And they say British humo(u)r is drier than a Grey Goose on the rocks

http://welldonefillet.blogspot.com/ You’ve got to admire Manuel’s snark factor while showing that the Brits also have to deal with a sometimes bizarre dining public. Especially since one doesn’t (unfairly, perhaps) usually associate snark with British humor. Here’s a pretty good example: http://welldonefillet.blogspot.com/2007/03/customer-that-broke-this-camels-back.html Now all we need is an Iranian waiter to blog about the time that [...]

And speaking of Pho…

For those folks interested in Vietnamese food, you should definitely own this: This is simply the best book on the subject. And you should check out her great companion blog, http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/ If only certain longhaired Vampirish hat-wearing Top chef contestants from previous seasons who claimed to be experts in Vietnamese cooking had devoured this book [...]

An appreciation for Pho

Someone was dissing the classic Vietnamese noodle dish Pho on a mailing list and I was compelled to come to its defense. Fueling the fire was the fact that Tony Bourdain was waxing eloquent about it as he is wont to do and so, here’s my response to someone’s observation that he found Pho “boring”. I wasn’t [...]

12 tips on making your dining experience better

Believe it or not, the waiter isn’t the only person who can make an impact on your service. Of course there’s the kitchen, the backwaiter/busperson, the manager, the host, the bartender, and even your fellow diners. What many people don’t realize is that they have the ability to create a great dining experience or torpedo [...]

The Insane Waiter

http://allprowaiter.blogspot.com/ This is a great day-by-day account of the wild and wacky world of the front-of-the-house restaurant worker. If you read this blog, and Waiter Rant, you’ll get a good idea of what we servers have to deal with on a daily basis. Servers will recognize these situations and either laugh or weep in sympathy [...]

The conservation theory of ideas and skills

Seems like the more I write about waiting tables, the less skillful I become at actually waiting tables. I wonder if my skillset is like the idea that you don’t use up energy and mass, you simply transfer from one state to the other. My error rate seems to be rising the more I put [...]

Buy this book or the lobster dies!

Oh wait – coming from a server, this isn’t so much of a threat as it is a promise. Still, you should buy this book, especially since mine won’t be available until the point when it is available (if ever). From the blogger who created Waiter Rant:

Getting it out of the way

As a rather rabid avoider of using sexist terms whenever possible, why did I use the word “waiter” in the title of my forthcoming blockbuster, best-selling, mega-cultural landmark book? Well, it sounded better than “So You Want To Be A Server…”. After all, how many people want to be a big, unwieldy computer device? When [...]

Tipping

Well, might as well break the ice in the most direct way possible. Tipping is a somewhat controversial topic here in the US. With most of the rest of the world eschewing the concept of the voluntary tip as the bulk of the server’s income, I thought it would be nice to create a dialog [...]

Hello world!

Yes, I’m writing a book. Go figure. Everyone and their sister wants to write a book at some point. Apparently, these days you even need a blog in order to write a book, so here we go. I’ve been in the restaurant biz for over a decade now and I’ve often thought that there needed [...]