Raising the Bar

[KatieLoeb]

If we can avoid the baiting and combativeness and the totally off-topic discussion of cooking schools (which might be worthy of it's own thread elsewhere) I'd like to bring this back to the subject at hand.

Interestingly, in talking to several people, I've found out that many "bartending schools" use the colored water method for training. I stand by my original assertion that there's nothing to be learned about taste and balance there, but I suppose for learning the mere mechanics of the job as well as the other repetitive motions (bev naps on the bar, proper glassware choices, etc.) it has it's place. Why they can't afford some fresh fruit and a jar of cherries and olives is beyond me, but I guess if you're going fake there's no point in using "real" maraschino cherries. I'd never hire someone waving a diploma from such a place at an interview, but the sorts of places I work require three years experience or more. I guess the TJMcFunsterbees of the world need a pool of talent to draw from too. Whatever.

As for the cost factor, using well or mid-level brands would be adequate for folks to at least get an idea of what something is supposed to taste like. Nobody anywhere is making stingers out of Louis XIII, so using an inexpensive brandy and creme de menthe would be fine. Everyone's taste's develop at different rates, and in different ways (I still don't really like scotch, but I know what a Rob Roy ought to taste like), so as bartenders gain more experience and exposure to higher level products they'll gain the understanding they need as they go along.

For anyone that wishes to develop their bartending skills and take it as a serious career choice, there are much better avenues like the Beverage Alcohol Resource courses, MOTAC (Museum of the American Cocktail) seminars, etc. These courses are not inexpensive, but neither is any other sort of academic professional training. And it's definitely cheaper than law school or med school!

[Alcibiades]

Katie, Did you say "Rob Ray?" Do you mean the Buffalo Sabres enforcer who fought Tie Domi in the back seat of their agent's car when heading to the NHL draft? God, I miss him. Sorry, it's NHL playoff time.

Kidding aside, you're absolutely right about the hiring process. Bartending certificates mean nothing to bar managers at better places; in fact, I can recall numerous snickerings about seeing resumes with these things listed. Bars want people with experience--that's why I suggested earlier that the real problem with these schools is that they waste the students' time and money with respect to future employment.

[KatieLoeb]

Rob Ray?

I've duly edited my bad spelling.

Yeah. I think you and I are on the same page about this. There's no amount of "schooling" (at least from a place that's not even using real booze) that's going to take the place of some real time slinging it behind the bar. And not slinging it in the literal sense, since no amount of volume experience pouring beers and shots is going to prepare you for specialty cocktails in an upscale establishment. Even at the small bar I'm working now, I try to have certain elements of the more popular specialty cocktails made up in batches ahead of time. We just opened the outside patio tonight for the first time and I can predict how hard I'm going to get my ass kicked in the coming weeks. Our seating doubled and there isn't a clone of me to handle the service bar.

It's going to be an interesting summer.

[MarketStEl]

You have to dine to sit outside, right?

Good news: Summer hours at Widener begin June 4. That means I have Fridays off and can grace your bar at happy hour a little more often, funds permitting.

In looking through the discussion -- both off- and on-topic -- a long-ago quote from a paragon of mediocrity came to mind.

That paragon was Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska), who, in 1969, as President Nixon's nomination of Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court was going down in flames, was quoted as saying, "I think there should be a place for mediocrity on the Supreme Court."

Obviously, Sen. Hruska was so far off base with this statement, he wasn't even wrong, but -- bringing this back to the topic -- if you're going to work at a volume establishment as opposed to a quality place, it seems to me that learning the basic mechanics and motions would save an employer the need to train you on the job, and that an employer at a volume establishment would appreciate that. But there is indeed no way you can learn about taste, or for that matter the intangibles like stage presence and conversational skills that distinguish the great bartenders from the rest, in a school such as this one, and in those matters, experience is the best teacher.

In this scheme of things, places like "Houligan's" and Applebee's are volume establishments, no matter how much (or how little) they charge for meals and drinks.

Pardon me for a moment while I comment on the brief but arch exchange between HD73 and Vadouvan.

Vadouvan is right in saying that no one should settle for mediocrity. By extension, every diner or imbiber deserves the best food, drink and service possible at the price he or she is paying.

But keep in mind that volume establishments of necessity operate at an industrial scale, and that very fact sets a ceiling on how high the quality will go. As I said about Aramark's foodservice here at Widener in my first foodblog, "It's difficult if not impossible to provide a) gourmet quality food, b) in large quantities, c) at low cost." Of those three variables, c) is the controlling one. I assume it's also a controlling variable for the large restaurant chains and high-volume bars, some of which install computerized equipment that meters out how much liquor goes into each drink and automatically communicates what was poured to the cash register. At this level of regimentation, the bartender merely becomes an assembly-line worker, and thus may as well be working with colored water anyway.

[HD73]

This doesn't have anything to do with "accepting mediocrity." It has everything to do with the necessity of picking one's battles. It's probably the case that I should, after applying the aforementioned principle, just keep my mouth shut. But here goes anyway:

I am not accepting anyone's mediocrity, because I do not go to those restaurants. And I fail to see how complaining about them here, unlike simply not patronizing them, somehow gives someone the moral high ground. If, in saying "Who gives a crap," I'm falling down the slippery slope of "accepting mediocrity," what do I have to do to avoid that slope? Say mean things about them on this board? Actively campaign for change in these establishments? Firebomb McDonald's?

I don't accept mediocrity in what I eat. I seek out places that don't accept mediocrity in the food they produce. The battle I've picked is to control what goes in and out of my mouth and, to some extent, try to pass some of that along to friends and family.

There will always, always, always be Bennigans and TGIFriday's in the world. There will always be people who don't give a shit about what they eat. And even if you somehow manage to be morally offended by that, don't you see that there are other, far greater moral offenses in the world more deserving of a personal crusade?

In the end, it's just food, and I refuse to assign it cosmic significance. It's something I care about, and will continue to care about. But beyond trying to introduce friends and family to my view of things, I just don't see how it's worth my time to evangelize to the world at large. Or, as it were, preach to the choir on this board about how much Applebees stinks.

If I really thought telling people who frequent eGullet that TGI Fridays is a bad place would change the trajectory of a single atom in the universe that is American food culture, I would do it. But it won't, so I don't.

[jmbrightman]

The most surprising thing to me is that it appears in the Weekly as a feature story. It reads like an advertorial in the Education supplement.