Dirty dining in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO—
It’s the dirty diaper — not the famous Baked Sonoma Goat Cheese With Viki’s Lettuces — that I’ll forever remember from dinner at the legendary Chez Panisse. Beckoned to this dining- mad city by the Association of Food Journalists for its annual conference, my colleague and I dutifully called Chez Panisse precisely one month to the calendar day in advance to reserve a coveted table, choosing the à la carte upstairs café over the downstairs restaurant with its prix- fixe, set menu.
It’s a freewheeling Friday night at the restaurant where Alice Waters gave birth to California cuisine (fresh, local, organic, ethical) in 1971.
Personable wait- staff twist and turn among tight- packed tables, laying friendly hands on diners’ shoulders while taking orders for sand dabs ( a fish), grass- fed beef and pizzettas. The 3month- old baby at the next table is squawky, but who isn’t? Unlike the rest of us, though, she has a wet diaper.
This we know because her parents proudly and loudly discuss it while changing the soiled nappy mid-dinner on the bench that we’re sharing. That’s before they complain about the draft, sending the waitress jostling between our tables to crank the window shut while accidentally sending the heavy handle ricocheting off the bench beside me under the next table. So this is what restaurateur Doug Washington of Town Hall meant the day before when he sat on a panel and declared that the wall between servers and diners has started to come down. The walls between servers, diners and other diners have come tumbling down in restaurants across the nation.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all for informal — in most restaurants, in most company, in most moods, for most meals.
I don’t care if my food is served from the right and cleared from the left, especially when logistics dictate that other scenarios are more sensible.
I don’t mind if my servers are familiar or funny, nor do I mind if they’re formal and detached. I draw the line at clueless and condescending — but forgive, forget and tip well for good food.
This all makes me a pretty typical modern diner. And yet it’s enlightening to hear a panel discussion on “ What is good service?” featuring Washington ( co- owner/ general manager of Town Hall), Laura Cunningham (general manager of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in California and Per Se in New York), and Stephane Lacroix, wine director/ sommelier of our conference hotel, the Ritz- Carlton. They agree that a good server is now someone who can “ read the guest” and figure out whether to be a personable waiter who crouches down to eye level, or an old- school waiter with a stiff back and formal approach.
“ Our job is to make sure that our staff get you into your comfort zone,” explains Cunningham. “ But sometimes a diner won’t let you through the wall. Some guests never look up and you can’t get any read.” A decade ago, Washington recalls, servers needed to be sharp and “well-presented” to get hired. Now tattoos and piercings abound and food knowledge can be learned — and so people skills and intuition are paramount.
“ I go out, things are not perfect and I don’t really care,” Washington admits. “ But it’s a fine line.” Bathrooms must be clean and the food must not have shifted from the way the chef plated it, but Washington can’t come up with more boundaries: “ I can’t delineate. It’s not black and white any more.” The panel, while detailing modern service, is also supposed to help us ( North American food writers, editors and critics) educate our readers about how to be better diners. So here’s their key piece of advice: Make your complaints about food or service immediately and give restaurants the chance to apologize and make amends. Don’t call or write later, when no one remembers you or can verify your concerns. To that I’d add that asking your favourite newspaper’s critic to lodge your complaint to a restaurant is ill- advised. ( We do get this occasionally, but we weren’t there, can’t vouch for your interpretations and won’t do your dirty work for you. We will, however, suggest you post your experiences on the Toronto message board of Chowhound.com so you can unload and commiserate with fellow diners.)
Diners, in a word, must be proactive. And if a restaurant disregards your concerns, don’t leave a tip — if that’s an option.
I say if because our conference was abuzz that Thomas Keller has launched a fixed service charge at Per Se — garnering much outrage and even attention from the Sept. 5 food issue of the New Yorker. As Keller said to us during a conference Q&A, he charges $ 210 ( U. S.) for each meal at Per Se, which includes service. His French Laundry in California, meanwhile, charges $ 175 ( U. S.) per meal plus a 19 per cent service charge ( and has done so for seven years now). Chez Panisse adds 17 per cent to each bill.
Legislating tips, Keller argues, levels the playing field for staff wages. He says it’s up to management to hire, train, supervise and penalize bad servers — and that it’s not up to customers to use tips as a weapon against bad service.
Waters, in another conference Q& A, admits she also uses the automatic service charge to balance wages between her cooks and her servers.
“ Alice Waters has enough money to give money to the cooking staff without making the customers pay for it,” American food writer/former New York Times
restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton tells us. She calls the automatic service charge trend “ disastrous” and is “ violently against it.” We can only wait and see if enforced gratuities show up on Toronto menus. For now, we expect to only be told what to tip for parties of six or more.
Kudos, then, to a reader who emailed in June after a fantastic Toronto meal that was spoiled by an owner who apparently left in the middle of taking the order to answer the phone, was impatient when she returned, threw napkins on a plate of food, mixed up orders and dodged complaints by repeatedly replying, “ That’s our style.” Our irate reader refused to pay the 15 per cent gratuity that was foisted on his party of seven, told the owner the service didn’t warrant any tip at all, and held his ground despite shrill threats of legal action. An extreme case, to be sure — dining out shouldn’t require police intervention. But amusing, nonetheless. Just like the dirty diaper dinner at Chez Panisse.
I’d like to say that I was appalled that servers in the worldfamous, destination restaurant didn’t glide over and calmly redirect the diaper change to the bathroom — or that they were so embarrassed about that and the flying window handle that they gave us free desserts or a glass of wine. But no one said a word, and I paid the 17 per cent service charge without complaint and left with an amusing story about the modern state of dining. Email : jbain@thestar.ca.