nwyles

One half of you anyways - the other ? The jury is out on that !

And so it begins............................ A clever girl has circumvented the system of no large parties by booking four tables of four at the same time ( through Opentable.com )and then requesting that they all be seated together. Do I give her an "A" for ingenuity and seat them all together or do I stick to my guns and seat them how I wish, scattered throughout the restaurant as to no slam one waiter with a party of 16 ?

Yes. I am on the Yaletown Business Improvement Association and chair a couple of committees, including the ones affected by RAV. We are working with RAVCO and the City and all of the other players involved to minimize the hardship the station construction is going to put on the neighbourhood and well and working with the designers to massage the external look. It has taken up a massive amount of time but the station is forever so it is something that should be done right. More on this later and the businesses it affects. Cheers Neil

I think that RAV station is going at the parking lot 1 block south of Broadway, behind Cityhall. There is a Whole Foods slated to go at the Crossroads space.

It was great!! Since I didn't have the opportunity to get on line until today, I thought there'd be a bit more about Neil on here. It was nice to see him interviewed, and I thought it was a great promo about the Vancouver food scene in general. The rest of the shows were great too, however, they seemed to be trying to be comparable to the Global shows quite a few weeks ago. Any comments about the other places commented on ? ← I thought there would be a bit more on Neil as well ! They shot enough footage for a short film, but I ended up on the cutting room floor. At least I get free Kolachy's for life now.

You had me right up until the word " vegetarian", then I just started to shut down. Seriously, looks great. Are all of the pubs like that ? If not, give me a percentage. It is a shame about how many of the "locals" here are all about chicken wings in Franks hot sauce and Molson Canadian. The level of food that we have , save a select few, in the pub scene, does not appeal to me at all. There must be a demand for it as there are so many, but part of it is that peope do not know any better.

but it's a 'duo' of desserts with selections from the lumiere menu, as opposed to just normal selections from the tasting bar. i guess thats where the clincher is - and who knows, maybe some sort of amuse or palette cleanser will be thrown in for the DOV'ers ← At $.50 off of the normal price, I highly doubt it. Rob and his team have been very generous to me over the years, so I do not mean any disrespect, but an amuse or palate cleanser would just make your experience longer, which if they booked out within a couple of hours of taking reservations, means they want you to go sooner. Avoid the goat rodeo and enjoy the tasting bar at Lumiere for one of the other 300 and 50 odd days of the year and splurge and blow the 50 cents. It is an experience that is to be savoured and not rushed.

I am going to have a team meeting this weekend to discuss my plans on how we appraoch this. We have nine front end staff. I am going to "draft" one of them to be a food runner one of the nights, one of them to do the door and one to do the bar. I usually have the restaurant broken up into five sections but for DOV, we will use six. Next night, switch etc. I will map it out so that it is a fair division of shifts and sections. When you are that busy, there are no bad sections. It takes lots of careful planning on table turns, start times and menus to pull this off. You only get one chance to make a first impression. I have checked all of the numbers from last year and have decided to only offer the DOV menu. 86 % of the people who came last year had the DOV, 7 % insisted on using their Entertainment card, therefore not eligible to have the DOV, and the remaining 7 % had the regular menu for whatever reason. This year, there is an Entertainment blackout during DOV so do not even try. ( I know, why would you try when you are getting such a deal......................some people insist on trying to get the Uber discount. No such luck ! ) It just makes sense to only have the one menu. I hope that it streamlines the operation and allows us to flawless in our execution.

Oh no! I have 168 posts AND I joined eGullet one day before you, Neil, can a deal be struck? Pretty please? I'll bring you some yummy Japanese snacks! ← You can always spot a rookie eh Neil? The answer of course is ordering the $35 menu AND an extra order of Hanger Steak. Have the salmon (from the $35 menu) as a fish course, the hanger as your main, and the GBP for dessert. The "lightweight" way around this would be to order the $25 menu. Have the GBP as your dessert with a glass of Township 7 Late Harvest. The Dessert Duo would of course be eaten afterwards, with coffee ... or a cheese plate and port. See the benefit of hanging around us veterans?? A. ← They could learn a thing or two from Ling : For my first dinner of the night I had............... And for my second dinner I had................... And my first dessert, I had.. ( you get the picture ) Small changes can be made if they are arranged through me before you get here ( you could also make the request on the open table reso that you are making - hint hint ! ). A waiter who appraoches the hot and crazy kitchen and says " Hey, there is a guy out there who would like to sub the Gingerbread on their $25.00 meal, can we do that ?" will get the searing hot frying pan upside the head.

