This post marks a juncture, where I lose all inclination to stay on topic. There are blogs elsewhere, wildly popular, about all kinds of things that I simply don't want to write about.
I will revel in my verbosity, refusing a simplified vocabulary, opting not to submit to the banality of endless recipes for cupcakes, donuts or whatever items of varying edibility happen to be the current rage.
Since blogs bury everything in layers of duff over time, I created a page explaining more about this. Although nobody will likely ever read it, I was somewhat amused by creating it. Shouldn't that be enough?
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
Prix fixe - excluding tax
The menu is $48, excluding tax and gratuity. Why not just say, "Fifty-two dollars (includes sales tax) + gratuity"? It's not like the sales tax is optional. What, you're going to dine out wholesale? Who will you sell the uneaten food to?
Looks like another sneaky way to "lower" the price, although technically this isn't deceit because only an idiot would imagine that there would be no sales tax. Or can you get the thing to go, and exclude sales tax? Who would do that?
What would be so wrong with $60, includes tax and 15% gratuity (you're welcome to tip more if you like). Or you could be precise, putting the tab at $58.92. A paltry $3.92 more than the fundraiser base price.
Yes, that fundraiser, the one I just wrote about. At the fundraiser, you could eat the equivalent of four or more hamburgers, listen to live music, have all the drinks you want and contribute to charity. The fundraiser included everything in the price, no ups no extras. Even parking, bless their hamburgery hearts.
Now I'm really confused. One special event lumps everything into one simple, yet higher, price. Another splits everything apart to make the price appear lower, but when all is said and done it comes out a bit more than the "expensive" price of the fundraiser - except it's almost certainly not all you can eat. I'm not even sure you can sample all the plates, or have to choose.
What's the best pricing strategy? A simple yet larger figure, or a smaller figure that will auto-inflate? Too bad I won't have data on the events. I'd be curious to see which sell out - although there would have to be some kind of factoring in the huge capacity of the fundraiser vs the low capacity of the restaurant.
Looks like another sneaky way to "lower" the price, although technically this isn't deceit because only an idiot would imagine that there would be no sales tax. Or can you get the thing to go, and exclude sales tax? Who would do that?
What would be so wrong with $60, includes tax and 15% gratuity (you're welcome to tip more if you like). Or you could be precise, putting the tab at $58.92. A paltry $3.92 more than the fundraiser base price.
Yes, that fundraiser, the one I just wrote about. At the fundraiser, you could eat the equivalent of four or more hamburgers, listen to live music, have all the drinks you want and contribute to charity. The fundraiser included everything in the price, no ups no extras. Even parking, bless their hamburgery hearts.
Now I'm really confused. One special event lumps everything into one simple, yet higher, price. Another splits everything apart to make the price appear lower, but when all is said and done it comes out a bit more than the "expensive" price of the fundraiser - except it's almost certainly not all you can eat. I'm not even sure you can sample all the plates, or have to choose.
What's the best pricing strategy? A simple yet larger figure, or a smaller figure that will auto-inflate? Too bad I won't have data on the events. I'd be curious to see which sell out - although there would have to be some kind of factoring in the huge capacity of the fundraiser vs the low capacity of the restaurant.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
May the best burger win!
Fifteen restaurants. Fifteen burgers. Fifty-five dollars to step up to the table (seventy-five if you pay for VIP treatment). Let's say they cut the burgers in fourths. That's about the equivalent of four whole burgers, total.
On a good day, I can eat one burger, with fries. I could possibly consume two, if they weren't huge, without the fries (I wouldn't, though). Who would be able to consume every sample, maybe returning for more to settle favorite burger questions?
One fancy burger, presumably with fries, would run me $15 at a restaurant with tip and tax. Let's say since this is a charity, everything goes 50%-50%. That would bring the now charitable burger to thirty dollars. Let's make it $35, since they threw in parking (great idea!). These are probably smaller than that half pound gourmet monster I'm thinking of, so their share of the profits might be even greater.
Those unlimited burger bites are not $35, though. Nor $40, not even $50. Fifty-five and up. What is the reason why this could not have been, say, $35?
There are prizes. Yeah, that makes sense, the winning restaurant should get a trophy. No - I read the text again. These prizes are for the audience? Like a door price? Why do I need prizes? I'm there for the food! Forget the prizes and lower the entry cost. Then there's live music, drinks, the burgers... everything all you can consume. Still, I can't consume that much, not safely. Not without seriously regretting my binge for hours afterward.
Why the three-ring circus? Food, drinks, live music, prizes... Among all that, where's the beef? A simple, hamburger-centric competition would work for me.
