What matters most to a restaurant? Is it the guests, who pay startling sums of money to be there? Is it the local farmers who grow the ingredients that fill the pantry? Or the cooks who craft dishes worth buying?
No, no and no. Judging from the amount of care expended, there's nothing restaurants value quite so highly as ketchup.
Say a table orders two rounds of onion rings and a single serving of fries. By the end of the meal, those grease-happy diners will likely have burned through half a bottle of ketchup. But that bottle won't reappear in its half-empty state, nor will it be topped off from the giant bladder bag of ketchup that's a fixture on most restaurant kitchen walls. Instead, a server will slowly pour the vestigial ketchup into another under-filled ketchup bottle, creating one full bottle (and one bottle bound for the dish room).
Marrying ketchup is standard practice at every restaurant where ketchup is consumed, which – at least in this country – means every restaurant, period. With the almost imperceptible exception of hoity-toity places that make their own ketchup and serve it in ramekins, American restaurants rely on 10-ounce Heinz ketchup bottles – and expect their servers to keep said bottles looking fresh.
In an effort to get more customers to choose dining in over the drive-thru, the country's No. 2 fast-food chain is revamping the interiors of its 12,000 locations worldwide, the Associated Press reports. Burger King hopes this contemporary, upscale look and feel will appeal to its biggest customers -- young men.
"The contemporary restaurant design incorporates a variety of innovative elements set to a backdrop that evokes the industrial look of corrugated metal, brick, wood and concrete," a Burger King official told Slashfood.
Franchise owners, who by contract have to periodically update their restaurants' design, can choose from include LCD menu screens, "Have It Your Way" graphics and a dining area centered around a flame-themed chandelier. "Drawing inspiration from Burger King Corp.'s flame-broiling, the 'grill-centric' design brings the signature cooking process to life," the company said.
The design, called "20/20", has been used in about 60 Burger King locations, and 75 more should be complete by the end of the year, the AP reported. The design is intended to give consumers a more "upscale" experience.
"I'd call it more contemporary, edgy, futuristic," Chairman and CEO John Chidsey told the AP. "It feels so much more like an upscale restaurant." The company announced its plan Wednesday in Amsterdam.
Just like heroic epics and Hollywood romances, server horror stories tend to unfold according to a very specific formula: Server meets guests. Guests like server. Server takes order. Server disappears.
While servers who spill coffee on their guests or forget to bring an extra fork are generally forgiven, there's no redemption for servers who vanish. Without their server in sight, guests feel neglected, trapped and exasperated by the entire eating-out experience. It's a rotten situation, which is why most diners who've posted here about terrible service have admitted to at some point wondering where their server went.
Assuming that question is sometimes posed sincerely, I offer here a few solutions to the Case of the Missing Server. Note that these explanations aren't excuses: Great servers don't go AWOL, ever. But there are many rational reasons, unapparent to guests, why servers can't be found. He or she just might be ...
1. Splitting checks. Here's one task that's become more laborious with the advent of computers. To prevent employee theft, most electronic point-of-sale systems are designed to make shifting guest tabs a tricky, multi-step process. Woe to the server who accidentally sticks Seat 3's fried wonton app on Seat 4's bill: On some popular systems, such an error can only be corrected by recombining the entire check and starting over. Creating six separate checks -- and gathering up six pens for signing them -- can take a server off the floor for up to five minutes (which, to a guest waiting for an iced tea refill, feels like an hour).
A Japanese tourist who was charged approximately $1,000 for a meal in Italy will have a "make-up" pizza with Italian officials in Tokyo.
In July, Yasuyuki Yamada was charged 694 euros for a meal in Rome's historic Il Passetto restaurant, which has counted Grace Kelly and Leonardo DiCaprio as clientele, ANSA reports.
The restaurant defended the bill, but it came just weeks after Il Passetto charged another Japanese couple more than $500 for two pastas, a fish dish, four porcini mushrooms, five slices of prosciutto as well as wine and coffee, ANSA said.
