actually out for a pasta-type dinner, i'm looking for a broad range of pasta options, preferably away from the red sauce and cream realms. was always seeking things like that, but only finding 1 or 2. all that said, i feel i'm about due for a return visit. there are places i will never eat in again (Cactus) and places that i enjoy but that lose favor for one reason or another (Nishino). on the latter, i hate to stay angry for too long, because staffs and kitchens and menus change, problems get fixed and good things are improved on. for all i know, i may find Lago delightful again, and i've just been depriving myself for a year. that help at all?

while there are occasional upsells that may involve a smaller, if more expensive, item, most of the ones i've been party to involve adding an item (or two or three) to the bill, or upgrading to something a bit larger and more extravagant. i'm unsuccessfully trying to think of a moment when that doesn't result in more calories on the table, maybe save when a green salad becomes one with heirloom tomatoes. (versus adding a fried chicken cutlet on top.) as it is already, entree sizes at most places i frequent are large enough to consist of several servings of food. it is a tirade against non-mom-and-pop places, though i'd posit that corporate restaurants are primarily responsible for this trend, and thus get a good share of the blame.

as fascinating as it must be frustrating. resistance to sales tactics, i wholeheartedly believe in. cheapness, well, there's no excuse for it. do we have to choose? i'd opt for both.

it's not that they're inconsistent. it's the order in which they do it. profits first, commitment to quality second, that's a restaurant i'm likely to walk out of. quickly. never to return. no question it's a tough business. the average lifespan of a restaurant, at least in New York, is somewhere around two years. (or was.) most simply aren't needed where they're located, or fail to find a profit base, or don't deliver at a level customers expected. the economy these days doesn't help. i honestly believe that restauranteurs who stay the business first and foremost for their love of it can survive, if they develop a loyal clientele, and i'll do my darndest to support them. those who want to get rich can sell their cheese fries to someone else.

as a consumer, i believe a restaurant is in business to feed me food i want and provide a pleasant environment in which to eat it. can't grow sales? can't cut costs? not my problem. i might have compassion for the individual operator, who's usually a small businessperson and got into it for something other than just making money. they also are usually focused on providing a specific service to their community. but when you start increasing that towards the chain level, well ... i'd feel the same way about a car company or a widget manufacturer. the company's job is to provide a product or service. my job is to buy it. if i don't like the cars Acura makes, i buy a Mazda. if i don't like the food Restaurant X serves, or the relentless selling culture foisted on the serving staff, see ya. i wholeheartedly believe in giving my money to people who believe in the food they serve and the environment they serve it in. if they can make it work, great. if they're more concerned with profit margins, i've got a long list of their competitors i'll be happy to frequent instead.

while i have great compassion for food-service professionals and the generally crappy business environment they're in, and i acknowledge the virtues of a healthy economy, i'm utterly unmoved by companies' fiscal realities. i'm sure there's lots of pressure to upsell. if i were a professionally trained restaurant manager running a casual venue, i'd probably see it as a necessary evil. luckily, i'm not, so i can lambaste it for the evil i believe it to be. the last thing Americans need is to have more high-calorie, high-fat food pushed on them. i don't say this as a specific attack on one type of restaurant. unless you're serving bean sprouts and spring water, chances are any kitchen's recipes are designed to taste good, with more focus on flavor than fat content. that's the whole point of eating out. and though i feel bad for the front-line servers who are forced to do their corporate masters' bidding, i hold utter contempt for the corporate types who are setting these screwy sales goals and seeking to maximize profits. in fact, i'd say it's they who are largely responsible for screwing over the mom-and-pop (in your case literally, sounds like) venues out there. but i wouldn't say upselling is "essential." fixing the many broken, royally screwed-up priorities of a corporate food culture is essential. providing customers with portions appropriate to a healthy dining experience, at a decent price, is essential. educating the American public that we pay astoundingly little for most of our food is essential. providing servers with decent base wages and benefits such that the quirky modalities of the tipping system is essential. convincing me that i really would appreciate my dining experience more if i tried the bacon cheddar potato skins? not so essential.

