Babbo

[ulterior epicure]

I am looking for feedback and opinions...We have eaten many times at all Mr Bitali's places except for Del Posto..Babbo is my son's favorite and we go at least for his birthday once a year...Food is ALWAYS very good...sometimes we have had wonderful service...sometimes the waiters are very condescending.  We had a so so waiter..and a really poor wine expert...he was unpleasant and did not seem to be familiar with the wines (to our astonishment)...the wine he brought was not to our liking but since it was opened we kept it and said nothing...what is one supposed to do??  I wrote a letter to Mr Bitali last week...I wonder if he will get it and if he will answer it...any opinions?? Thanks....

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I hope that in your letter you spelled B-A-T-A-L-I correctly.

Edited February 4, 2009 by ulterior epicure (log)

[oakapple]

I wrote a letter to Mr Bitali last week...I wonder if he will get it and if he will answer it...any opinions??

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Let us know how it turns out. I suspect you will get a "corporate" reply written (or ghost-written) by someone in Batali's organization, though not from the man himself.

[chefboy24]

I am looking for feedback and opinions...We have eaten many times at all Mr Bitali's places except for Del Posto..Babbo is my son's favorite and we go at least for his birthday once a year...Food is ALWAYS very good...sometimes we have had wonderful service...sometimes the waiters are very condescending.  We had a so so waiter..and a really poor wine expert...he was unpleasant and did not seem to be familiar with the wines (to our astonishment)...the wine he brought was not to our liking but since it was opened we kept it and said nothing...what is one supposed to do??  I wrote a letter to Mr Bitali last week...I wonder if he will get it and if he will answer it...any opinions?? Thanks....

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what were you supposed to do ??!?! its babbo! say "i don't like this wine, this is not how you described it at all. can we do something else please?" of course they would let you.

sounds like you were intimidated, and, in my experience babbo tries to do everything possible to not intimidate guests, starting with the rock and roll on the ipod.

i'm sorry but i can't stand letter writing people. if you are having a bad time with your waiter or your wine, speak up. people speak up all the time. letter writers create real problems in the management chain and stress people out...if you had just said something during your dinner - all of your problems would have been fixed and you might have even got some free stuff out of it. (which is aparently what you want anyway...by writing this letter...to mr. bitali.)

Edit

I'm sorry I have to dig further. Please I am not attacking you. But you said "the wine he brought us"

what I think happened is that you maybe ordered a wine and DECLINED HELP from a sommelier.

Why would you go to Babbo and not talk to a sommelier? They have 3 on the floor at most times.

Did you ask for a sommelier? Did you ask your waiter to recommend a wine? Did he say anything when you asked, like, "do you want red or white? Full bodied or light?" or did he just come back with a bottle?

And why should you be astonished? Babbo has, last time I was there, about 800-900 Italian wines. It's not the waiters job to be familiar with all of them (which is why they have 3 sommeliers).

Sounds like you were very unclear.

Edited February 4, 2009 by chefboy24 (log)

[flinflon28]

i'm sorry but i can't stand letter writing people.  if you are having a bad time with your waiter or your wine, speak up.  people speak up all the time.  letter writers create real problems in the management chain and stress people out...if you had just said something during your dinner - all of your problems would have been fixed and you might have even got some free stuff out of it. (which is aparently what you want anyway...by writing this letter...to mr. bitali.)

If YOU can't stand letter writing people that doesn't mean that it's a poor way to provide feedback and to assume that the person's sole reason for doing so is to get "free stuff" is the eptiome of smugness.

If some people aren't comfortable asserting themselves in person then there is absolutely nothing wrong with them putting pen to paper.

Having worked back and front of house I can say from my experience that letters do not create problems in the management chain or stress people out. If they do then this management chain isn't staffed with the right people.

Granted some letters that will received might be illogical but to dismiss the method seems inappropriate.

[Shmily]

I am sorry that my post was not very clear..In fact, it was the sommelier with whom we had the difficulty ...We know a lot about food, but sadly, not much about wine, and we told the sommelier exactly what we wanted...we have done tha same not only at Babbo many times, but at many other restaurants ...I know even less about Italian wines...but the sommeliers at Babbo have been very helpful in the past...I am not looking for anything free, just acknowledgement of a problem...After spending $500 for a dinner in these difficult times, if we are courteous, I expect the same in return...and sadly, I was very disappointed by their treatment...Yes, I do think I was intimidated after what seemed like a lengthy discussion of the wines that was going no where....We have had condescending waiters occasionally at Babbo, but never this problem before...

