Cookbook of the day – Lemongrass and Sweet Basil

Lemongrass And Sweet Basil: Traditional Thai Cuisine by Khamtane Signavong This slender volume would make a good companion piece to my previously recommended book, True Thai by Victor Sodsook. True Thai didn’t have any photographs of dishes and this volume has copious photographs that will give the chef a good idea of plating, presentation and composition. It’s [...]

10 Most Annoying Things About Dining Out

From The Dallas Observer: 10 Most Annoying Things About Dining Out We often wonder why anyone would decide to own a restaurant. Not only can profit margins be thin, they also rise and fall on whims. Hire an inept server? Customers at that table will never return. It’s a precarious business. From the guest’s point [...]

Burning bridges

One of the realities of working in a restaurant is the often transitory nature of working in a restaurant. There is a myriad of reasons that this is true. One is the fact that workers themselves see the job as transitory. They don’t consider it a “career”.  They consider it something to do while pursuing their [...]

Cookbook of the day – Fish Cuisine

Fish Cuisine by Anton Mosimann Publisher 10 Speed Press ISBN 0-89815-543-6 This stylish volume from the Swiss chef Anton Mosimann was first published by Macmillan Press in 1988. It looks as modern today as it did then. Many cookbooks from the late 80s look dated but this is an exception. The platings are fresh and [...]

Simplification

Most good waiters have a certain spiel that works for them. Many of these spiels cover all service points that show up on secret shopper reports (asking for bottled water, offering appetizers, mentioning specials, etc.) The waiter has also found the proper vocal inflections, key selling phrases, cadences, etc. The great waiters throw all of that [...]

Updated update

Internet service restored – full speed ahead…

A quick update

Just signing in quickly to say that my internet connection is down temporarily and might not be up until next week. Thanks to my local library, I’m able to make this short announcement. Hopefully it will be back up sooner than later and I’ll be back in action. Meanwhile, put on some music and chill…

Lawsuit: Waiter fired over Roethlisberger complaint

From the legal site Avvo: Monday, October 5, 2009 at 02:47 PM A former restaurant worker at Lake Tahoe’s Harrah’s resort claims that he was fired from his assistant manager job because of a complaint filed by football star Ben Roethlisberger. Alvaro Brito, who had worked at the restaurant for 12 years, said he was [...]

Responding to post from Waiter Extraordinaire

http://waiterextraordinaire.blogspot.com/2009/10/gimme-break.html “A fellow waiter and I were talking today about the waiting life. When I started bringing up the low hourly wage a lot of waiters made in the United States he brought up a very good point. When I mentioned the fact that waiters down South seem to accept the fact that they get [...]

World’s oldest barmaid (from Reuters)

Dolly has worked as a barmaid for 69 years. What a rookie! Reporter: “What’s your favorite drink”? Dolly: “Whiskey and tonic”. You go girl! http://www.blinkx.com/video/uk-dolly-is-world-oldest-barmaid/B-jOjdWAw7-sUfRk2jbv3g 95 year old barmaid, Dolly Saville