Saturday, November 3, 2012.
How To Drive Me Crazy In A Restaurant.
Breakfast first, at the Marriott Courtyard's little buffet. Everybody there knows me--not for what I do, but for being a regular customer since the hotel opened fifteen years ago. The chef makes eggs specially for me if I ask. Today I didn't need to. Her peppery scrambled eggs were just as I like them, soft curds with a perfection I cannot duplicate myself at home. The cooking of eggs is an under-appreciated art.
Across the street to the car wash. It has been two years since I've had time to have this service. It probably would have gone on even longer, but I need a brake tag soon, and my headlight lenses are so cloudy that I don't have quite enough illumination to drive the long, narrow road at the end of my journey home. Besides, the shiny wheels are blotchy gray.
The man who tries to sell you every service he has came up with a package price of $170. I bargained him down to just under $100. It took him two and a half hours to do it all. Meanwhile, I went through the tall pile of magazines from my trunk to cull the ones I was done with. Some were three years old.
If I retired right now, I wonder how long it would take me to catch up with stuff like that. I'll never know. I don't believe retirement is in the cards for me. I have too many milestones I want to pass. One of those is doing the radio show five and a half more years. That would push me past Nut & Jeff as the host of the longest-running radio show in New Orleans history.
What a dumb goal that is.
While waiting for the car, I noticed that the carwash gives away free coffee and popcorn. I've long wanted to compile a list of places with free coffee. Another worthless endeavor from the compulsive sector of my mind.
I was more surprised to see that the car wash has several copies of my cookbook for sale on its small rack of books. They must sell a few, because the last time I was here two years ago they had the old editions up there. These are the new ones.
It was almost one in the afternoon before I got home, but boy, did my car look good. Even the Marys noticed.
Tonight is a big LSU football game. Mary Ann's first plan was to go to The Chimes to watch it, but the place was packed and had a long waiting list. We kicked around a couple of other places and wound up at Zea.
I don't often hear from readers and listeners the complaint about restaurant service that seems to dog me wherever I go. I find it maddening when, serving a meal that obviously should be served in courses, a server brings two or more dishes at the same time. I'm not talking about a piece of fish and a side dish, or even an entree with a salad. Those I could live with.
Tonight, I ordered the soup of the day (corn), a Caesar salad, and fried catfish. After a long interim, the server lugged a nearly-full tray of dishes to our tableside, set up a stand, and unloaded all three dishes in my order, and both of MA's. "Uh-oh," Mary Ann said, having seen this before and knowing what my reaction would be.
"Hold it," I said to the server. "Why am I getting everything at once?"
"Most people like it that way," said the server.
"How could anyone like getting two hot dishes at once, and wondering which one to eat and which one to allow to get cold?"
"Well, I don't know, but they do!"
"Then they didn't want to tell you for some reason, but even the menu says that the soup is an appetizer, and the entree comes after it. Doesn't that seem obvious?"
"I guess you just have to eat fast."
"What? No, really, think about it. Two hot dishes at once is all wrong!"
Picking up the now-empty tray stand and turning back to the kitchen, over her shoulder the server let loose a sentence which no server should ever think, let alone say to a customer:
"Well, that's the way we do it!" Case closed.
Time to talk with the manager. I told him the story. He said that of course that was not the way they do it, that he would have a talk with the server, and take the catfish off the check. I demurred, but he did it anyway.
The server came back to finish the meal for us, and apologized. That must have been tough. I gave my usual twenty-percent-plus tip--but not including the catfish price in the calculation.
My friend John Mariani, the restaurant editor for Esquire, has on the back of his business card his precise specifications for a Daiquiri. It includes a drawing of the glass he wants the drink served in. I think I will have some cards made up that demand that I am never to have two or more hot courses placed before me at one time.
It still steams me to think that such a thing needs to be said. It's among what my father called "general principles," and what Dick Brennan Sr. calls "the ABCs."
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