To catch a thief ... restaurant pilferage ....

[rancho_gordo]

Ok, Ok,. I can't stand it anymore. I CONFESS!!!!!!

In the late 70s and early 80s, we used to go for dim sum a lot in Chinatown (SF). I loved the food but decided the cost was too high for such little plates. In those days, at the end of the meal, they would count up the empty plates and charge by number and size. So I had a gal pal with a large bag and we'd just empty a number of those little plates into her purse.

Nowdays, they use a little rubber stamp and stamp as they serve.

This wan't me, but I remember when Nob Hill was actually fancy and fun and we used to dress up in our best vintage clothes and go cocktailing. This was also in the 80s, long before the lounge movement and at the height of cocaine consumption, so we thought ourselves very fancy and avant garde. One night we invited a friend who was out of our set but seemed so eager, we thought what the hell. We started in the Redwood Room and then made our way for a drink at every good bar until we hit the pinnacle, L'Etoile in the Huntington Hotel. the pianist Peter Mintun was a local celeb and on any night you'd see Allistair Cook or Kitty Carlisle or some another dinosaur celeb (my favorite type) looking for a dry gin martini. It was very intimate and swank and the place to go as far as I was concerned. The problem was this new friend was getting sloshed en route and I had a reputation! She would exclaim that we were the modern round table and she was Dorothy Parker and, and, and.... (here she'd stumble because she didn't actually know the names of any other round table participants). I was livid. She kept getting louder and drunker and her mid-Atlantic accent kept getting stronger. We left when she spilled a drink on herself and made our way upstairs to the coat check. She sat down as she waited for us to get our things and all of a sudden I heard a big crash. She had passed out and her purse had opened and all of the contents came spilling on the floor, including ashtrays from literally everyplace we had been.

I say: Where there's a swill, there's a sway!

[Tonyy13]

edited becuase I hit the send buttom too many times.... idiot...

Edited January 7, 2005 by Tonyy13 (log)

[Tonyy13]

Almost none of this (the pork chop thing excluded) touches what goes on in culinary schools. Johnson and Wales in Providence was the "fell off of the back of a truck" capitol, I swear. Without totally incriminating myself, some things that made their way back to the room that me and three other guys shared include numerous pairs of tongs and ladels, a kitchenaid mixer, a robot coupe, a full blender, full sets of bar glasses and other assorted barwear (they have a mixology lab w/ 18 full bars w/ full setups), a few sets of complete ice carving tools, numerous terrine molds (le cruset, only the finest for the thieves of South Hall!!), plates, knives, thousands worth of food, trash bags, soap, TP (there was never any in the dorms), all kinds of stuff. Now that I am a culinary school professor, I regularly check the trash before it goes out, convieniently the dumpsters are right next to where the students park their own cars. I was the beneficiary of some of these things, but not most of them.

Also, after working for a great restaurant in providence that closed, me and the former owner returned (inhebriated) to sit at the bar and "check the place out". When taking a trip to the potty, we noticed a wall hanging that held a lot of personal weight w/ the owner. This was a plaster hanging that was 1.5" thick, about 20 tall, and 35-40 inches long, and weighed about 90 pounds. Well, it was my job to distract the bartender while my friend took the hanging and snuck out the back of the kitchen, which lead right to the street. I was left sitting at the bar, and the bartender asked me if my friend was alright, and I told him that I thought so. My friend then called my cell, giving the go-ahead that he got it, and I hung up, and told the bartender that my friend had ended up meeting a friend down the street at another bar, and asked me to get his coat and settle up for him. The bartender never was the wiser, and now the hangning sits on the wall of our house.

[Gifted Gourmet]

I was the beneficiary of some of these things, but not most of them. 

←

You want your money back, Tonyy??

[Grub]

After celebrating the end of the last year's exams, two class mates and I stopped by a Chinese restaurant -- pretty much just because the place still served beer -- the pubs had closed (Manchester, UK). The service was REAL slow, and I guess they just wanted us to leave -- but they never stopped by to pick up the check. So we take the tray with the money on it, up to the cash register and wait, wait, wait... Nothing.

Now, we were all real drunk at this point. So when these two idiot classmates of mine yelled "RUN!" and took off, I automatically followed them -- yelling "What the hell are we running for?" They tell me "we're doing a runner." -- "Yeah, we're running, but why...?"

Eventually, I grasped what doing a runner amounted to, but insisted that we HAD paid for the meal -- I remember counting out the money myself, which was a pretty laborious process, given our state of intoxication... But this twit had grabbed the money out of the tray after we brought it to the cash register. And so, we're running around in Chinatown, drunk off our asses, no idea where we're going. If I'd been sober, I would have just stayed behind and paid for the meal myself...

We were so drunk, we ended up going around in a big goddamn circle, and I swear, we actually ended up back at the restaurant, although behind it. The waitress simply came out and asked if she could please have the money now. She got it. No angry chef with a cleaver, or anything like that. Just a petite Chinese girl quietly asking for the money, please...

I tried to apologize, but man -- how do you apologize for something this idiotic?