In fact, I learned several things from your Post..so I thank you...

[chefboy24]

sorry i come off as aggressive, but i'm very passionate about this.

when you write a letter, maybe the chef and owner will pass it back and forth around their management, sommeliers, wine director, dining room managers. its like a snowball effect, it gets bigger and bigger and more people just get pissed off. someone may lose a job over it.

but in reality if in person you just raised your hand, asked for a manager, and said

"i hate to do this, but, i'm not enjoying my meal here. i've been here before several times and i love babbo but i find my waiter to be condescending and the sommelier wasn't helpful at all and i really don't enjoy this wine. i'm having a bad experience and i just wanted to let you know."

i can't imagine that your experience wouldn't be turned around in a nanosecond and you would have been extremely taken care of after that.

[Timh]

I agree that you should have said something at the time. By saying nothing, you did not give them the opportunity to make things right. So a letter aftewrthe fact still means you had a bad experience instead of allowing them to do their jobs.

[tan319]

I am looking for feedback and opinions...We have eaten many times at all Mr Bitali's places except for Del Posto..Babbo is my son's favorite and we go at least for his birthday once a year...Food is ALWAYS very good...sometimes we have had wonderful service...sometimes the waiters are very condescending.  We had a so so waiter..and a really poor wine expert...he was unpleasant and did not seem to be familiar with the wines (to our astonishment)...the wine he brought was not to our liking but since it was opened we kept it and said nothing...what is one supposed to do??  I wrote a letter to Mr Bitali last week...I wonder if he will get it and if he will answer it...any opinions?? Thanks....

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I hope that in your letter you spelled B-A-T-A-L-I correctly.

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Yes, make sure you spell that culinary icons name correctly, sir!

F-A-N-T-A P-A-N-T-S

[mjs]

i'm sorry but i can't stand letter writing people.  if you are having a bad time with your waiter or your wine, speak up.  people speak up all the time.  letter writers create real problems in the management chain and stress people out...if you had just said something during your dinner - all of your problems would have been fixed and you might have even got some free stuff out of it. (which is aparently what you want anyway...by writing this letter...to mr. bitali.)

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Sorry, but I disagree with you about letter writing. Sure, depending on the situation it can be more effective to speak to a manager then and there. However, different situations may call for a different approach.

A few years ago I was entertaining foreign clients at Le Bernardin. The food was fine but there were several service slip-ups. I did my best to discreetly point them out to the server or captain (one of the issues was lack of proximity of someone in charge). However, problems continued throughout the meal. If I had made more of a fuss, it would have been awkward and potentially embarrassing in front of my guests. I also didn't feel it was incumbent upon me to get up from a business conversation in order to find an appropriate manager. It's also too late to fix certain problems once they have occurred.

In that case I wrote a letter and received an appropriate call apologizing. I was sent a gift certificate (I don't remember the exact amount...around $200) as compensation. I was satisfied with the response.

[Pan]

I am looking for feedback and opinions...We have eaten many times at all Mr Bitali's places except for Del Posto..Babbo is my son's favorite and we go at least for his birthday once a year...Food is ALWAYS very good...sometimes we have had wonderful service...sometimes the waiters are very condescending.  We had a so so waiter..and a really poor wine expert...he was unpleasant and did not seem to be familiar with the wines (to our astonishment)...the wine he brought was not to our liking but since it was opened we kept it and said nothing...what is one supposed to do??  I wrote a letter to Mr Bitali last week...I wonder if he will get it and if he will answer it...any opinions?? Thanks....

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One possibility is to ask to have a taste of the wine before purchasing a bottle. In high-end restaurants, and even medium-priced places like Lupa, they have gladly given me and my dining partners tastes of wine before we decided whether we would order even a quartino. As a matter of fact, not only did our waitress happily do that for us at Babbo when I had dinner there a few months ago, but so did our waiter at Lupa on Monday night. We didn't like the first wine but did like the second wine. And in his case, he provided us with a taste without our even having asked for one. But I have found that high-end restaurants are always happy to give tastes of as many as three different wines, if asked.

