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Thursday, September 8, 2016.
A Slipup At Emeril's.
This is not a good time either for restaurants or their customers. Business is very slow in late summer, as everybody shifts schedules to accommodate school and watching the requisite number of hours of Saints and LSU football games. A lot of restaurant people take vacation time now, or close down for renovations or repairs. Meanwhile, convention business is off, because no big group wants to book New Orleans in hurricane season. For all those reasons, I think it's a good idea to cut slack when things go wrong in otherwise excellent eateries this time of year.
Yet I can't seem to get a growing service trend out of my mind. It's one that has vexed me for many years in very informal restaurants. But now I'm seeing the problem in first class restaurants. Like Emeril's, which for all of its history has delivered unusually excellent food and service. It's been a five-fleur restaurant for almost all of its twenty-six years.
But here's what happened when Mary Ann and I were there on this evening. Not many people in the dining room--for reasons I noted above.
MA's order quickly devolves into two of her favorite dishes: chicken-andouille gumbo and grilled salmon. I an titillated by an unusually large number of very appealing appetizers. I ask the waiter whether he would have a problem with my ordering four small plates, with no entree. The question is rhetorical--Emeril's was one of the first restaurants to embrace the all-appetizer dinner practice. I got no indication that the waiter had a problem with that, if indeed he did.
[caption id="attachment_37381" align="alignnone" width="500"]
Around the corner to Emeril's.[/caption]
So here comes the gumbo for MA. At the same time, I take delivery of barbecued duck wings, and small andouille and boudin sausages, both made in house. The wings were one item, the sausages another. They came at the same time. They were served hot, but before I could eat them both, one (the andouille and boudin) would become cold. What a choice to be forced to make! If I send one of them back, they might just hold it. But this being Emeril's, I'd guess that they'd make a new one. Or would they? I should have objected, but--well, I cut slack in late summer.
Most meals I take have three or more courses. Most of the time, I tell the waiter that under no circumstances should two hot dishes be placed before me at the same time. I would like Hot Dish #1 first, then Hot Dish #2. Sometimes the servers take offense at this, and say that of course they would never make such an obvious mistake. I always apologize in advance.
But I find that if I don't make this request, there would be the two (or more--the record is four) hot dishes, getting cold before my very eyes.
Making matters worse is another trend: Restaurants seem to like serving lukewarm food to begin with. I see this so often that I've given up trying to change it.
The meal continues with MA's salmon. In front of me are mussels in an interesting green herb sauce. The mussels are overcooked, and it takes longer than usual to ferret the meats from the shells. I go as fast as I can to get to all the mussels before they shrink. But why should I be forced to race along in a restaurant like this?
I move to the other hot dish: fried calamari in a room-temperature, well-chopped sauce along the lines of a muffuletta olive salad. If there's anything worse than a dish that gets cold, it's a fried dish that gets cold. It's a large bowl of squid rings with a golden crust and Parmigiana cheese grated over the top of the pile. If there's anything worse than a hot dish that gets cold, it's a big version of the dish.
By now, I have written this meal off to the late-summer blues. But I wonder whether this abysmal trend is only beginning. What can I possibly do?
I will do this:
Attention, first-class restaurateurs! One of the greatest improvements in restaurant service during the past twenty-five years has been the excellent training you give your staff. There is much for them to learn. But apparently this matter of allowing two hot courses to go to the table at the same time for the same diner was left out of your playbook. I am encountering this malpractice again and again, often in the best restaurants.
It's a simple rule. The late Dick Brennan Sr. would have called it one of the ABC's. You never bring out two hot dishes to one person at the same time. Even if the customer doesn't express dismay, he's thinking it. It's second-rate service. Once in awhile, a person in a hurry or who plans on combining the two dishes will ask for it that way, but it's not the way serious diners want it.
I close this screed with an anecdote about one of the times I was served both a hot appetizer and a hot entree at the same time. I asked the waiter which dish I should allow to get cold, and which one I should eat. She didn't pick up on my sarcasm, and said, "I'll be right back." What's she going to do? I wondered. Ask the manager?
She returned in a minute and said, "The manager thinks you should eat the oysters Bienville first."
"And let the grilled pompano get cold?" I asked.
"Yes, that's what he told me," she said.
All I could do was shake my head.
Emeril's.Warehouse District & Center City: 800 Tchoupitoulas. 504-528-9393.
