"doggie bag" news and stories

Potato pancakes. Photo: Pabo76, Flickr.

• Two Seven Roses locations -- in Slavic Village and Beachwood -- give Cleveland affordable Eastern European comfort fare.
• Requesting doggie bags at a restaurant no longer makes customers look like cheapskates.
• MacMurray's 2007 Pinot Noir starts out smooth and has "a long finish."
• Rather than drowning in coffee, try healthier brain food, like vitamin-rich greens or a good oatmeal breakfast.
• Thirsty Dog Labrador Lager is a hoppy lager worth the attention of Ohio beer lovers.
• The Inn at Turner's Mill has gotten a face lift and new life as Rosewood Grille, plus other restaurant news.
• Beth Knorr is a Local Food Hero for her work with food education and food policy.
• 5 Things to Chew On covers everything from "cool cheese" to "hot tomatoes."
• Recipe: Corn, Zucchini and Tomato Soup with Basil

Photo: dan4th, Flickr.

The debate this column fueled last week concerning the standard baseline tip isn't the sort of thing most servers spend much time considering: We'd all like our patrons to leave us lots and lots of money, thanks.

But that doesn't mean there aren't service issues upon which front-of-the-housers may never agree. I'm thinking here of doggie bagging, a practice that I've seen pit close friends against one another. The contentious question is who does the boxing.

At the white tablecloth restaurants where I've worked, it's understood that the task of wrapping a guest's half-eaten food in foil – ideally sculpted into a graceful swan – falls to the server (although since foie gras and lobster tail make for notoriously bad leftovers, many diners opt to have the vestiges of their five-star meals scraped straight into the trash.)

That's not always the case at slightly more casual restaurants, where many servers routinely plop Styrofoam boxes onto their guests' tables. As a veteran of fancy dining rooms, I always figured those servers were lazy. Turns out, they're looking out for their guests' interests.