But none of this really addresses your situation, because it sounds like you reasonably counted on the knowledge of a sommelier. If I had been you, and the wine had been very clearly at variance with the sommelier's description and unsatisfactory, I would have insisted on sending the wine back, though apologetically (something like: "I'm sorry; this wine really tastes terrible and nothing like the sommelier's description. I really hate to send it back, but I really have to. Please bring us a taste of another wine we might like.").

[markk]

I am sorry that my post was not very clear..In fact, it was the sommelier with whom we had the difficulty ...We know a lot about food, but sadly, not much about wine, and we told the sommelier exactly what we wanted...we have done tha same not only at Babbo many times, but at many other restaurants ...I know even less about Italian wines...but the sommeliers at Babbo have been very helpful in the past...I am not looking for anything free, just acknowledgement of a problem...After spending $500 for a dinner in these difficult times, if we are courteous, I expect the same in return...and sadly, I was very disappointed by their treatment...

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Helloooooo - you do realize that this is Mario Batali that you're talking about, right? The guy who considers customers a pain-in-the-ass, and who would laugh in your face for complaining about $500 if you had done it in person.

Your beloved Mario has one of worst attitudes towards paying customers that anyone in the hospitality business could ever have (i.e. "contempt"), and considering that his method of dealing with in-person complaints is to laugh in your face, you'll probably discover (as I did the one time I had to write to him about a significantly worse experience than yours) that letters go completely ignored. Your beloved celebrity chef is too busy laughing himself all the way to the bank.

You write the phrase, "After spending $500 for a dinner in these difficult times,..." - to perhaps the one person in the industry best poised to learn the lesson "Arrogance cometh before a fall". Your letter, if it reaches Mario at all, is probably giving him the laugh of his life.

I doubt that there's a "chef" or restaurant owner in the business who could care less about his customers than Mario, or who has a worse attitude towards them.

[weinoo]

Helloooooo - you do realize that this is Mario Batali that you're talking about, right?  The guy who considers customers a pain-in-the-ass, and who would laugh in your face for complaining about $500 if you had done it in person.

Your beloved Mario has one of worst attitudes towards paying customers that anyone in the hospitality business could ever have (i.e. "contempt"),

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I don't think he likes bloggers or eGullet posters either...

[prasantrin]

i'm sorry but i can't stand letter writing people.  if you are having a bad time with your waiter or your wine, speak up.  people speak up all the time.  letter writers create real problems in the management chain and stress people out...if you had just said something during your dinner - all of your problems would have been fixed and you might have even got some free stuff out of it. (which is aparently what you want anyway...by writing this letter...to mr. bitali.)

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If there were problems that resulted in a customer taking the time to write a letter of complaint, then perhaps the management (and others) deserved to be stressed out. And letter-writing is not always a ploy to get free stuff.

I'd love to know markk's experience at Babbo( or Lupa?) which he has alluded to in the past. It must have been a doozy of one.

[Shmily]

WOW..I really thank all of you, especially Markk, Weinoo and Prasantrin for taking the time to post...IF I hear anything in response to my note, I will tell you about it...I guess I hold more expensive restaurants to a higher standard...

[markabauman]

It's ironic that Mario Batali was featured prominently in a NY Times article yesterday:

Restaurants Stop Playing Hard to Get

I had a very bad experience a while back, not at one of his restaurants, but another famous one in NY, recently closed, though under different chef/owner. My reasonable explanation of disappointment (hardly a complaint-maybe I should have been more vocal) was met with indifference and contempt. A nicely composed letter to the chef/owner was ignored. This, however, was before the recent financial crisis hit. No matter how good a place is, it's a little difficult for me to accept the concept that the restaurant is doing you a favor for you're being there and for taking (often a significant amount) your money.

On a trip to NYC this past weekend, however, we did seem to experience what was mentioned in the Times article at another restaurant. It was our first visit to this midtown place, so I don't know what the normal level of service is. The front desk, the waiters, the manager were all extremely helpful and attentive with excellent food and wine selections. So there is an upside apparently of many places that are trying much harder.

