Restaurant Wars

I'm delighted to find myself on this blog, even though it gives the lie to my belief that I was an excellent waiter, especially with the large tables.

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The Waiter Chronicles Revisited

"Good Food" is a Saturday show on the local public radio station. I don't listen to it normally, but yesterday as we drove to the museum I caught mention of the phrase "Waiter Rant" and froze the dial in place.

Waiter Rant is a crazy-popular blog written by Steve Dublanica, a blog which produced a Norton Anthology-worthy essay and subsequently an entire book, a book which currently resides on the New York Times' Best Seller List. Yesterday, Dublanica was interviewed by the host of "Good Food," Evan Kleiman. Listen to the show here.

Listening to the interview stoked my proud waiter fire, a fire that burned hot yet a year ago and then cooled after I found gainful employment in my "real" calling and quit last January. But before I took off the apron I had a correspondence with Dublanica (then known only as "The Waiter"). I posted my email to him here, and I posted (with his expressed permission) his response here.

Is this like knowing someone famous?

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The Waiter Chronicles: Last Day (redux)

By 1:00 the dining room was dead, so I took off my tie and apron and printed my batch report. Fifteen dollars on three tables: bad. Really bad. So bad that I take a moment to feel some sympathy for Grandpa, Pepe, and Junior. This is what I'm leaving them.

A couple parties of two wandered in a little after 1:00. Grandpa could handle them with his eyes closed, but something sentimental inside made me re-don my apron and take "one last table." Easy stuff. A pizza, a ravioli, coke, iced tea. The women linger over their lunch, and as they do I'm thinking ahead to the rest of the afternoon. I texted Pepe earlier to come up and see me, but he never responded. Oh well.

The rear doorbell rings, and around the back corner comes Junior and What (as we've come to call one of the bussers). Pepe follows soon after, and it becomes clear that they're here for a reason. Finally, the other Owner arrives, windblown from a motorcycle ride from the city, and places are set around table 43. Wine glasses are set and appetizers are ordered.

It's a lunch. The Owners, the waiters, the bussers, and me. I'm choking on the realization.

Pepe asks me what I want to eat, and I tell him, "Whatever you think I should have."

"You ever had the lamb shank?" he asks.

"No." He turns resolutely to the computer and taps in the order, grinning and eagerly pulling at the few hairs that protrude from his chin.

I clock out and ceremoniously return my card to The Owner, who receives it with a broad smile. We all sit and enjoy a fabulous lunch. The Owners have a gift for "la bambina": a pair of baby booties and a Target gift card. I'm touched.

The Owner mandates that I will say a blessing over the capasante, gamberi con fagioli, and calamari that Nando (the other busser) is placing on the table. This is a dear thing about him that I have loved from the beginning. A man of deep skepticism and loud objections to institutional religions, he has a fixed insistence upon the celestial order of things and our part in petitioning the heavens. His pleas for me to pray for him stopped seeming like jokes months ago.

I return thanks for good friends and good gifts, and I ask God's blessings on all of us in the days ahead. At the "Amen," Pepe feigns emotion, placing a clenched fist to his chest and moaning through pursed lips. I pat his shoulder and laugh. All that's left to do is to enjoy the table. Tell funny stories, laugh over-zealously, and pour more wine. It's beautiful, and I don't deserve it.

It's a living tableau of grace, given to the clumsy by the Hell-bent, and shared among people who, months ago, had no reason to care about the existence of one another. When the wife unexpectedly arrives to join in, it can't get any better.

And so it doesn't.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Last Day

It is the last day today. In at 10:30 to open, serve lunch, and then it's over. It's not an ending I ever expected to be very thoughtful about, and yet I'm finding myself a little sad. The cast of characters that has made up my life these last seven months will stay in place, doing what they do, but I won't be there to enjoy it.

Yet, neither will I be there to suffer from it.

I've got Angry Chef's phone number in my contact list, and a couple of times this week I've thought that I should call him up, give him a proper farewell. I've not seen or heard from him since that blurry December night when he told me what to do with myself and then disappeared into the night, never to be heard from again. I don't know if I'll pursue that thought.