notably, none of this discusses whether servers are using enough flair. as mentioned elsewhere recently, the upsell utterly enrages me. i personally find it to be the sign of a restaurant that's more interested in their accountants than their chef. not only does it not work on me, it's a pretty sure sign i'm mentally downgrading your tip as you suggest i add on sides, or supersize my margarita, or whatever the hell extra low-cost/high-yield sell plan the managers have devised. as to CNN writing about it, well, it's an interesting enough study and recent and given the average info retention of the average reader, certainly worth writing about. (presumably better than was done there, but then i'm pretty biased.) no doubt this has been a topic of restaurant-management study since about the time the discipline was founded as an academic one. smiling and generally being nice and decent? sure. seems a basic part of any customer-service job. i'm fortunate enough to be cantankerous by profession, but i've had my share of grin-and-bear-it. standard service-industry stuff. telling me their name? if it's useful, sure. i often ask servers' names, especially if it's at a bar and i'm likely to chat with them and ask lots of pesky questions about their wine list. using my name? maybe, but that's a bit weird. like when the Safeway checkers look at my name on the receipt and use it. especially since my name doesn't pronounce well on first glance. as to nametags, well ... i don't eat in places where people wear nametags. smiley faces? only acceptable if the server isn't yet of legal drinking age. candy? sure. not as good as a petit-four or a bon-bon, but this is America. casually touch customers? this is a total thicket. if someone is notably attractive and i'm dining on a boys' night out and it's all part of that little flirting thing that many servers believe in (but that often becomes a problem) it's probably OK. otherwise, it's just weird, like that co-worker who doesn't understand the notion of personal space. and crouching down? that's just bizarre. i want a server, not a third-base coach. repeat orders? basic stuff. weather? whatever. i'm in Seattle. the rain trumps all.

not sure how much else there is to tell, actually. the Hooters folks are simply licensing their name and branding to the Indian franchisee, who'll actually run the restaurants, do the hiring, &c. i got no sense from the press release and other material exactly whether they're going to infuse the Indian Hooters with any particular local flavor, aside from perhaps a bit (but not much) latitude on the menus. my guess is that many of these decisions are yet to be decided. on the cultural front, well, i'm probably the worst person in the world to ask. i'm a born New Yorker and not so much a Hooters patron, so i'm rather poorly set for dissecting the social implications. so far as i can tell, there's two issues here: (1) the export/import of yet another big American brand, complete with very American food and what some have described as a corporately imperialistic ethos (not Hooters in particular, but American brand generally), to a place that already has its own traditions. now, there's nothing inherently wrong about cross-cultural pollination, and i'm sure if the Indian equivalent of P.F. Chang's managed to spread mainstream Indian fare across America, many Indians would prefer to see that than another McDonald's being built (though of course there are plenty of proud McDonald's franchisees of Indian heritage). personally, i'm puzzled that the Indian middle class would opt for buffalo wings over the multitude of cuisines available to them, but if that's what they want, far be it from me to say they shouldn't have it -- major nutritional issues aside. (2) whether half-naked women and Jalapeno chili cheese fries are the hallmarks of American culture and something we should be offering as a cultural symbol. i wonder about the wisdom of that -- especially in an era where America is so pervasively seen as a subverter of other nations' values. but i didn't get a clear sense this would raise the same cultural hackles in India that it might in, say, Pakistan. as i said, i'm probably the worst person imaginable to determine such things. and as you noted above, Monica, whether Mumbai or elsewhere, it's quite likely to imagine places where Hooters won't be welcome. the as-yet-unannounced locations might well be unannounced because they don't want to start *that* debate quite yet. for better or worse, my sense is that the market -- though that may be influenced by some rocks thrown, protests held, &c. -- will determine whether Hooters should be there. i think the Italians have telegraphed that Starbucks isn't welcome, and yet the French seem to reluctantly be accepting the 'Bucks incursion onto Gallic soil. but i'd be very curious to hear what anyone else thinks ...