[Shmily]

I've had mixed experiences at Le Bernardin, where the service tends to be very professional but perhaps not necessarily all that warm. In addition, a while back my mother-in-law wrote a letter of complaint after a mediocre lunch and got such a condescending letter back from Eric Ripert that I was tempted to publish it. This leads me to think that at the top levels there are some miscues being delivered to the service culture at Le Bernardin.

In any event, I think if you pick any highly regarded restaurant you will find at least some accounts of great service and some accounts of awful service. A restaurant is a complex machine and, for whatever reason, it can grind to a halt on any given night. I have had disappointing service experiences at Taillevent, and at Gramercy Tavern. It happens. And it's unfortunate, because if I'd had my bad service experience at Gramercy Tavern on my first visit I'd be irreparably convinced that the service there is weak. However, with the perspective of dozens of great meals over a period of many years, I was able to say, oh well, they had a bad night, life goes on. In addition, even at restaurants where the service is overall weak, a great server -- or a great server-customer rapport -- can generate a positive service experience even in the midst of mediocrity.

Given that service is such a complex, organic creature, it all comes down to the system that's in place. You can't guarantee perfection every time. What you can do is put in place a system that produces as much perfection as possible as often as possible. That's where I think Danny Meyer is so brilliant as a restaurateur: he attacks the service issue on all fronts by hiring the best people at every level, insisting on the most rigorous training programs and generally fostering an ethos of enlightened, hospitable customer service. The system he has in place at all the restaurants he oversees is one that is highly adaptable. Even when there's a breakdown, there are multiple layers of redundancy in place and the team is always poised to "write a great last chapter." (I think I'm still getting emails about my one mediocre service experience at Gramercy a hundred years ago.)

Contrast that with an operation like the Bastianich/Batali group of restaurants. On a good day, you can have a great service experience at Babbo. Indeed, when Babbo first opened it poached several of Gramercy Tavern's best servers including the late, great James Danos. And on a good day, if you dined at Babbo and you had Simone and James working your table, and they were in a good mood, you could have an exceptional time. But Babbo, unlike Gramercy Tavern, does not have a strong system in place. So as a percentage, you will hear about many, many more negative service experiences at Babbo than at Gramercy Tavern. And the recovery from those incidents will be inferior. I mean, if you have a service problem at a Bastianich/Batali restaurant, and you try to address it with a manager, it's like trying to penetrate some Kafkaesque bureaucracy where the first instinct is to close ranks not fix problems. It just doesn't feel like anybody at the top is transmitting the "customer is king" mantra down the chain of command.

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I would like to post this posting from Mr. Shaw from the Forum discussing Service...especially the last paragraph...because he says it perfectly...and the article in the Times yesterday should apply...but Mr Batali seems to have his own rules...sadly....

[chefboy24]

i'm sorry but i can't stand letter writing people.  if you are having a bad time with your waiter or your wine, speak up.  people speak up all the time.  letter writers create real problems in the management chain and stress people out...if you had just said something during your dinner - all of your problems would have been fixed and you might have even got some free stuff out of it. (which is aparently what you want anyway...by writing this letter...to mr. bitali.)

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Sorry, but I disagree with you about letter writing. Sure, depending on the situation it can be more effective to speak to a manager then and there. However, different situations may call for a different approach.

A few years ago I was entertaining foreign clients at Le Bernardin. The food was fine but there were several service slip-ups. I did my best to discreetly point them out to the server or captain (one of the issues was lack of proximity of someone in charge). However, problems continued throughout the meal. If I had made more of a fuss, it would have been awkward and potentially embarrassing in front of my guests. I also didn't feel it was incumbent upon me to get up from a business conversation in order to find an appropriate manager. It's also too late to fix certain problems once they have occurred.

In that case I wrote a letter and received an appropriate call apologizing. I was sent a gift certificate (I don't remember the exact amount...around $200) as compensation. I was satisfied with the response.

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okay, i understand. when you are on a client dinner, entertaining clients, i totally can see that making a fuss is very unattractive to the guests you are entertaining. but i've been in that situation, and i still excuse myself to go to the "restroom" but i actually try to explain to a manager what was going wrong without creating a big fuss.

in my experience, letter writing people just want free stuff. if i have a bad time at a restaurant, i generally won't go back (for a while), free gift certificate to return or not.