Café des Artistes, one of New York's most historic restaurants, has closed after 92 years.
According to the restaurant's voicemail, the Café was slated to reopen on Sept. 14 after being on "summer vacation" from Aug. 10 through Sept. 13. George and Jenifer Lang, the owners since 1975, have now chosen to forgo reopening and shut the storied restaurant doors forever.
The New York Times reports the economy and a union lawsuit regarding the restaurant falling behind on payments for medical insurance and welfare funds are to blame.
"It's a very sad day for us," Jenifer Lang told the Times. "It's a death in the family."
Bon Appétit's September issue has hit newsstands with its annual list of the nation's Top 10 Best New Restaurants. Featuring mouthwatering top dishes from Cleveland to Decatur, Ga., there are some interesting picks in the mix.
If you're located in -- or traveling to -- any of the cities mentioned, keep in mind that in this era of seasonally shifting cuisine, the dishes Bon App editors loved back when the issue was being put together might not be available right now.
We called Tyler Kord, chef and co-owner of No. 7, in Brooklyn, N.Y., to inquire about his pumpkin-seed-encrusted tofu, which editors sampled last winter and adored. A different rendition of tofu is on his current menu, but the pumpkin-seed version is gone. "I've never repeated anything," Kord says. Will he consider putting it back on? "Maybe."
Was Kord -- a fellow whose menu has featured luxe choices like bavette steak and grilled arctic char -- surprised by the editors' choice? "Yeah, definitely. I mean, they picked tofu. It's a delicious dish, but it was a little surprising."
The top 10 new eateries and dishes are after the jump.
The secret ingredient to Jennifer Aniston's success might be in her kitchen.
In the September issue of "O, The Oprah Magazine," Aniston says that her friends, celebrity and non-celebrity alike, love the food served in her Los Angeles home.
"It's the best restaurant in town," claims Aniston.
The actress can be seen in culinary action most nights of the week alongside her personal chefs, sisters Jewels and Jill Elmore.
"She makes a place where people want to come and hang out," jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer told People magazine about Aniston's dinner parties.
Taking the rave reviews to heart, the sitcom-turned-movie star is now considering opening up the reservation book to everyone.
According to Grub Street Los Angeles, the 40-year-old starlet is reportedly chewing on the idea of opening up her very own eatery.
So, Slashfood wants to know if you'd give Chef Aniston a shot.
My 'Bete Rouge': Red Wine. Photo by bhollar/Flickr
This last weekend, much to our dismay, my wife and I drank our first $300 bottle of wine.
Our neighborhood in the Bronx is not blessed with an overabundance of great restaurants, so we have learned to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of our local dives. For example, one of our favorite places has outstanding food and is beautifully decorated, but also has incredibly aggressive waiters who endlessly try to upsell us. Still, in the grand scheme of things, we've decided that pushy waiters are the kind of thing that we can overlook, particularly when the restaurant makes the kind of adoration-worthy pizzas that are its stock-in-trade.
Last weekend, a few old college friends were in town for a visit, so we took them there. After we ordered a couple of appetizers and three of the restaurant's distinctive gourmet pizzas, my wife picked a reasonably priced Italian red that seemed like a good bet to accompany our meal. A few minutes later, the waiter returned to double check on our order. My wife, who was dealing with our daughter at the time, glanced at the wine he pointed to, noted the name, and replied that, yes, it was the one we wanted.
We reported back in May, along with the rest of the food blogosphere, that Frank Bruni, dining critic for the New York Times, was departing his beat as perhaps the most powerful journalist in the national restaurant scene.
Blogs like Eater, Grub Street and Gawker covered the departure obsessively, and their sadness at the departure of the man some called the Brunz -- or when feeling particularly tender, "King Brunz" -- was palpable.