as the guy who had the privilege, i guess, of writing the above-mentioned article, this was exactly what i wondered. i suggested that perhaps the steak sandwich might not fly, but they seemed to wander right into it. i also wonder what the social implications of this could possibly be. but that's most certainly off-topic ...

i've had notably mixed results there, enough so that i finally took it off my list. staff can vary widely. food is generally quite good, but i *do* find the vibe to be way more pretentious than the food justifies. it's just pasta and pizza, and a very limited menu at that. while i'm all for kitchen pride, it all seems a bit precious. but perhaps they've mellowed in the past year. of course, i'm in what chuck classified as Category 3, so i expect my neighborhood joints to be very low key, in addition to being crazy good ...

forgot about some of those. agree. had a good meal or two at Bizarro a while ago, but the last time the gnocchi i had were something two or three steps below what i've prepared for myself at home. ditto La Spiga. some highlights, but not in a long while. but i should thank you, mangiabene, for reminding me about Swingside, about which i have nothing but praise. aside from the tiny size of the venue, the food is terrific and inventive (venison ragu sticks in mind for some reason) and i'm always happy. wine list is great too. so now i've poked a hole in my own theory about Seattle and Italian food. [edited to indicate "tiny size" meant the building, not the portions.]

i'm with mangiabene. tried almost everything -- though not La Vita e Bella -- and i'm still searching for one that truly warms my heart. Mamma Melina is a terrific red-sauce place, including the music. always reliable, though the wine list could use some expansion. i used to be bigger on Cafe Lago, but i often found it too busy and was always wanting the menu to be bigger. the pizza's good, but for those prices, i'll go down to Tutta Bella in Columbia City. i loved Troiani, but found their prices way out of hand. and haven't eaten there since Walter Pisano left, so can't speak to it now. Assaggio was ok when i tried it, which was a while back. they failed my ultimate Italian restaurant test, which is being able to make a good espresso. (in Seattle!) many like Il Bistro. it never did a ton for me, but i'm in the minority. inconceivably, i have yet to try Juanita.

a generally sympathetic view of DQ's effort, from Nation's Restaurant News ... http://www.nrn.com/newsletter-mm/story.cfm...rs%20Newsletter "It's just crazy enough, but not too crazy," said Michael Keller, executive vice president of marketing for International Dairy Queen Inc. Cows won't be allowed inside the units, but customers do have to make an effort to win their free beverages. "It doesn't count unless the cow approaches the threshold of the door," Keller said. Although Dairy Queen executives don't know what the turnout will be, Keller said he expects the promotion to do well in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Texas, states with large cow populations. no mention of the branding dust-up.

no question. New Orleans was cited as an excellent example, and i think you could plausibly argue that SFO trumps LA in cuisine, despite being smaller. and up here in the northwest, Seattle and Portland hold their own despite being relatively small. all outgrowths of local tradition -- and often some really good sourcing of top-rate ingredients. and let's not even start in on the Texas MSAs and their relative talents.

just quickly, on city versus metro region, the more useful data in considering suburban trends is usually the MSA, or metropolitan statistical area. http://www.census.gov/population/www/estimates/metrodef.html the 2000 list is here: http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t29/tab03a.xls the metropolitan division, usually smaller, can also be helpful. though, i imagine, so can the Zagat divisions.

skip Wild Ginger. if you really want that sort of stuff, it's equally available in YVR and for far less money and far more authenticity. Zoe and Palace Kitchen are total winners, as i think was discussed in another thread. and my regrets for not at least dropping by your restaurant when we were up in your neck of the woods a few weeks back. had no idea you were on eG, but i remember being very impressed recently to see your praise for Zoe and wishing we'd lingered a while in Yaletown ...

if you read my subsequent posts, you'll note that i pointed out the very thing you mention. i've been to the DC burbs (and had great Afghan food in Arlington) and burbs all over, and there's most certainly legitimate ethnic cuisine to be found. but they're standouts amid the blandness of most suburban dining, which is more often than not corporate chains. assuredly, i'd love it if the suburbs were suddenly filled with wonderful Latin and South Asian and Chinese and so on cuisine, and i'd love it even more if we very pale folk flocked to those places regularly -- not only for the food but to support small, local businesses run by first-generation Americans -- but i acknowledge that's a heady dream.