I've gone so far as to assemble a playlist to burn for Pepe, but I don't have any cd's, so it'll probably not see the light of day. That's okay. There's something a little bit forced about somebody like myself forcing music onto a 21 year old dynamo like Pepe, even if it does arise out of a genuine desire to share something good.

I stopped by a little boutique on the way home yesterday to pick up a little something for The Owners. I'd had in mind for awhile that I would leave them with a chalice and plate set, a quasi theological statement about their restaurant as a shared table where people are welcomed and find, em, communion. But those are a lot more expensive than I'd realized. In the end I settled an a small iron cross that I hope will make a contribution to the life of the place.

Waiterrant wrote awhile back that the restaurant world "can be like a comfortable womb" for those who work in it. You come at the start of your shift, and you leave at the end. What's expected of you is constant. You don't have health benefits or weekends, but it's predictable and safe; at times, the cash is fantastic. I never envisioned anything other than a thoughtless and sudden transition out of this "womb," yet I suspect that the coming days and weeks will have their moments of . . . something--nostalgia, maybe?

That'll be for the good. It will mean that this experience has been good. Which is worlds away from what I thought it would be when I wrote this:

"It occurred to me as I walked home this afternoon that I don't need this. Ten years ago I would have seen it as a test of character. I would have regarded the breaking glasses and the raging inferiority complex as a sort of challenge to be overcome. To ingratiate myself to those people by proving myself minimally competent, even good, at what I was hired to do would have become a measure of my abilities. I would endure it to prove to myself that I could. But I don't need to do that anymore. I don't need to prove anything to myself, at least not as it pertains to balancing dishes on a tray. I so don't need this.

Only I do. Because otherwise I'm unemployed, and somehow that seems worse than this. But not by much.

Ciao.

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The Waiter Chronicles Diner Profile: The I-Know-Just-Enough-To-Be-A-Total-Tool Guy

This guy knows a little bit about cocktails. He knows a little about food and a little about coffee. And that little bit of knowledge combines to make him an intolerable menace to the waiter. He never dines alone; he always has a date with him, or some friends or family. Going out to dinner this evening was his idea, and he most likely chose the place. The I-Know-Just-Enough-To-Be-A-Total-Tool guy (hereafter IKJETBATT guy) needs to perform.

He starts by ordering a vodka cocktail. Not a standard cocktail like a vodka tonic, or even a vodka martini. No, the IKJETBATT guy orders a vodka gimlet. When he orders his second one, he'll be sure to point out that the first one was a little "sticky."

When it comes time to order dinner, he'll ask detailed and complicated questions about really simple menu items. He'll ask, for example, how the eggplant parmesan is "presented" (the waiter will make something up while thinking, "On a novel little utility called a plate").

When the IKJETBATT guy's free basket of bread runs out, he won't wait for his server to return to the table so that he can politely request more. Instead, he'll bellow "excuse me, excuse me, excuse me! Can we get some more bread?" to the waiter while the waiter is very obviously attending to a nearby table.

When he orders coffee after dinner he'll ask for a latte. But not just any old latte. He'd like a "no-foam" latte. And when you bring it to him, he'll ask for "a little stirrer or something" since the three spoons at his left hand are obviously not up to the task of stirring the drink.

And, worst of all--this is the move that confirms the diner's identity beyond a shadow of a doubt--when the bill comes, the IKJETBATT guy rewards the waiter for the countless hoops he's had to jump through by tipping at about 11%.

The IKJETBATT guy is hard to miss. He's even harder to forget.

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The Waiter Chronicles: January Lull

All of December is a mad rush at the Ristorante: the place is fully booked several nights a week, and large parties are the norm; we run out of clean silverware by 7:30. But it's exhilerating. And since we're making so much money, none of the waiters complain.

Then January rolls around, and things slow down. Waaaaay down. The glut of eating and drinking that filled the year's 12th month have taken their toll on the waistline and the conscience by the first week of January. Reservations almost totally dry up, and what people do come in aren't drinking much, and they're steering clear of dessert. It's a little depressing.