Now Sam Sifton has stepped into the spotlight and, as editor Bill Keller's memo notes, up to the treadmill. (Bruni wrote about his rigorous workout routine for Men's Vogue). Food writers are already apoplectic about the newcomer: Eater has given the casual "Sifty" a shot, whereas Gawker is far more interested in finding a proper costume for the not-at-all-anonymous Sifton, who has long been the Gray Lady's Culture Editor. No doubt the suggestions of Gawker commenters, which range from Harry Potter to Lenny Dykstra to Anna Wintour, will prove helpful to the new critic.
Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the seventh in a series of posts.
At my restaurant, each server is issued a service-station style workshirt with his or her name neatly scripted above the left breast pocket. It's a homey touch (albeit one that's largely subverted by my colleagues' propensity to wear someone else's shirt.)
Most servers aren't all that eager to reveal their names to their customers, since there's nothing more irritating than hearing someone repeatedly shriek your name when you're standing 20 yards away. The most undignified aspects of serving seem somehow even more demeaning when paired with one's own name (as in: "Hanna, will you clean up this mess my son made?" or "Hanna, I want you to cut the crusts off my sandwich.")
Worse still, a name is just a gateway drug for prying patrons, who figure that once they're on a first-name basis with you, they're welcome to inquire after your education, age and marital status.
We don't know. We're asking. At least our sibling site Asylum.com is.
Intrepid food bloggers and writers, here's your chance to help them out by nominating the restaurant you think is the manliest, most dude-friendly, or just an excellent joint to which you'd take a visiting Viking or poet-lumberjack if he were visiting from out of town.
Asylum.com needs your expertise. They're not just looking for steakhouses that serve 3-pound T-bones, but also those joints guys love -- like JUJU Cereal Bar in LA and Texas Wieners in Philadelphia, where they'll drop feta on your tube steak, just for the asking.
If they use your nomination, they'll bestow greatness upon your blog from the hallowed pages of Asylum.com. Readers will be voting on your nominations, and much like Miss America, there will be one winner, but many awards along the way.
E-mail your blog and nomination to johndevore@asylum.com.
Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the fourth in a series of posts.
"Writers of almost all the nations in the world have denounced the custom, but there will never be any change, for the reason that there is not enough profit in the restaurant business to allow paying the waiters good living wages," wrote bartender extraordinaire Harry Johnson in 1882.
In the eyes of many, the practice of tipping is inequitable but unavoidable. Some even find the custom downright strange: Outside of restaurants, it's pretty much impossible to procure any goods or services without first committing to pay a certain price. For example, try paying for your next movie ticket after the film.
If a restaurant patron bolts without paying his bill, he's committed a crime. Even if he thinks his steak was overcooked and his salad was soggy, protocol calls for him to ante up for whatever he ordered (unless he's sent it back). But if he stiffs his server, he's exercised his prerogative.
So here's a radical suggestion: Why not make service a menu item?
Tennessee restaurateurs are fighting a new law that threatens to enshrine a tradition they believe is best left in the Old Wild West.
Unless a judge grants a last-minute injunction, Tennessee residents with the proper permits will be able to carry their concealed, loaded firearms into restaurants serving alcohol starting this coming Tuesday. That makes Tennessee the first state in the nation to expressly allow folks to tuck their guns into hidden holsters and sidle up to the bar.
Attorney David Randolph Smith, who's representing 10 citizens opposing the law, says in what some might consider an understatement, "the problem with having guns where alcohol is served is that fights and breaches of the peace are known to occur."
Or, as Nashville songster Travis Tritt put it more lyrically in one of his biggest hits: "Each time I drink, I start to think I'm 10-feet tall and bulletproof."
Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the third in a series of posts.
Here's a confounding bit of restaurant math:
If you and your three friends sit at my table and order a bottle of wine, all I'm expected to do is pick up the bottle from the bar, pour four perfectly measured glasses and toss the bottle in the recycling bin. On average, that particular routine earns me about $10.
But say your table contains three teetotalers who ask for soda instead. Inevitably, you'll slurp down your Sprite quicker than your tablemate polishes off his Coke, which means I'll have to make multiple visits to your table, each time sweeping up different glasses, carting them across the dining room and returning them freshly filled. All that work is usually worth about 80 cents.
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