- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 141
Dinner in a fancy restaurant, with real "Chef Owners".
It's been a while, and friend won the lottery - literally - 5/6 numbers on the LottoMax, paying - wait for it - $4,000. She deserved it, was a little short on rent, so this will help her out.
We go to the fancy restaurant - haven't been for a year. It's built on a 45 degree slope on the other end of Baker, the patio abuts a park popular with the homeless.
It's dinner and a show! They're out there, the "Usual Suspects", mother of Norm, she's gotten a new mobility scooter, various others, some of the out-of-towners, exchanging insults then fisticuffs, many intervening, no one is hurt, the police are called, just another night with the usual suspects. Every other night. What a job! The patio, it abuts this "park" and you think, in the summer, it's gonna be a hard sell, their prices, product, vs the homelessness just a railing away...
Dinner in the fancy restaurant, 2 servers, 2 tables, a 10 minute wait for a glass of wine. Appetizer; mussels, mussels good, broth, some sort of leek-in-water, leek good, water-wet, well...
It goes from there.
Calamari, good, the sauce it's served in - well, shite. Brussel sprouts, amazing, as is the sauce. Steak, with salad and fries. Steak, OK (Sorry to say I make better- at dine-out prices no steak should be indifferent), fries, tasty, but that's because there's more salt than fry, the salad, well, the leaves were fresh, the dressing should have been flushed.
It's really hit-or-miss at this place. What they do well, they do well. But - what they did well was only the Brussel Sprouts. The rest, it was all various shades of "throw it back at the kitchen" and/or "Flush it down the toilet". Nobody is quality checking the idea, let alone the product.
Where I work there's a TV - always on, always playing, and it's "Hell's Kitchen" with Gordon Ramsey. You can watch this shit 24/7, if you're of the inclination, although - really; why would you. I find him a bit offensive, although I've worked with considerably worse.
Anyways, I'm picturing in my head Gordon Ramsay tasting this shit, it wouldn't fly. Well, it would, only onto the chef's apron that deigned to present it. And hard.
Service, pleasant but entirely incompetent. A take away ordered after the meal, forgotten, then billed separately. I've been overwhelmed with a dozen to-go orders and 5 or 6 tables walking in at once, these two were overwhelmed with a table each. Apparently it's for sale, and I for a fleeting moment consider it, but no, the industry is dead, let it die. I can cook so much better at home, for so much less, and serve it as well, and I have to accept that it's just not worth it to dine out anymore. The industry is dead.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 541
Thursday night in town (Gym Friday Morning) - JR. wants to show me a pop-up hipster cocktail bar beneath *****, classic, a back-alley entrance, in a sub-basement 3 stories deep, windowless hole that seats about 20 people, dark but a good ambience, they know him because he orders fancy overpriced "Mocktails", or to put it more bluntly they caught his name because he's the "Shirley Temple" guy.
A little leatherette cocktail book with a list of cocktails, their own "patented" mixologies, the smoked-cedar-plank old fashioned, infused liquors, vinegars, specialty bitters, they've 2 bartenders/servers, classic hipster types with long beards, hair tied back, "in the fashion", 1 DJ, they can't keep up, it's that classic bumble-fuck Kootenay service...
Have our drinks, check out the crowd, JR. chats up the bartenders, then on to a more classic old-school Nelson bar, where JR. orders a real drink and somehow gets inebriated and we're talking about nonsense, par usual, when he mentions the "Bonsai Kittens", an internet thing when the internet was still young and interesting, and it turns out that he believed it, thought it was horribly cruel, and I have to break it to him, it was, like so much of the internet, a complete and utter hoax, merely somebody practicing their photoshop skills, and he didn't know, and I'm thinking who doesn't fact check this stuff?
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 550
The Pools, now priced at $18 and by reservation only, prices subject again to increase in July.
Because people will pay.
The restaurant, for dinner, Bannock and Mussels to start. The Bannock is really a scone. The mussels, they've changed the sauce, now only white wine. Meh.
A half dozen servers, the place is full.
For a main we split the steak - 10 oz NY. It's OK. The vegetables are good.
They have posted signs - 20% minimum gratuity for parties over 6, tipping options on their machine run 15-20-25% - stupid. And a mandatory 12% gratuity on all to go orders.
Service is fine.
It's all fucking preposterous. H* - new hire - talks of working there - she describes it as "if people who new nothing about restaurants opened a restaurant'" and she's right, 100%, and yet still they're successful, largely due to the lack of reasonable competition.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 551
Using up my punch pass, more for the shower than anything else but after an hour in the weight room I treat myself to the steam room, the hot tub, the sauna, before heading out for a well-earned meal.
"The Witches Cauldron", a popular spot for Charcuteries, boards of simple pre-sliced cuts of meat, cheese, olives, fig jams, pickles, some nuts, fresh baguettes, all this is inexpensive, an impressive business model that provides the kitchen minimal stress, I'm here largely for the ambiance, to fill in those spots in my diet where I don't ordinarily get to, but throw in a couple of small glasses of wine and ***!!FUCKING BLOODY HELL***. This is why I don't drink out.
Anyways, sorry about that, looked at the bill, lost the plot there for a moment.
They've a tarot reader onsite, she's psychic, she must be, just look at the tattoos and her curly red tresses, and I'm watching and it's taking me a while to figure it out, I'm not so bright, the whole theme of this restaurant is "Witches", but - when I do, and then - wtf - WTF!, is she looking this shit up on her phone? SHE'S LOOKING IT UP ON HER PHONE!!!!
You should not be charging for any sort of reading if your looking shit up on your phone. That's embarrassing. That said, her clients don't seem to upset. Imagine what I could do, a few crystals and scattered decks to choose from, a black candle to burn the dark mass...
You know, I've got this down.
Anyways, the "big" night out on my 4 day weekend, an unexpected "boon"? (not really, days off - in this season, are expensive, I hemorrhage money buying coffee and eating in restaurants and doing everything I can to stay warm.) My rhythm will improve as the nights grow shorter and the weather warmer.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 616
My list of new deal-breakers for restaurants.
#1) The tip prompt goes above and beyond 20%. Even those tip prompts that offer "15-18-20%" are wrong. If the owner/proprietor sees nothing wrong with doing this - dine elsewhere. They don't have a fucking clue. And this is not to suggest that in some instances people might not want to tip their server better - but the "other" option provides for that.
#2) They employ any "Students of Hospitality". By these people I mean those international students who are brought in from abroad specifically to fill low-paying roles in hospitality under the guise of taking "a course" from Columbia or Selkirk College. This is clearly a ploy to get low-skilled workers at bargain basement prices. It's wrong. No one should have to take a course - 2 or 3 years in some instances I've heard - for a minimum wage job.
#3) They advertise a shortage of staff. This is Bullshit. They have a shortage of competent managers. Refer to the St. Eugene Staff Motivational Poster. Restaurants have no problem raising prices to reflect increasing food costs. If they don't realize they have to raise prices to pay their staff better or find other ways to be competitive then they should not be in business. The first few months after the pandemic, fine, but this now is too much.