Could this be simpler? Would people go just to eat hamburgers, without all that sideshow stuff? What if the burgers were all you can eat, and only water were provided free of charge? I'd throw in free parking, because that's a really great idea. Aside from that, all drinks could be extra. I'd even reconsider having live music, since there's going to be a lot of noisy, burger-munching people crowded into the space. Lower cost, lower ticket prices, potentially higher attendance, possibly even more money to the charity. Would a no alcohol policy lower insurance prices enough to boost charity revenue, or would this be a deal breaker for potential attendees and reduce proceeds?
I'm not expert at this kind of thing, but I can't help asking a few more things. Do they really make more money for the charity by creating a huge, expensive event (instead of a more affordable, lower overhead one)? Do they need this high price to keep attendance down? Would a lower price make them more money overall, or would the venue get so crowded that nobody will ever return? Will anyone return anyway?
If the thing sells out, then they're right. On the other hand, if there are lots of unsold tickets, then maybe I am making some kind of sense here.
NOTE: The thing sold out. They're right. Let's just raise all the hamburger prices to $20 so everyone will be happy. I'll just eat something else.
On a good day, I can eat one burger, with fries. I could possibly consume two, if they weren't huge, without the fries (I wouldn't, though). Who would be able to consume every sample, maybe returning for more to settle favorite burger questions?
One fancy burger, presumably with fries, would run me $15 at a restaurant with tip and tax. Let's say since this is a charity, everything goes 50%-50%. That would bring the now charitable burger to thirty dollars. Let's make it $35, since they threw in parking (great idea!). These are probably smaller than that half pound gourmet monster I'm thinking of, so their share of the profits might be even greater.
Those unlimited burger bites are not $35, though. Nor $40, not even $50. Fifty-five and up. What is the reason why this could not have been, say, $35?
There are prizes. Yeah, that makes sense, the winning restaurant should get a trophy. No - I read the text again. These prizes are for the audience? Like a door price? Why do I need prizes? I'm there for the food! Forget the prizes and lower the entry cost. Then there's live music, drinks, the burgers... everything all you can consume. Still, I can't consume that much, not safely. Not without seriously regretting my binge for hours afterward.
Why the three-ring circus? Food, drinks, live music, prizes... Among all that, where's the beef? A simple, hamburger-centric competition would work for me.
Could this be simpler? Would people go just to eat hamburgers, without all that sideshow stuff? What if the burgers were all you can eat, and only water were provided free of charge? I'd throw in free parking, because that's a really great idea. Aside from that, all drinks could be extra. I'd even reconsider having live music, since there's going to be a lot of noisy, burger-munching people crowded into the space. Lower cost, lower ticket prices, potentially higher attendance, possibly even more money to the charity. Would a no alcohol policy lower insurance prices enough to boost charity revenue, or would this be a deal breaker for potential attendees and reduce proceeds?
I'm not expert at this kind of thing, but I can't help asking a few more things. Do they really make more money for the charity by creating a huge, expensive event (instead of a more affordable, lower overhead one)? Do they need this high price to keep attendance down? Would a lower price make them more money overall, or would the venue get so crowded that nobody will ever return? Will anyone return anyway?
If the thing sells out, then they're right. On the other hand, if there are lots of unsold tickets, then maybe I am making some kind of sense here.
NOTE: The thing sold out. They're right. Let's just raise all the hamburger prices to $20 so everyone will be happy. I'll just eat something else.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
BOH: Rule with an Iron Fist!
Sometimes plans just don't work. I won't be working in the school's restaurant kitchen this fall. I'm giving a conference that people actually pay to attend, and will be forced to miss two days of class.
This breaks The Rule: anyone missing two days of class will be dropped. Since it would happen after the drop deadline, I suppose this means the school keeps about $400 and I get an "F" adding insult to (financial) injury.
Only a fool would enroll in a class with terms like that.
To be fair, one of the chefs tried to find someone to swap shifts. It's a Good Chef / Bad Chef schtick. One wants to crush everyone, break them, make them run screaming for the doghouse, their tails between their legs, get them out of the hospitality business now before they sully the reputation of the school. The other, although strict, genuinely seems to want everyone to succeed. This chef is the one who smiles, and it's a real smile all the way to the eyes. The other person smiles like the cat when it's about to engage in some play at the expense of a small furry creature, generally vermin.
Here's the funny thing: if I just flaked and didn't show up, it's considered no different than trying to work out a schedule a month in advance, make up time lost, turn in paperwork early, or any other advance mitigation.
