Eliza

I'm kind of surprised that "how is everything" or "how is dinner so far" irks some folks. Isn't "is everything to your liking" just a re-wording of "how is everything"? I tend to feel miffed if my server doesn't drop by once or twice during the meal, even if the question he or she asks is mostly a rhetorical one. The plate-clearing is where things can get especially weird. It would improve the lives of servers and diners alike if all embraced the ol' fork-and-knife-at-4:20-means-I'm-finished. Leaves sooo much less opportunity for "are you still working on that" awkwardness.

In the weeds, I have used such embarrassing words as "munching" "grazing" and "nibbling" i.e. "are you still grazing?" eek. There were times, as a server, when it seemed as if a very chipper alien had taken over my body for a minute.

In addition to the ones already mentioned here, anyone have more ideas for low-cost meats? In particular, I'm looking for a nice cut of pork that would take well to a few days of Zuni-style cure, but all inexpensive meat ideas are interesting to me. I like the idea of low-cost ingredients prepared in a loving, relatively labor intensive fashion.

x1000 for pain Poilane-style perfection. i couldn't live without the crust. although everyone's naan responses did make me think for a second.. HungryC, I've never heard of Louisiana-style french bread and I'm fascinated.

so if i were, for example, scaling up by a factor of ten, any ideas on what the yeast ought to be multiplied by? or is it something i need to figure out by feel, and trial and error?

I'm rhubarb crazy. a few ideas: Rhubarb-white chocolate tart Rhubarb-Almond bars also, I couldn't find an online recipe for this, but if you have Baking with Julia, you must immediately make the rhubarb upside-down cake. i make it pretty much weekly in the spring. lovely with honey-sweetened whipped cream and a cuppa coffee.

splendid, slkinsey. thanks so much. i'm going to start with Lahey's no-knead recipe and go from there. one more question i forgot to ask: why have i heard that, when scaling up a recipe, you can't just multiply the portion of yeast like you do with other ingredients?

I'd love to re-open this thread because I've got some burning questions. I'm in the unenviable position of being both a pizza snob and being not-great at making perfect pizza dough. -Any ideas on what the flour to water ratio of an ideal thin crust might be? (i wasn't sure if mroybal's 100:68 recipe is used for thin-crust) -Does a thin crust have less to do with recipe and more to do with simply "rolling" it very thin with your hands? -Is there a realistic way to make a large batch of dough, enough for 15 or 20 10-in. pies, without a giant Hobart mixer? -Does a longer rest minimize the kneading/mixing time, as it does with Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe? (I know there's a no-knead pizza dough recipe floating around, but it hasn't gotten great feedback)

thank you both for the good advice! very good to know about the refrigerator fan...

I was looking to avoid blabbing too much and just solicit more general running-a-kitchen advice, but here's the lowdown: It's a small, casual restaurant with a busy late-night bar, open only in the summer. We're in a seasonal tourist community so we do get some tourist traffic but the clientele is mostly local and regular. The menu, which has been essentially the same for 20 years, is sandwiches, salads, pizzas, simple entrees, quite a few veg options (meh). I would say the original idea was kinda hippified, pseudo-Mediterranean-influenced fare, and I'm going to want to change that. I'd really like to take hummus and pitas off the menu; I'm sure they were a little ahead of the times serving it in '89, but not so now. Lunch runs $8-$15, dinners $8-$22. The chef I am replacing has worked there for a long time, has a drinking problem and was getting hard to work with, so the owner asked him to move on. The rest of the staff, all people I know (this is a very small town), is staying on. Thanks for listening, guys, I'm eternally grateful.

A friend asked me to take over the kitchen of his successful restaurant/bar. The menu is tired and dated and he knows that I will want to change it completely, and he actually used the words "total creative license (!), to which I obviously add "within the budget." Here's the thing: I only made the switch to Cook from Server last summer, making desserts and salads at a fine-dining place and cooking and baking for a small catering company. I am in a committed relationship with the restaurant business and I'm a good cook but I'm oh so green! Budgets, spreadsheets, food cost percentages, staffing, dealing with tardy distributors, fiddling with broken reach-ins.. I have three months to educate myself before we open for the summer, so I won't be in over my head. Whaddaya think, pros and semi-pros and non-pros? What do I need to know? What are your best/worst stories of restaurant beginners' folly? What stupid mistakes will I absolutely make, no matter what? What mistakes are avoidable? I wouldn't be surprised if this thread already exists somewhere in the restaurant forum, but I couldn't find it.

