Tuesday, May 21, 2013.
Substandard All Around.
There's a difference between a radio interview and my round-table show. In an interview, I ask a question, the guest gives and answer, and we repeat the process until it becomes boring, or time runs out.
Unless the guest is unusually animated and entertaining, I don't like standard interviews much. They seem forced to me, and I can't imagine that anyone would want to listen to them. My quest for finding a better way resulted in our round-table approach, in which I tell everyone in the room--who may or may not have anything on common--to carry on a conversation as if we were sitting in a restaurant over dinner. That's especially good with engaging people, but even those who aren't sparkling personalities do better with the looser format.
Even so, we have days when nothing seems to happen. This was one of those days. We had the owner of the year-old Dijon restaurant, Kurt Brodtman. And Dr. Nick Moustoukas, the president of the Greek Orthodox community. Which hosts the Greek Festival. Which is this weekend. Cindy Miller, who runs the deli and catering department of Dorignac's. And Butch Stedman, the longtime wine manager of the same supermarket.
I don't know why--and I'm ready to believe it was me--but today's show turned into an ordinary interview. At the end of the hour, we brought it to an end and went back to the open phones.
Afterwards, I was to give a talk to a group of geologists, who were having their annual banquet-with-spouses. Originally Mary Ann was to give the talk, but something came up for her, and I agreed to fill in. Then her other engagement went down, so she was back. Both of us spoke, on our very different topics. (Hers is about her book "The Suzie Homemaker Chronicles," which is about the joys and tears of motherhood.) People liked both of us, and we both sold a fair number of our books.
The dinner these folks were served was so terrible that if I had gone to Winn-Dixie's deli, picked up a soup, salad, chicken dish and dessert, warmed it in the microwave oven and ate it at the kitchen counter, it would have been twice as good as what this restaurant served.
I will not name the restaurant, because if I do the chef will think I am exercising a vendetta against him. And he will miss my point, which is that he ought to be ashamed of himself for serving food like this:
A crab and corn bisque so thick and floury that, even with fresh corn and a lot of crabmeat, it was like something you'd get in an office-building cafeteria. That was followed by a green salad completely wilted by having the dressing applied too lang before the salads were served.
There were three entrees to choose from. I had the chicken with a caper and lemon butter sauce. The waiter wrapped a napkin around his hand so he wouldn't burn himself with the hot plate. He needn't have worried: the plate was at room temperature (with the air conditioning in that room set pretty low). So was all the food on it. The chicken was white, featureless, and tasteless. My daughter--heck, even my wife--would do a better job. (She said so, so it must be true.)
The only good course was a dessert made with sponge cake, pastry cream and fruit. It tasted good, but it was designed with a bit of architectural presentation in mind. That was lost, because the cake had been knocked over en route to me, and lay there broken.
Finally, the white wine was oxidized, something very obvious from its color alone. The man sitting next to me claimed not to know anything about wine, but he guessed correctly that there was something wrong with this stuff.
Chef: if you think there is a reason why you can serve this kind of substandard fodder to your customers, you have completely lost your culinary compass.
By coincidence, four people who were at this dinner also showed up at the NOW&FE Vintner Dinner MA and I attended the next evening. Without my bringing it up, all of them asked me what I thought of the dinner described above. They were as scandalized as I was.
To browse through all of the Dining Diaries since 2008, go here.