The class guidelines say to be professional, communicate, plan ahead - but when you actually do these things the message is that none of this counts. Apparently these rules apply to things initiated by others.
So, imagine that this is a business. That's what the school keeps saying, that this class is just like working in a real restaurant, because you are working in a real restaurant. The only difference is that you pay them instead of the other way around. The other difference is that you only work part time, two days per week.
So, here's how the business is run: Anyone who knows in advance that they won't be able to work a shift will have to find someone to take their place. If they can't, they're fired. If anyone is late too many times, they're fired. If someone does not show up without notice, they're fired. There is no hiring after the beginning of September. If they wind up with a skeleton crew after mid-November, that's just the way it will be. There are no excused days, no matter what attempts are made in advance. No show: goodbye!
I think this place would be bankrupt rather soon, due to a lack of staffing. Their reputation as a hostile place to work would spread as those removed from employment spoke to their friends. Fewer and fewer people would apply, and those who did would likely not be the best qualified for the job.
The main message is that you can't negotiate with management. They are not your friends. They are not reasonable. It's futile to even try.
I would have missed two days in the semester, true. But I would have made up the hours, and even offered to replace others who could not attend on their work days. In a real business, things could probably be worked out. Someone would call in sick, I'd replace them, food would happen. They will probably eject other people for breaking The Rule. If I were there, I'd replace them where possible, keeping the kitchen staffed.
Maybe restaurants really are run this way. Since I need to have work experience to get work experience, I won't know. It seems like a great way to increase turnover and create animosity in a profession that's already demanding. It also conflicts with a "fair but firm" rule in management - how is it fair that trying to work things out in advance earns the same penalty as just not showing up? Where's the incentive to communicate, negotiate, work things out?
Chefs are fighting the idea of food as a commodity, where all chickens are identical (except for size), all factors other than price are irrelevant. They want each bit of food to be traceable to some source, where happy animals and plants live in happy ecosystems, happily converting sunlight, water and nutrients or whatever they eat into delicious things for us to eat.
Yet, when it comes to human resources, we are all commodities. At school, our value is measured in hours. We're interchangeable. Our pasts, desires, feelings are irrelevant. We are but cogs in the machine, mechanistic automatons executing preplanned instruction sets.
How can an industry that wants to strengthen complex interconnected food production and sourcing do an about face and reinforce the industrial groupthink concept of people as commodities?
I always viewed Zen as something that breaks rules, thinks outside the box. Right thought, right action does not seem to mean commoditizing people into cogs in a food processing machine.
If this is our best paradigm for kitchen management, it's time to choose again. The food, its origins, the people preparing it, the path of the matter and energy in the food, the building and its systems are linked. Saying one part of the system is organic and ecological while another is mechanical and linear just doesn't make sense.
If I ever get this Hospitality Management certificate, some day I could be management. I would make the inflexible rules, fix my victims with the angry reptilian stare, send them articles on Zen Buddhism while practicing something else. This is supposed to be a model of how to run a restaurant, right?
Perhaps I will, though hours of meditation, achieve some form of enlightenment and find a solution - although I fear it would be dynamic and changing. The truth is not the thing that can be contained in words, as they say.
I've dropped the class. Gone, forgotten. Although several fellow students gave their condolences, there was not even a note of regret that it didn't work out from anyone involved in managing the class. A new cog was found, the machine works. Nothing further need be said.
This breaks The Rule: anyone missing two days of class will be dropped. Since it would happen after the drop deadline, I suppose this means the school keeps about $400 and I get an "F" adding insult to (financial) injury.
Only a fool would enroll in a class with terms like that.
To be fair, one of the chefs tried to find someone to swap shifts. It's a Good Chef / Bad Chef schtick. One wants to crush everyone, break them, make them run screaming for the doghouse, their tails between their legs, get them out of the hospitality business now before they sully the reputation of the school. The other, although strict, genuinely seems to want everyone to succeed. This chef is the one who smiles, and it's a real smile all the way to the eyes. The other person smiles like the cat when it's about to engage in some play at the expense of a small furry creature, generally vermin.
Here's the funny thing: if I just flaked and didn't show up, it's considered no different than trying to work out a schedule a month in advance, make up time lost, turn in paperwork early, or any other advance mitigation.
The class guidelines say to be professional, communicate, plan ahead - but when you actually do these things the message is that none of this counts. Apparently these rules apply to things initiated by others.
So, imagine that this is a business. That's what the school keeps saying, that this class is just like working in a real restaurant, because you are working in a real restaurant. The only difference is that you pay them instead of the other way around. The other difference is that you only work part time, two days per week.
