Wall of fame
A restaurant in Copenhagen has a novel way of dealing with no-shows.
Diners who fail to honour their bookings are a big problem for restaurants. One estimate puts the cost at $75 million in Australia alone. In 2017, booking site The Fork blacklisted 38,000 people for not honouring their reservations.
Sarah Devine, the sommelier at Copenhagen restaurant Barabba, recalls one Saturday night when more than 16 people failed to arrive for their bookings. This incident and others prompted the team to devise a creative solution: a “wall of fame” on which staff wrote the names of no-shows.
She cites the case of Lasse L. “Lasse booked a table on a Friday night at 8pm for six people. After he had not turned up, we called him at 8.20pm. He was very apologetic, and insisted that he was supposed to have booked for the following Friday night.
“The next Friday, we called and re-confirmed. The booking time came and went with no Lasse L arriving. This time he did not pick up his phone and we have not been able to reach him since. Both nights, we had turned tables away.”
Lasse L didn’t make his reservation, but he did make the wall. Barabba initially didn’t publicise its scheme, but patrons would ask about the list, and it eventually made the front page of Danish newspaper Politiken.
So is Barabba’s approach working? “Our aim was to start a conversation,” says Devine, “and, to that end, I think it has been very successful. It’s the only wall of fame you don’t want to be on.”
SYDNEY The team behind Paperbark, the highly regarded vegan diner in Waterloo, has looked to Italy for its next venture. Peppe’s, a new vegan pasta joint in Bondi by Joe Pagliaro and Grace Watson, shows that tasty Italian doesn’t need cheese or eggs. “We realised that Italian food in Italy is far more vegan than it’s portrayed outside the country,” says Watson. The short menu, by head chef Joel Bennetts (Three Blue Ducks), features a couple of pastas and gnocchi, perhaps with a cauliflower-porcini white sauce, along with plenty of aperitivo snacks. The drinks list focuses on minimal-intervention winemakers both local, such as James Erskine, and Italian, chosen by Giorgio De Maria of Fun Wines.
MELBOURNE The name translates as “wine bay” in Italian, so it’s apt that grapes are a big focus at Baia
Di Vino. The menu by head chef Dino Mohsin (Riserra, Rockpool
Bar & Grill) includes fried sardines with fennel cream, and veal with buttermilk crumb and witlof. Dishes are matched by sommelier Vivian Man, who might suggest a Chalmers vermentino from Victoria or Ermes Pavese’s Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle, grown on the Italian part of Mont Blanc. Fancy Free, the pop-up by a team including Rob Libecans, Matt Stirling and Ryan Noreiks from Black Pearl, has found a permanent home in the CBD. The team has a reputation for good times. At Hobart’s Dark Mofo, for instance, “red wine” was offered in a communion-style ritual; at another event, green-tea Piña Coladas were served in inflatable unicorns. This spirit lives on at the new bar, albeit in a responsible manner. The “no/low/full” alcohol approach to cocktails means most of the menu is light on booze, the likes of R&C Milk Punch with raspberry “paint” and Japanese maple ice.
PERTH At Jane Dough Pizza, chef Ben Atkinson (Meat Candy) based the pork-and-fennel sausage pizza on one of his favourite sandwiches. The result is a roast porchetta, salsa verde, fennel mayo and sweet onion bestseller. The attached King Somm Wine Bar & Store will suggest the right drop for your hot sopressa or artichoke pizza.