28 August Sunday

Someone once told me that in San Francisco there are two types of restaurants, fabulous and closed. This sentence is true when a broad definition of fabulous is used. There is a wide sliding scale that can include places like – The best of the crappy diners, the BEST bakery that get shut down for health violations, or other holes-in-the-wall where the only meat option is ¨meat¨. Nonetheless, there are many good restaurants there, and there are some in my hometown Akron Ohio too. Restaurants do what they must to attract customers and make their overhead. There are key differences as to how this success happens, and they very much depend on the type of person you are serving, what they want, what they expect.

In the Buckeye state, and throughout the Midwest, there is a certain pride that the diner takes in knowing exactly what they want to taste and designing the flavor profile themselves instead of the chef. I have always found this odd, especially because it happens at higher end dining as well as middle establishments. I will describe two events, one each from the respective states.

An exchange I recently had with the good wait staff at a restaurant in San Francisco:

¨And what can I get for you sir?¨

¨I¨ll have the salmon.¨

¨Thank you.¨

A similar exchange with great wait staff at a restaurant in Akron, Ohio:

¨And what can I get for you sir?¨

¨I¨ll have the salmon.¨

¨Great, would you like the soup or the salad with that?¨

¨What soup do you have?¨

¨Chicken Chili, Butternut Squash, Broccoli Cheddar, or Clam Chowder.¨

¨Hmm….I´ll have a salad.¨

¨House, French, Italian, Thousand Island, Ranch, Blue Cheese, or Raspberry Vinagrette?¨

¨House.¨

¨Great, would you be wanting the potato or rice pilaf?¨
¨I¨ll have the potato¨

¨Boiled, baked, steamed, roasted, steak fries, curly fries, twice fried, au gratin, or Hasslebacked?¨

¨Baked.¨

¨And that salmon, did you want that, fried, grilled, steamed-in-the-bag, poached….¨
¨Grilled, please.¨

¨And with that salmon did you want the Teriyaki, Southwestern, El Diablo, Old El Paso, German Gypsy, or Sweet Poughkeepsie sauce?¨

¨German Gypsy.¨

¨And that comes with an additional side from the bottom back of the menu.¨

I am now tired. I also feel a little anxious because I didn´t quite understand that I´d have to make so many decisions. I mean I knew that when the menu arrived, and my hands became moist when the waitress approached. But I didn´t know how it would feel, this interrogation. I wondered if she approved of my choices. The menu I had created for myself. I guess the expectation is that the guest puts the disparate particles together and the chef´s job is to make it work. I need the wait person´s help.

¨What do you recommend with the German Gypsy salmon?¨

¨Well, a lot of people really like the sizzling corn husks, or dig deep in yumbo town with a bucket of hushed mutton cuttins. If you go with the griddle flipped zucchini cakes, I would swap out the Clam Chowder for the salad because the salad already comes with the griddle flipped zucchini cakes on top of it. A lot of people do that.¨

¨Oh OK. I´ll do that. Does that sound good?¨

¨Yeah, it´s good.¨

Perhaps what it is is that there is a maximal quality to that Midwestern restaurant, everything is available and the customer is king. In California I´ve seen a number of menus that explicitly say ¨no substitutions¨ and we obey. Yes, fussy, picky, snooty, have-it-my-way California kiddos will line up in obeyance behind the Chef de Maison. It is an act of trust, perhaps because as my friend was saying, if you can´t read people´s palates, your restaurant ain´t gonna last. Fabulous or closed.

Even though it is still August, the change has taken place and Fall is wrapping their wide arms around us. Here´s one little fella that wasn´t quite ready to let go and managed to attach themselves to their tree. Hang on tight. It´s gonna be a long, cold winter.