well said. parking lots should be an excellent indicator, though not a universal one. the Outback Steakhouse/Bonefish Grill near downtown Seattle has valet parking, which pretty well said all it needed to for me. i take great pleasure in cutting off drivers trying to merge across three lanes to the valet station. on the Chicago point above, i'd agree: some of the best ethnic restaurants aren't necessarily in center city. my five years in Queens provided me access to some of the finest Greek, Colombian, Korean, Indian and Peruvian food on the continent. here in SEA, there's amazing Vietnamese, Chinese and Latin food found in what qualifies as the 'burbs, though some of them are more blue-collar than the usual 'burb. what's rare, though, are to find these places in what i'll call the gentrified 'burbs. there's an occasional exception -- the South Asian cuisine in Seattle's wealthier outlying areas is allegedly pretty good, though i can't find anyone to give me a top-notch recommendation -- authentic cuisine seems to be interpreted as different, and different seems to be bad. Italian, Mexican, &c., well described as comfort food. this USA Today piece says it all: they take Marcella Hazan to dinner at Olive Garden. Third course: Lobster Spaghetti. Lobster and spinach sautéed with olive oil in a creamy broth and served over spaghetti. Marcella renders judgment in a word. "No," she says, pushing her bowl away.

so my question is: what will his legacy be? he's done an unimaginable amount to bring the California wine industry to its current, world-leading state -- and he's done that by creating both some very good, very expensive wine and by building his empire on a lot (a *lot*) of so-called "value" wine. (i hate that term.) so will the Mondavi name in time come to stand for the quality of his Reserve line, or for providing Woodbridge and Private Selection to half the supermarkets in America?

many thanks, and thanks for the above suggestions, too. i've got the Gigondas caves on our list, and Bosquets is an excellent suggestion. will see if i can dig up an e-mail for them and request a visit, since i assume most of the estates there aren't open. (hence the caves.) will have to check with my travel companion, but i think Beaugraviere is the Mondragon venue she was thinking of. and will have to check into the Vaison place, too. hadn't heard of the Tavel co-op. i think it may be a tad out of the way of our route, but will see if i can squeeze it in. i adore their rosés, so would love to stop by there. so far the toughest day seems to be Tain L'Hermitage, though i believe they may have a cave. the dream would be to convince the Chaves to let us pay them a brief visit, but not sure if i can pull that off ...

cool! hey, do they deal with non-trade walk ins? i'm a Dick's regular (i find Seattle Restaurant Store overcharges and usually doesn't have what i want -- how can you not stock an all-metal fish spatula?!?) but the Mercer location is right by my gym, and has Saturday hours ...

yep, no question about it. though there's plenty of mediocre urban food, at its best urban food is not only fresh, trendy and focused on the new and unusual, it also encompasses legitimate ethnic cuisines -- the Chinese food in Chinatown, the taqueria, &c. suburban food? well ... Cheesecake Factory. big portions of either uninspired fare or food that has a soupcon of ethnic flavoring without in any way being authentic. "CHINO-LATINO STEAK. A Fusion of Asian and Latin Flavors! Spicy Marinated Charbroiled Skirt Steak with a Thai Tamarind Sauce. Served with Grilled Red Onion, Tomato and Steamed White Rice." "THAI CHICKEN PASTA. Linguini Tossed with Sauteed Chicken, Julienne Carrots, Green Onion, Roasted Peanuts and a Spicy Hot Peanut Sauce. Topped with Fresh Bean Sprouts." (taken from: http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu.htm ) not to pick on the CF, but it's emblematic of the suburban dining mentality. the irony being that so many of their locations are in high-traffic downtown venues, specifically to cater to suburban visitors who want a comforting brand restaurant while visiting the big city. and let's not even talk about Chili's. all that said, there are some terrific restaurants in the 'burbs and the country. but they're catering to an urban crowd gone pastoral. maybe it's all a state of mind.