So, here's how the business is run: Anyone who knows in advance that they won't be able to work a shift will have to find someone to take their place. If they can't, they're fired. If anyone is late too many times, they're fired. If someone does not show up without notice, they're fired. There is no hiring after the beginning of September. If they wind up with a skeleton crew after mid-November, that's just the way it will be. There are no excused days, no matter what attempts are made in advance. No show: goodbye!
I think this place would be bankrupt rather soon, due to a lack of staffing. Their reputation as a hostile place to work would spread as those removed from employment spoke to their friends. Fewer and fewer people would apply, and those who did would likely not be the best qualified for the job.
The main message is that you can't negotiate with management. They are not your friends. They are not reasonable. It's futile to even try.
I would have missed two days in the semester, true. But I would have made up the hours, and even offered to replace others who could not attend on their work days. In a real business, things could probably be worked out. Someone would call in sick, I'd replace them, food would happen. They will probably eject other people for breaking The Rule. If I were there, I'd replace them where possible, keeping the kitchen staffed.
Maybe restaurants really are run this way. Since I need to have work experience to get work experience, I won't know. It seems like a great way to increase turnover and create animosity in a profession that's already demanding. It also conflicts with a "fair but firm" rule in management - how is it fair that trying to work things out in advance earns the same penalty as just not showing up? Where's the incentive to communicate, negotiate, work things out?
Chefs are fighting the idea of food as a commodity, where all chickens are identical (except for size), all factors other than price are irrelevant. They want each bit of food to be traceable to some source, where happy animals and plants live in happy ecosystems, happily converting sunlight, water and nutrients or whatever they eat into delicious things for us to eat.
Yet, when it comes to human resources, we are all commodities. At school, our value is measured in hours. We're interchangeable. Our pasts, desires, feelings are irrelevant. We are but cogs in the machine, mechanistic automatons executing preplanned instruction sets.
How can an industry that wants to strengthen complex interconnected food production and sourcing do an about face and reinforce the industrial groupthink concept of people as commodities?
I always viewed Zen as something that breaks rules, thinks outside the box. Right thought, right action does not seem to mean commoditizing people into cogs in a food processing machine.
If this is our best paradigm for kitchen management, it's time to choose again. The food, its origins, the people preparing it, the path of the matter and energy in the food, the building and its systems are linked. Saying one part of the system is organic and ecological while another is mechanical and linear just doesn't make sense.
If I ever get this Hospitality Management certificate, some day I could be management. I would make the inflexible rules, fix my victims with the angry reptilian stare, send them articles on Zen Buddhism while practicing something else. This is supposed to be a model of how to run a restaurant, right?
Perhaps I will, though hours of meditation, achieve some form of enlightenment and find a solution - although I fear it would be dynamic and changing. The truth is not the thing that can be contained in words, as they say.
I've dropped the class. Gone, forgotten. Although several fellow students gave their condolences, there was not even a note of regret that it didn't work out from anyone involved in managing the class. A new cog was found, the machine works. Nothing further need be said.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Peru comes to Roseville
I really like Peruvian food, and was surprised to see an elegant new Peruvian restaurant opening in Roseville. Normally this is a cuisine that I have to enjoy in Los Angeles, but now I hoped I'd have a new favorite local destination.
This is where I need to say that being in a restaurant management program is definitely not the route to take if you want to enjoy dining out. You see glaring errors by the service, lack of training, bad hostessing, bad management, missed opportunities, dashed expectations, plating errors... all stacking up with a single purpose: to destroy your chances of enjoying all but a very few restaurants. These things can be overlooked at inexpensive dives; plating a burrito or torta ahogada really isn't that critical. But in fine dining, plating a lamb shank with half its meat gone swimming in the sauce in the kitchen becomes a reason never to return. Likewise serving oxidized wine for tasting, opened who knows when. Blowing a dessert by masking the star ingredient in favor of flour and strawberries... not so fine.
This was one of those times where I think of the Turing test when dealing with a wait person. This is the test where you plunk down a human at a terminal and give him or her a few minutes to converse with someone or something at the other end of the line. If the person can't tell if he or she is talking to a machine, it passes the test. Both the waiter and the hostess might have struggled to pass, sometimes giving what seemed like incoherent answers.
The "free wine tasting" poured from a bottle containing perhaps an inch of wine at the bottom. Against my hopes, it was indeed oxidized. Transformed from fragrant wine into something less good, not indicative of its true character. What else can you expect, when the bottle contains 90% air and 10% wine? So, naturally I said something too complicated when asked if I liked the wine: "I don't know, since it was opened too long ago, oxidized and no longer tastes of itself."