[Bill Miller]

sorry i come off as aggressive, but i'm very passionate about this.

when you write a letter, maybe the chef and owner will pass it back and forth around their management, sommeliers, wine director, dining room managers.  its like a snowball effect, it gets bigger and bigger and more people just get pissed off.  someone may lose a job over it.

but in reality if in person you just raised your hand, asked for a manager, and said

"i hate to do this, but, i'm not enjoying my meal here. i've been here before several times and i love babbo but i find my waiter to be condescending and the sommelier wasn't helpful at all and i really don't enjoy this wine.  i'm having a bad experience and i just wanted to let you know."

i can't imagine that your experience wouldn't be turned around in a nanosecond and you would have been extremely taken care of after that.

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I'm sorry but we ate there last Wednesday--it was wonderful--deconstructed osso buco, mint pillows, a 98 Barbaresco--wonderful service--quiet on the second floor--where were you? I think you need harmone pills!!

Edited February 13, 2009 by Bill Miller (log)

[Shmily]

Hi again.,..No one is saying that service at Babbo always has problems....bu if you go back and read "Fat Guy's last paragraph...more people have negative than positive service experiences...I, myself , have had both...BUT that all being said, I never got a response to my note and that is just rude...and the note was sent the same week Mr. Batali appeared on the front page of the NY Times Food Section with the article about economic problems. Well, believe that we will eat far less often at all of his places...not due to the economy....but due to less than pleasant service....and that is so sad and unnecessary...a short note of explanation grom him would be fine....

I have learned from this experience to speak up more right away...in a pleasant way...or request someone else to help us...

[oakapple]

Hi again.,..No one is saying that service at Babbo always has problems....bu if you go back and read "Fat Guy's last paragraph...more people have negative than positive service experiences.

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More negative than positive? I seriously doubt that.

[markk]

At this point in the thread there are just too many snippets for me to quote, but let me try to comment without quoting a line from each of many messages since I posted last...

I've had some stunningly bad experiences, some with service only, and some with both food and service, at Batali restaurants (the only exception being Lupa).

After one very disastrous dinner entertaining client/friends where both the food and service were horrible at Esca, I wrote to Mario about the experience and never received a reply. When I ran into him a month or two later at Casa Mono (after a mediocre meal that only had one problem which I would've been willing to laugh off till I told him and then he laughed in my face), I told him that I had written to him about a much more serious problem at Esca a month or two earlier, and he turned quite serious (for him), assured me that he did indeed answer every letter he got about such things, and gave me an e-mail address and asked me please to re-send that letter so that he could I answer it. I sent it, and he ignored it again.

Some time after that I took another set of clients (with whom I am also, luckily and happily, quite friendly due to our mutual love of food) to Babbo, and while there were no problems with the service, the food was exceptionally mediocre - to the point that while I, myself, was finding dish after dish to be mediocre, I was also seeing that my guests were leaving significant amounts of the same dish uneaten on their plates (we all had the same thing - I had arranged in advance to do a much-extended "pasta tasting menu" in which we ate most (though not all) of the pastas on the full menu (some with the addition of some definitely not-cheap fresh White Trufffles that had just come into season that year). My guests were trying not to comment on the food that they were being treated for, but course after course there was a lot of moving food around the plate and leaving it (which I was doing too) - which isn't a good sign; in the days when Babbo was new and really trying, plates got devoured and wiped clean. This food was thoroughly disjointed, disconnected, and could not have been more complacently prepared, or less exciting.

So for me that was one hideous experience with really bad food and offensively bad service at Esca, (and one ignored letter from Mario), followed by a mediocre meal at Casa Mono in which Mario laughed in my face about the complaint I made when he asked how everything was that night, (and also and assured me that he answered every letter he got and therefore must not have gotten my more serious letter about the earlier meal at Esca which he asked me to re-send, and then ignored again), followed by a meal with perfectly good service and exceptionally mediocre food at Babbo.

So I'm out! For me there's no point in going to Mario's restaurants based on the track record I've had with the experiences and his response to the problems.

(I exclude Lupa from this - I've never had problems there, but instead have had primarily superb, if too-salty food, but the service has been great (sometimes exceptional, as it was the time I entertained these same clients there by pre-arranging a feast in advance with the GM and chef [this is when Ladner was still there] - and in any case, even if there had been occasional shortcomings at my Lupa experiences which there had not - Lupa's prices are under the point on my radar that I really would get that annoyed.)