After two years of filing it away in my to-make list, last week I finally made Pierre Hermé's (via Dorie Greenspan) lemon cream. There is nothing like it. Texturally somewhere between pudding and aïoli but actually lighter than both; it melts in your mouth. I slathered it into a yummy sweet tart shell (Alice Medrich's recipe = perfect). Where has lemon cream been all my life? You can find the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours, or here: Lemon Cream

Servers shouldn't chase down and berate crappy tippers, even though it could be terribly fun to do so. I have, however, commented on a zilch tip on a big bill, and it has always turned out to be a drunken oversight or miscommunication. I have also double-checked with customers who have left exceedingly large tips. As has already been noted, FOH workers take the good with the bad, see the big picture, hope it all evens out. It usually does, and there's the key: the fact that it does even out means that the majority of customers ARE tipping 15-20%. Not just our fellow servers and bartenders, not just rich people.. depending on the restaurant, maybe 95% of regular folks tip appropriately. To choose not to tip is ethically exactly the same, as Philadining said, as not stuffing your dollar into the coffee fund jar at the office. Everybody else is doing it because it's part of a trusting understanding we have, so it's not really one's prerogative to abstain. For whatever reason, customers are entrusted with the responsibility of tipping, and just because no one is there slapping you on the wrist for a stingy gratuity doesn't mean it's not compulsory. A lame tip is quite a personal affront and show of disrespect, because the expectation is made so clear in our culture. I don't think US restaurants should print the expected gratuity on the bottom of the menu to clarify the "contract" with the customer.. leaving 15-20% is expected and normal. including a set gratuity is not expected and normal in the US, and THAT should be printed on a menu if it is the case.

i find the giant peppermill thing completely embarrassing; I'm a server and it makes me feel like I work in a 1970s country club, gussying up someone's wedge salad or chicken a la king or something. I totally agree that ideally, the food should be in a perfectly-seasoned state when it comes out of the kitchen, and shouldn't require this (mostly ornamental) show of extra seasoning. I am, however, one of those barbarians who likes the tableside-grated cheese on my pasta, because cheese is miracle food.

I don't know if I'm in the right place for this question, but I'm hoping I can tap the cumulative expertise of this forum [you are all doing fabulous things with sweets and it's so inspiring, hooray!!]: first of all, wtf is the deal with Joy of Cooking's seven-minute frosting? I made my man a classic yellow layer cake with pink and brown seven-minute frostings, and while the cake tasted great, the frosting was truly yucky; I couldn't get the corn syrup texture out of my mouth. The real problem here is that I had a certain kind of frosting in mind. What I'm looking for is much softer than buttercream, forms a slight pudding-skin-esque texture when it sits at room temp, tastes really buttery, and is what would have been on my yellow birthday cakes when I was a little kid. Help! I love making birthday cakes for my friends, and I must find the elusive frosting of my childhood!

You should consider WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), an organization that sets people up with temporary (as short as 5 days, as long as 6 months) positions on small farms, in exchange for room & board. The actual work varies from farm to farm, but when I did it for a month in Tuscany and southern France, the farmers were really happy to have me work for the morning hours in a field or an olive grove, and then come into the kitchen and help/watch them cook.. it was really fantastic. Obviously, some farmers don't cook a lot, but you can narrow down your choices and correspond by email to figure out the foodier ones. I learned to make perfect pasta dough and my hosts were all incredibly welcoming and wanted to always feed me beautiful meals and wine. It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but with only a week, I think it might be a nice slice-of-life food-education situation.

jackal, did a waiter steal your girlfriend or run over your dog or something? sorry. i couldn't disagree with you more. my point wasn't that servers should share stock tips and hugs, just that servers' personalities come out just like anyone else's, and that it's mostly harmless, for pete's sake. i love going to restaurants and nearly always have a fantastic time: i seem to get by just fine without thinking of servers the way you do. ok i promise that's the last waitress rant from me, for a little while anyway..

As a server and a touchy-feely sorta person, I really try to avoid physical contact with my customers, because I know that it inspires passionate distaste in some. I have a big problem, however, with the part of this distaste that comes from the notion of staff being invisible and therefore..untouchable? (somebody earlier pared a server's duties down to "intelligently" describing specials, bringing food quickly, topping off wine.. I get the point, but ouch). I'm not questioning a customer's right to unviolated personal space, but it shouldn't be so easy to forget that your server is, indeed, a person with a personality and a whole set of habits and expressions, and it's really unlikely that he/she is touching you to get a better tip. Probably your server is just a regular ole touchy-feely person who is trying to convey a feeling of comfort and care, the best way he/she knows. Unless the inner thigh is being caressed, I think maybe one could stand to lighten up about it and sheepishly accept a few shoulder rubs like one would accept Uncle Bill's uncomfortably tight bear hugs. We're just people! Sorry if I'm being reactionary, but this fascinating question and everyone's comments reminded me that vestiges of old-school snobbery often surface most peculiarly in the world of customer service.

tonight we had hot dogs with onions, sliced Bubbie's pickles (the greatest pickles i've ever had), mustard and ketchup. last night we finished up fresh fettuccine and venison sausage tomato sauce leftovers, but as it happened, there wasn't much leftover. we supplemented our plates with annie's mac & cheese (weird, i know) and had big salad with too-oily vinaigrette made with delicious balsamic and fruttato olive oil. but three nights ago, i actually cooked. i braised beef short rib with molasses, soy sauce, red peppery sesame oil, white wine, orange zest, garlic, ginger, onion. i made a sort of spicy lemony cole slaw with lots of ginger in it. we had a dinner party. i was hungover the next day. success.

that lemon-olive oil-olive dessert sounds and looks beautiful. wowie. tonight i'm making salted caramels; i found some lovely maine sea salt the other day and i go crazy for salty-sweet. if anyone has other salty-sweet ideas for me, i'm all ears.