What would a good waiter do? He'd say, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize that this had been open so long. I'll open another bottle so you can have a fair taste.". This didn't happen. He just walked away, mumbling something that lowered his Turing score, or just proved that he didn't know spoiled wine from Gatorade - or maybe didn't want to waste house money by opening a bottle that I might not order. So, bad management (not authorizing the wait staff to open new bottles when necessary), or badly trained wait staff? I don't know. Maybe both. One demerit.
Carnitas by another name does indeed taste as porky. It's apparently called "chicharrón" in Peru, but it's made the same as carnitas, from pork butt or pork shoulder - not pork belly. It's simmered then fried, just like carnitas. The sauce and finish are different, but basically it's four or five (I wasn't counting, so let's say five) one inch cubes of pork. Lined up on a plate, each glued down with a dab of pureed sweet potato and topped with a squidge of aioli. Sweetish pork, sweet puree, sweetish onion, a bit of garlic. No acid to kick things into a higher gear, but a price worthy of Campagnolo (expensive bike parts... never mind). That's something that probably runs, what, four bucks a pound or less. Five cubes, lots of negative, aesthetic and empty space around it. Good deal for the house, but it seems the Mexican restaurants can make a profit on carnitas plates that are much more generously endowed and come with rice, beans, salsa and chips to boot. Hmm. Not trying for repeat, non-special occasion business here, are we?
Every time I've eaten a lamb shank, it's had meat going all around the bone, just like it was on the animal. Muscle groups come in opposing sets so the beastie can bend its hoof this way and that. Since muscles only pull - they don't push. This lamb was apparently a mutant, since it only had meat on one side of the bone. Where did the other half go? Presumably it's still in the pot, where it came off the bone during the long braising process. The problem is, from a management point of view, that nobody verified this. It just got plated and served. Nobody cared. Maybe I'm wrong, and they used that piece of meat for something else (I couldn't find lamb anywhere else on the menu, but this proves nothing). So, here I am, surprised to discover as I turn over my shank, that lunch is over. The waiter's attitude was not exactly of service - he didn't care that the wine was long past its prime. There was nobody else in the place who interacted with customers, save the hostess, and she wasn't into smiling herself.
In culinary arts, we learn that if something is based on a principal ingredient, it should actually taste like said ingredient. Our "Passionfruit piece of heaven with forest fruit didn't. With a name like Pedazo de cielo de maracuya con frutas del bosque (if I remember correctly), the passion fruit should jump up and shout, like that paleta I ate in Mexico. Instead, it tasted primarily of strawberries and mint. This was another instance of taking what should probably have been one medium-sized flan-like thing and plating it with some garnishes, maybe even fruit that actually comes from Peruvian woods. It was instead divided into three slider-like mini-things. Pretty, but not a lot of dessert mass for the money.
I wonder what Peruvian forest fruits could be. Peru runs from the Pacific Ocean, over the Andes and into the Amazon rain forest. Lots of opportunities for fruits, so how did Peruvian forest fruits become field-grown strawberries? Perhaps they were grown in Peru, but still... I was expecting something more exotic. A quick search yielded interesting things. Camu camu, cherimoya, maracuya, dragonfruit (Pitajaya)... but not strawberries. Some are available as frozen puree, so presumably they could have made a coulis out of a couple of them and gone wildly Peruvian.
There were two examples of a red wine varietal available by the glass. The waiter did not ask which one I wanted - he merely poured the most expensive, saying that it was the bottle we'd tasted. Our fault? No - it's his job to ask whenever there is more than one price point for the same varietal. Sneaky, sneaky - but we should have paid more attention. Why? We're hoping that the house wants us to come back and won't sneak around. It was a $4.00 difference, not really enough to matter in the monetary sense, but enough to create a strong perception of profit maximization at our expense. Badly done!
Managing expectations is a key term here. You want to exceed expectations, make the customer feel special, cared for, honored. Avoid at all costs making your guests feel like marks in a carny show.
It's all about perception, not necessarily reality. This creates happy customers who will likely return later and spend more money - part of other key terms like frequency. The basic goals are to get people to come more often and spend more money. Either or both works. Neither is not great, since it leads to bankruptcy after the novelty of the place wears off. These guys set expectations high, then failed to meet them. Tasty food but expensive with small portions. Spoiled wine and perceived indifference by the wait staff. Going for profit over satisfaction and hospitality by pouring the expensive wine while ignoring the more reasonably priced glass of the same varietal, with a perception of house greediness. Perceived missing food in the case of the lamb shank. Leaving the customer to wonder where the main dessert ingredient went, after suggesting the dessert as better than another (more expensive, too - so perception of upselling). Perception of lack of hospitality when the hostess seemed annoyed or worried that I would abscond or otherwise ruin a culinary book set out for display (if you don't want the books touched, but them in a glass case!).