So I continue to go to Lupa from time to time when the craving strikes me. As for Mario's other, higher-end restaurants, I get either lousy food, lousy service, or both - and a mocking attitude when I take the time to write and complain about them nicely. I do care that the man lies and tells me that he answers every letter he gets, and then ignores the one letter about something quite serious that I sent him twice, the second time at his request.

With regard to oakapple's post, I haven't had more negative than positive experiences at Babbo - they've run pretty much 50/50. And with regard to chefboy24's comment, "in my experience, letter writing people just want free stuff" - I don't know that he really can make that assumption (based on anything other than psychological "projection") unless he can state that the letters he's received have specifically asked for 'free stuff'. My letter to Mario about the Esca disaster made it very clear that I didn't want anything more than to know that the problem had been acknowledged and hopefully fixed, thinking that I might take those guests back there a second time, as they don't eat meat, which is why I picked Esca in the first place, thinking it might be a treat for them. Instead, we got rude, hostile service, cold food, wrong orders, and in one case the guest who made it quite clear that he was allergic to shrimp and lobster (and was recommended by the waiter to try a particular dish that featured lobster but which they would omit - which was eventually served to him with lobster and a totally miserable and uncaring attitude by the server - prompting these guests to ask me finally "did we do something to offend them, or is the service always like this?" (This was prompted by the fact that this one guest was quite enamored of one of the breads that was served from the roving bread platter and asked for a piece each time the bread waiter came, until the point int he meal when the bread waiter would serve only the table next to us, and then walk away, despite the fact that my guest was asking, loud enough to be heard, for more bread, please. Combine that with wrong orders (the rest of us got the wrong dishes, two of which I had actually seen sit for 20 minutes and get cold, not realizing they were ours waiting for two other dishes to come out) and the fact that everything was mediocre, and you start to see why I called it a disastrous meal.

Ironically, I had told them that a meal at a Batali restaurant would be a treat, not only for the food but the service as well.

So as I say, I'm out. Enough Mario for me for one lifetime!

[rickster]

Hi again.,..No one is saying that service at Babbo always has problems....bu if you go back and read "Fat Guy's last paragraph...more people have negative than positive service experiences.

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More negative than positive? I seriously doubt that.

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I think that last paragraph says that there are a higher proportion of negative experiences at Babbo than at Gramercy Tavern, not that the negative experiences at Babbo are higher than the positive ones.

[chefboy24]

sorry i come off as aggressive, but i'm very passionate about this.

when you write a letter, maybe the chef and owner will pass it back and forth around their management, sommeliers, wine director, dining room managers.  its like a snowball effect, it gets bigger and bigger and more people just get pissed off.  someone may lose a job over it.

but in reality if in person you just raised your hand, asked for a manager, and said

"i hate to do this, but, i'm not enjoying my meal here. i've been here before several times and i love babbo but i find my waiter to be condescending and the sommelier wasn't helpful at all and i really don't enjoy this wine.  i'm having a bad experience and i just wanted to let you know."

i can't imagine that your experience wouldn't be turned around in a nanosecond and you would have been extremely taken care of after that.

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I'm sorry but we ate there last Wednesday--it was wonderful--deconstructed osso buco, mint pillows, a 98 Barbaresco--wonderful service--quiet on the second floor--where were you? I think you need harmone pills!!

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umm, i was talking about the right thing to do when something goes wrong at any restaurant, not just babbo.

i love babbo and i've never had a bad time there?

reading comprehension?

[chefboy24]

seriously telling mario about a bad meal you had one time is like telling jamie dimon and vikram pandit that the economy is tough now....

all joking aside, there is the worst waiter in new york at esca, who needs to learn when to shut up. after telling him twice, on 2 separate occasions that i've been to esca many times, he insisted on doing a 1-2 minute schpiel of the menu, i actually lost my calm at the table with him.

when i ordered this obscure italian wine called coenobium, made by nuns (alledgedly), this guy would not shut up about it, even though i've probably sold 5 or 6 cases of it myself to diners around the city. the worst man, the worst.

[Sneakeater]

If you had ordered this along with the Coenobium he'd have never shut up.