What's also depressing is that the Ristorante meets this lull head on by cutting staff on the schedule, starting with the bussers. During the holidays there was at least one--and often two--bussers on every shift. But this last week gave us a busser only once, yesterday, at lunch. Every dinner service this week has been covered by two or three lonely waiters; the bussers are on holiday.

Which would seem to be fine, given the above observation about the slow traffic. It's just that waiting tables without a busser is, I'm coming to believe, twice as difficult as having one. The mental and physical exertion are nearly doubled when the waiter has to fetch bottomless baskets of bread and refill countless iced teas for tables. With a busser, a waiter can relax when a table leaves; get the check from the table, close the ticket, attend to other tables. But without one, a table's departure is a horn-blast signaling him to battle.

Clear the glasses. Clear the dishes. Roll up the paper. Wipe down the chairs. Bring a new paper. Bring plates, silverware, napkins, glasses.

Seriously, my legs hurt more this morning, after a week of January traffic, then they ever did during the holidays. Maybe it's that I'm a month older. Maybe it's that I'm ready to be done with this whole chapter, so the discomfort is more apparent. Maybe it's just less adrenaline. Whatever the case, my feet are aching for February.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Bon Natale

Christmas Eve at the Ristorante was carried along by an air of other-worldliness. There was an eerie quiet coming from the kitchen, and Angry Chef's absence created an atmosphere of sadness mixed with relief. For me, the place doesn't feel the same without him. But the first hours without him revealed the burden that his temper had placed on everyone.

The dining room was busy all night. Junior jumped back into the kitchen to help cook, and people were pleased with the food. Near the end of the evening, the wife arrived to have her Christmas Eve dinner, and the owner insisted that I order dinner and sit with her, both of us as his guests. Grateful, I complied.

As everyone exchanged Christmas wishes and headed home, the Owner passed out Panettone and Prosecco. We left happy.

It was a Bon Natale indeed.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Angry Chef's Ouster

I'm not sure how it went down, but Angry Chef was fired sometime between 10 pm last night and 12 pm today. Junior just called to tell me the news and to inform me that our eight Christmas Eve reservations (and anyone else who wanders in) will be treated to the culinary stylings of Augusto and Felipe, the two sous chefs. If needed, Junior himself will lend a hand in the kitchen.

Last night's dinner service was not good at all. Around 5:30 several large parties with children arrived at the same time. They were all seated, given drinks and bread, and had their orders taken. As will happen, two parties of eight (one of them mine) had their entrees fired at the same time. That's 16 entrees that need to come out at once. The kitchen doesn't even have 16 pans.

Angry Chef lost it. He had been animated up to that point, but this put him over the edge; he came out of the kitchen yelling, looked at me and pointed, screaming "[expletive deleted] you!" Then he demanded to know where the owner was. I produced the owner, who ambled back into the kitchen with his disgruntled employee, and a loud Italian shouting match ensued.

I'd never seen this before. I'd seen Angry Chef yell; I'd seen the owner yell. I'd never seen them yell at each other. The waiters and bussers did our best to keep moving and ignore the catastrophe in the kitchen. In the end, my party of eight had to wait 45 minutes for their dinner, and I had to offer them free desert. Likewise, Pepe's party of eight waited nearly an hour.

Things settled down after that, but at the Ristorante's expense. The owner had to turn people away, since the kitchen was in such a state. So here he is with a dining room only half full, telling customers he can't seat them. Needless to say, he was not happy. In fact, he would say later that he would have done better to not even open last night.

What happened between then and the phone call I just got I don't know. I suppose the details will be filled in, but I won't be asking for them. The long-and-short of it is that the Ristorante is out its chef.

I feel bad for Angry Chef. He's a far more complicated person than I know, surely, and his flamboyance and temper bespeak some self-destructive habits with [obviously] detrimental results as far as his career is concerned. But he's a genuine guy. He loves good food and wine, and he lives and dies by the integrity of his craft. I had grown quite fond of him, actually. In fact, as we readied the dining room last night, enjoying a little pre-dinner chat, he wistfully told me that he loved me and that he would miss me when I left.

How could he have known that, in less than 24 hours, he would be preceding me in departure?

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