So, here was the result: we felt somewhat swindled from the combination of high prices, small portion sizes, the wine switch and the missing lamb. This was compounded by the waiter's lack of action over the spoiled wine offered for tasting and his failure to ask which Malbec we wanted to order. We didn't feel cared for, since every time we mentioned something wrong, we were met with a mumble, an excuse, and no action whatsoever. Problems arise. Failing to deal with them can be fatal. Fixing them can turn them into assets and create avid, faithful fans who will return.
The final clavo en el ataúd was the hostess as we were leaving, who looked ready to defend a pristine cookbook at the entrance with tooth and nail - but not find out if the house desserts came from its pages. She asked if I had a question. I did. She had no answer. Instead of smiling, finding someone, creating an interaction, a link to the person preparing the food, maybe a reason to return, she ended the conversation, question unanswered. In an empty reception area, she was too busy. Missed opportunity.
I posted the following review elsewhere on the web, where the restaurant might see it and possibly improve things - or start ranting and send nasty PMs... hopefully the former.
__
My star-losing complaints are that I feel like there's a fair amount of portion size sleight of hand going on here relative to the price points. Compounding this, the wait staff seemed more intent on maxing out the check. It seemed like there was no chef in charge, nobody to care for each plate to come out of the kitchen.
The portion size thing would be fine if the prices were lower - I'm all in favor of small plates, but only if they have small prices so I can sample more things. La Huaca likes to put tiny morsels on one elegant, spacious dish with a lot of air in between. That's some expensive air!
They have a ceviche "bar". Although, it isn't really. See, at a real bar, people sit at bars, interact with the bar chef. Here you order from the menu; the bar maestro does his thing across the room. No interaction. The ceviche is nonetheless fresh, like pieces of sushi grade fish tossed in a citrus-flavor mix and served, so that it doesn't really "cook" in the marinade so much as soak up the flavor.
Our pork appetizer was like Peruvian carnitas. One inch cubes of tender pork sitting on an orange sweet potato purée, topped with some onion and aioli. The flavors lacked contrast; everything had a bit of a sweet note that would have profited from some acidity to compliment the other flavors. At half the price, this might be worth getting.
The lamb shank sat buried in sauce, with a dab of beans at its side. The meat was indeed falling off the bone, for when I turned the shank over, there was no meat there, just a bare bone. Huh? Where's the rest of my food? A mistake? Or not? Half the meat? That's not fair! I paid for that meat. Didn't I?
When you name something "passion fruit piece of heaven with forest fruit" (my translation from the Spanish), you expect it to taste like passion fruit first and everything else second. Sorry. The star - maracuya - was almost a no show, drowned by strawberry and mint. Another plate of mostly air: three small, cakey things arranged on a plate.
Free wine tasting is supposed to be an amenity, but my first taste came from a bottle that sat open too long: feh!. When I pointed this out to the waiter, he just walked off. He didn't return with a freshly opened bottle so I could taste the wine as its maker intended, but instead offered a taste of another varietal. Things didn't get better, either.
One varietal appears twice on the wine list: two glasses with a four dollar price difference. When I ordered that varietal, he brought the most expensive glass without even asking which I wanted. His excuse? "I poured out of the expensive bottle, so you should have known." Fail!
Oh, one more thing. Those beautiful cook books at the entrance? LEAVE THEM ALONE! I tried looking up the passion fruit dessert (not there) and the hostess came over to hover around and ask if I had questions. I did - but she couldn't answer them. She was there to Protect the Book. I noticed from outside that she carefully checked the book for damage (none) and carefully put in in its place on the table.
This is where I need to say that being in a restaurant management program is definitely not the route to take if you want to enjoy dining out. You see glaring errors by the service, lack of training, bad hostessing, bad management, missed opportunities, dashed expectations, plating errors... all stacking up with a single purpose: to destroy your chances of enjoying all but a very few restaurants. These things can be overlooked at inexpensive dives; plating a burrito or torta ahogada really isn't that critical. But in fine dining, plating a lamb shank with half its meat gone swimming in the sauce in the kitchen becomes a reason never to return. Likewise serving oxidized wine for tasting, opened who knows when. Blowing a dessert by masking the star ingredient in favor of flour and strawberries... not so fine.
