Monday, November 9, 2015.
Tipping's End? Papi's Tex-Mex. New Critic.
I am getting a lot of mail and radio calls about the no-tipping policy put forth in Danny Meyer's restaurants in New York City. His reputation is so strong that he can do almost anything he wants and get away with it, although he's smart enough not to do anything that will upset his customers.
My predictions:
1. The no-tip policy will be taken up by many restaurants, most of which will be chain eateries, who are ever seeking ways to direct a few more pennies to the bottom line.
b. Independent restaurants and restaurant clusters* will also take a shot at eliminating tipping. They will find that many of their waiters will leave for restaurants that will keep the status quo. This will be the result of the everlasting shortage of skillful service personnel. Being tipped is a strong attraction to restaurants that will allow it. What makes sense in New York City is usually limited to New York City.
iii. Danny Meyer's restaurants will be the last major ones to return to the tipping system. It will happen by early 2017.
Remember where you heard it.
* A cluster differs from a chain in that all or most of the restaurants involved have their own managements, chefs, and menus. The Brennan restaurants and the John Besh restaurants are clusters. Copeland's and New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood are chains.
The Marys are involved all day in some project across the lake. It's just me and the kittens today. Valencia has taken up writing by walking across my keyboard every chance he gets.
I have lunch solo at Papi's, a small chain out of Baton Rouge that recently opened on Causeway Boulevard on the South Side of Covington. It bills itself as a fajitas factory. The menu is splashy and riddled with combo platters. I probably would not have paid it much attention, but Mary Leigh--my consultant on hamburgers and Tex-Mex--told me that she thought Papi's was pretty good.
[caption id="attachment_49546" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A variation on chicken fajitas at Papi's.[/caption]
The place starts out well, with tortilla chips served with two salsas--one the standard cool, sharp kind, the other cooked to a bit of sweetness, and served warm. They're both good, but my prejudice for the first variety continues.
I look over the menu for a long time without anything grabbing me. I settle on a fajitas variation of very mild peppers and onions sizzling on a cast-iron plate, crossed by a row of finger-sized, grilled chicken. This has little spice, either. But I add some zip from the bottle of Mexican hot sauce on the table. On another plate are lettuce, a dollop of which looked like either sour cream or mayo, pureed black beans, yellow rice, and flour tortillas. None of this adds a thing to the entree.
From out of nowhere materializes Steve St. John, the longtime production talent at the radio station. I like to brag that the Food Show has been on the air for twenty-seven years. But Steve and his colleague Jim McCutcheon have voiced commercials in the WWL cluster for going on forty years. Steve has one of the great voices in local radio. His enunciation is both polished and versatile. If you live in New Orleans, you've heard him hundreds, perhaps thousands of times on both radio and television. And he's a very helpful radio pro.
Steve says he likes Papi's, where he has dined more than a few times.
We have rather a busy radio show, with the subjects of salsa, burping in public, and the pecking order of local cookbooks leading the conversation. Then I am off to chorus rehearsal. We're working our way through Christmas songs. One of them is "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," sung with a melody a good deal dfferent from the one we know. What's that all about?
I send a check to Ryan Pearce, who has volunteered to be a restaurant critic for NOMenu. I looked in vain for years for someone who is competent to write about dining out, and interested enough in the kind of restaurants that leave me lukewarm. Ryan wrote about Arabella--an Italian place in Bywater--and Red's Chinese, a hot spot in the same neighborhood. His writing is exactly what I was hoping for. I'm not surprised, though. Ryan and Jude were good friends in grammar school. His father is in the seafood business (so is Ryan), and our families have spent many hours together. Ryan is highly literate and intelligent, with a good sense of humor. And he likes to eat, which is the important thing for this gig.
Papi's Fajita Factory. Covington: 1331 N Highway 190. 985-893-1382.
My predictions:
1. The no-tip policy will be taken up by many restaurants, most of which will be chain eateries, who are ever seeking ways to direct a few more pennies to the bottom line.
b. Independent restaurants and restaurant clusters* will also take a shot at eliminating tipping. They will find that many of their waiters will leave for restaurants that will keep the status quo. This will be the result of the everlasting shortage of skillful service personnel. Being tipped is a strong attraction to restaurants that will allow it. What makes sense in New York City is usually limited to New York City.
iii. Danny Meyer's restaurants will be the last major ones to return to the tipping system. It will happen by early 2017.
Remember where you heard it.
* A cluster differs from a chain in that all or most of the restaurants involved have their own managements, chefs, and menus. The Brennan restaurants and the John Besh restaurants are clusters. Copeland's and New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood are chains.
The Marys are involved all day in some project across the lake. It's just me and the kittens today. Valencia has taken up writing by walking across my keyboard every chance he gets.
I have lunch solo at Papi's, a small chain out of Baton Rouge that recently opened on Causeway Boulevard on the South Side of Covington. It bills itself as a fajitas factory. The menu is splashy and riddled with combo platters. I probably would not have paid it much attention, but Mary Leigh--my consultant on hamburgers and Tex-Mex--told me that she thought Papi's was pretty good.
[caption id="attachment_49546" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A variation on chicken fajitas at Papi's.[/caption]
The place starts out well, with tortilla chips served with two salsas--one the standard cool, sharp kind, the other cooked to a bit of sweetness, and served warm. They're both good, but my prejudice for the first variety continues.
I look over the menu for a long time without anything grabbing me. I settle on a fajitas variation of very mild peppers and onions sizzling on a cast-iron plate, crossed by a row of finger-sized, grilled chicken. This has little spice, either. But I add some zip from the bottle of Mexican hot sauce on the table. On another plate are lettuce, a dollop of which looked like either sour cream or mayo, pureed black beans, yellow rice, and flour tortillas. None of this adds a thing to the entree.
From out of nowhere materializes Steve St. John, the longtime production talent at the radio station. I like to brag that the Food Show has been on the air for twenty-seven years. But Steve and his colleague Jim McCutcheon have voiced commercials in the WWL cluster for going on forty years. Steve has one of the great voices in local radio. His enunciation is both polished and versatile. If you live in New Orleans, you've heard him hundreds, perhaps thousands of times on both radio and television. And he's a very helpful radio pro.
Steve says he likes Papi's, where he has dined more than a few times.
We have rather a busy radio show, with the subjects of salsa, burping in public, and the pecking order of local cookbooks leading the conversation. Then I am off to chorus rehearsal. We're working our way through Christmas songs. One of them is "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," sung with a melody a good deal dfferent from the one we know. What's that all about?
I send a check to Ryan Pearce, who has volunteered to be a restaurant critic for NOMenu. I looked in vain for years for someone who is competent to write about dining out, and interested enough in the kind of restaurants that leave me lukewarm. Ryan wrote about Arabella--an Italian place in Bywater--and Red's Chinese, a hot spot in the same neighborhood. His writing is exactly what I was hoping for. I'm not surprised, though. Ryan and Jude were good friends in grammar school. His father is in the seafood business (so is Ryan), and our families have spent many hours together. Ryan is highly literate and intelligent, with a good sense of humor. And he likes to eat, which is the important thing for this gig.