Sorry guys, I just check the egullet rules: No deals shall be given to anyone with less than 100 posts. As a 1000 post person, I am not supposed to even respond to anyone with less than 20 posts. Get typing !

I'm kind of sad. I just checked the HSG menu. I'm going to have to choose either the hangar steak on the the $25 menu or the gingerbread pudding on the $35 menu. I can't have both. ← Perhaps some sort of arrangement can be worked out. Do you have your egullet decoder ring yet ?

My dearest Macha, I am offering two levels of Dine Out menu - $25.00 and $35.00 I did that last year as well. It presents a couple more options for the diner as well as a chance for me to see a couple of dollars more if they so wish. We see about a 70 % / 30 % split on the two price ranges. I am also offering a few additions if people want to order prawns or mushrooms on the side etc. This is the perfect solution for those people who can not order alcohol, and yet do not want to be percieved as cheap. I know this has been tossed around recently Order more food !!

They showed it a second time on the late news. Free Kolachys for life for nwyles ! You can't buy that kind of exposure. I think that with that kind of press, you could do Neil a favour and make a few Kolachys without green peppers. I think my voice is much deeper in person - It sounded a little high a squeaky - perhaps they were running the tape extra fast.

World Junior beard !

It is like the "Wizard of Oz". If you do not want to know, stop looking behind the curtain at the Wizard ! Having read some of the other threads about this topic : I saw the one about making multiple reservation on the same night and filling the spots with friends. Hat off to the person who fills all the spots, but I can tell you, not everybody goes to the trouble of filling the spots. Sometimes they just do not show, leaving the restaurant swinging in the wind. Why not just make reservations for yourself and stick to it. Why do you feel the need to be a "dinner broker". Let people make their own resos and stick to it. It is like preaching to the choir here, as everybody takes this seriously, happy to get resos and stick to them. I am already having nightmares about Dine Out and it has not even started yet !

If somebody could confirm this, I will apply this week !

The hanger steak craze will continue, and I have the market cornered on supply !!! My evil plan to take over the world is working.

hsg menus Both menus ($25 and $35) are on this page! You need acrobat to read it. ← You can only list one menu on the Tvan site. They do not allow more than one. Most restaurants are doing a couple of menus. Check out their own websites or www.diningoutguide.com

Ahhhh....You changed your menu from the one listed originally, eh? Hm.... ← That menu was perhaps from last year. I edited my menu some time ago but it would appear that the gremlins got to it. I had not gone back to the TVan website to double check until today. I had to re-post it today, after trying many times to get into the slooooooow system. I was finally to later on this afternoon. What is up is what we are serving. You can go to www.diningoutguide.com for the full picture. Cheers Neil

GBP is on the $35.00 menu. It is the less than subtle way for me to get people to spend more money. The secret is out now. Cheers Neil

The damn site keeps crashing ! They should have seen this coming ! My phone is ringing off the hook for people to fax them the menus because they can't get it online.

The new owner is cleaning up and plotting and scheming. Prepare for more info soon.

SO envious! Really? Isn't it nonetheless one of your biggest sales nights of the year, private party or not? Just wonderin', k ← Are you kidding ? NYE is rookies night out ! Parties of twenty somethings who do not know how to behave in a restaurant ! Pass. Expectations are soooo high for this night and it is just another night. Your steak did not get magically bigger and your red wine did not get magically redder. People want bands, but not willing to pay for it. Is the champagne not complimentary with the $18 sirloin ? Blah, blah, blah

This will be my first New Year's off since I was 15 years old. ( I am 39 ! ) I used to play in a dance band so we always had a job on New Years. It was hard to justify being out of my own restaurant so I let the band go by the way side for the past eight New Years. We decided that we would close this year. People come to use as a stepping stone on their New Years plans, but not usually the final destination to ring it in. I have had a wedding and booked the entire Canucks team for a couple of years, but other than that, by the time 9:30 rolls around, it is usually all over for us. I think we will be off to some friends for some cocktails and snacks and back home with the kids fairly early. I have a bottle of Champage in the fridge for the stroke of midnight, if we stay up that long. Happy New Years to all - Let's see if the events lived up to the hype.

Been closed for some time now, perhaps 6 months or more.