This was one of those times where I think of the Turing test when dealing with a wait person. This is the test where you plunk down a human at a terminal and give him or her a few minutes to converse with someone or something at the other end of the line. If the person can't tell if he or she is talking to a machine, it passes the test. Both the waiter and the hostess might have struggled to pass, sometimes giving what seemed like incoherent answers.
The "free wine tasting" poured from a bottle containing perhaps an inch of wine at the bottom. Against my hopes, it was indeed oxidized. Transformed from fragrant wine into something less good, not indicative of its true character. What else can you expect, when the bottle contains 90% air and 10% wine? So, naturally I said something too complicated when asked if I liked the wine: "I don't know, since it was opened too long ago, oxidized and no longer tastes of itself."
What would a good waiter do? He'd say, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize that this had been open so long. I'll open another bottle so you can have a fair taste.". This didn't happen. He just walked away, mumbling something that lowered his Turing score, or just proved that he didn't know spoiled wine from Gatorade - or maybe didn't want to waste house money by opening a bottle that I might not order. So, bad management (not authorizing the wait staff to open new bottles when necessary), or badly trained wait staff? I don't know. Maybe both. One demerit.
Carnitas by another name does indeed taste as porky. It's apparently called "chicharrón" in Peru, but it's made the same as carnitas, from pork butt or pork shoulder - not pork belly. It's simmered then fried, just like carnitas. The sauce and finish are different, but basically it's four or five (I wasn't counting, so let's say five) one inch cubes of pork. Lined up on a plate, each glued down with a dab of pureed sweet potato and topped with a squidge of aioli. Sweetish pork, sweet puree, sweetish onion, a bit of garlic. No acid to kick things into a higher gear, but a price worthy of Campagnolo (expensive bike parts... never mind). That's something that probably runs, what, four bucks a pound or less. Five cubes, lots of negative, aesthetic and empty space around it. Good deal for the house, but it seems the Mexican restaurants can make a profit on carnitas plates that are much more generously endowed and come with rice, beans, salsa and chips to boot. Hmm. Not trying for repeat, non-special occasion business here, are we?
Every time I've eaten a lamb shank, it's had meat going all around the bone, just like it was on the animal. Muscle groups come in opposing sets so the beastie can bend its hoof this way and that. Since muscles only pull - they don't push. This lamb was apparently a mutant, since it only had meat on one side of the bone. Where did the other half go? Presumably it's still in the pot, where it came off the bone during the long braising process. The problem is, from a management point of view, that nobody verified this. It just got plated and served. Nobody cared. Maybe I'm wrong, and they used that piece of meat for something else (I couldn't find lamb anywhere else on the menu, but this proves nothing). So, here I am, surprised to discover as I turn over my shank, that lunch is over. The waiter's attitude was not exactly of service - he didn't care that the wine was long past its prime. There was nobody else in the place who interacted with customers, save the hostess, and she wasn't into smiling herself.
In culinary arts, we learn that if something is based on a principal ingredient, it should actually taste like said ingredient. Our "Passionfruit piece of heaven with forest fruit didn't. With a name like Pedazo de cielo de maracuya con frutas del bosque (if I remember correctly), the passion fruit should jump up and shout, like that paleta I ate in Mexico. Instead, it tasted primarily of strawberries and mint. This was another instance of taking what should probably have been one medium-sized flan-like thing and plating it with some garnishes, maybe even fruit that actually comes from Peruvian woods. It was instead divided into three slider-like mini-things. Pretty, but not a lot of dessert mass for the money.
I wonder what Peruvian forest fruits could be. Peru runs from the Pacific Ocean, over the Andes and into the Amazon rain forest. Lots of opportunities for fruits, so how did Peruvian forest fruits become field-grown strawberries? Perhaps they were grown in Peru, but still... I was expecting something more exotic. A quick search yielded interesting things. Camu camu, cherimoya, maracuya, dragonfruit (Pitajaya)... but not strawberries. Some are available as frozen puree, so presumably they could have made a coulis out of a couple of them and gone wildly Peruvian.
There were two examples of a red wine varietal available by the glass. The waiter did not ask which one I wanted - he merely poured the most expensive, saying that it was the bottle we'd tasted. Our fault? No - it's his job to ask whenever there is more than one price point for the same varietal. Sneaky, sneaky - but we should have paid more attention. Why? We're hoping that the house wants us to come back and won't sneak around. It was a $4.00 difference, not really enough to matter in the monetary sense, but enough to create a strong perception of profit maximization at our expense. Badly done!
Managing expectations is a key term here. You want to exceed expectations, make the customer feel special, cared for, honored. Avoid at all costs making your guests feel like marks in a carny show.
It's all about perception, not necessarily reality. This creates happy customers who will likely return later and spend more money - part of other key terms like frequency. The basic goals are to get people to come more often and spend more money. Either or both works. Neither is not great, since it leads to bankruptcy after the novelty of the place wears off. These guys set expectations high, then failed to meet them. Tasty food but expensive with small portions. Spoiled wine and perceived indifference by the wait staff. Going for profit over satisfaction and hospitality by pouring the expensive wine while ignoring the more reasonably priced glass of the same varietal, with a perception of house greediness. Perceived missing food in the case of the lamb shank. Leaving the customer to wonder where the main dessert ingredient went, after suggesting the dessert as better than another (more expensive, too - so perception of upselling). Perception of lack of hospitality when the hostess seemed annoyed or worried that I would abscond or otherwise ruin a culinary book set out for display (if you don't want the books touched, but them in a glass case!).
So, here was the result: we felt somewhat swindled from the combination of high prices, small portion sizes, the wine switch and the missing lamb. This was compounded by the waiter's lack of action over the spoiled wine offered for tasting and his failure to ask which Malbec we wanted to order. We didn't feel cared for, since every time we mentioned something wrong, we were met with a mumble, an excuse, and no action whatsoever. Problems arise. Failing to deal with them can be fatal. Fixing them can turn them into assets and create avid, faithful fans who will return.
The final clavo en el ataúd was the hostess as we were leaving, who looked ready to defend a pristine cookbook at the entrance with tooth and nail - but not find out if the house desserts came from its pages. She asked if I had a question. I did. She had no answer. Instead of smiling, finding someone, creating an interaction, a link to the person preparing the food, maybe a reason to return, she ended the conversation, question unanswered. In an empty reception area, she was too busy. Missed opportunity.
I posted the following review elsewhere on the web, where the restaurant might see it and possibly improve things - or start ranting and send nasty PMs... hopefully the former.
__
La Huaca Restaurant
This could become a really great restaurant - or vanish, but only time will tell. The food is generally quite good, but everything else... read on!My star-losing complaints are that I feel like there's a fair amount of portion size sleight of hand going on here relative to the price points. Compounding this, the wait staff seemed more intent on maxing out the check. It seemed like there was no chef in charge, nobody to care for each plate to come out of the kitchen.
The portion size thing would be fine if the prices were lower - I'm all in favor of small plates, but only if they have small prices so I can sample more things. La Huaca likes to put tiny morsels on one elegant, spacious dish with a lot of air in between. That's some expensive air!
They have a ceviche "bar". Although, it isn't really. See, at a real bar, people sit at bars, interact with the bar chef. Here you order from the menu; the bar maestro does his thing across the room. No interaction. The ceviche is nonetheless fresh, like pieces of sushi grade fish tossed in a citrus-flavor mix and served, so that it doesn't really "cook" in the marinade so much as soak up the flavor.
Our pork appetizer was like Peruvian carnitas. One inch cubes of tender pork sitting on an orange sweet potato purée, topped with some onion and aioli. The flavors lacked contrast; everything had a bit of a sweet note that would have profited from some acidity to compliment the other flavors. At half the price, this might be worth getting.
The lamb shank sat buried in sauce, with a dab of beans at its side. The meat was indeed falling off the bone, for when I turned the shank over, there was no meat there, just a bare bone. Huh? Where's the rest of my food? A mistake? Or not? Half the meat? That's not fair! I paid for that meat. Didn't I?
When you name something "passion fruit piece of heaven with forest fruit" (my translation from the Spanish), you expect it to taste like passion fruit first and everything else second. Sorry. The star - maracuya - was almost a no show, drowned by strawberry and mint. Another plate of mostly air: three small, cakey things arranged on a plate.
Free wine tasting is supposed to be an amenity, but my first taste came from a bottle that sat open too long: feh!. When I pointed this out to the waiter, he just walked off. He didn't return with a freshly opened bottle so I could taste the wine as its maker intended, but instead offered a taste of another varietal. Things didn't get better, either.
One varietal appears twice on the wine list: two glasses with a four dollar price difference. When I ordered that varietal, he brought the most expensive glass without even asking which I wanted. His excuse? "I poured out of the expensive bottle, so you should have known." Fail!
Oh, one more thing. Those beautiful cook books at the entrance? LEAVE THEM ALONE! I tried looking up the passion fruit dessert (not there) and the hostess came over to hover around and ask if I had questions. I did - but she couldn't answer them. She was there to Protect the Book. I noticed from outside that she carefully checked the book for damage (none) and carefully put in in its place on the table.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)