Just desserts or bad taste?

Can't decide whether this is brilliant, or a frightening vision of the future and the lack of privacy that Facebook type sites result in.

MELBOURNE restaurateur Peter Leary has used Facebook to track down bill dodgers in his up-market establishment, Seagrass. Full Story

Check out the story yourself, and let me know what you think....

A fancy function indeed

I recently worked a very exclusive function, as wait staff for a small sit down affair. The client was a major Global Banking Corporation (very well known), very serious money going on.

I was quite nervous before it started as we'd been briefed that it was going to be a very formal affair, selected wines for different courses, all fine dining, when all I've done previously is finger food (with virtually no waitressing experience). The wine was served from decanters, and thank god the other guy I was working it with had previously worked at Rockpool, a classy Sydney restaurant, where they serve all their wine decanted (apparently).

They were very heavy, and I would never have been able to pour with them.

One of the difficulties is that the section of the specialised venue they were in, was quite narrow, once they were seated there was absolutely no room behind them, so it was all reaching across and dow the table. Fine for the other guy, but I've got short arms! I suspect the gentlemen were quite looking forward to all the leaning (over them) actually, but thankfully I did little of it.

As the evening progressed I needn't have worried too much, basically the other guy was running the show, being much more experienced than myself, and I was there to support him. I didn't have to serve wine at all except for some initial glasses, so I stuck mainly to carrying plates and pouring water.

It was quite a small group though, especially when I'm more accustomed to function sizes of 100+, it was a single table, long enough to be a hassle reaching, small enough that it didn't need splitting. One of the things that interested me about the group was there was only one woman.

It was a party of executives, celebrating promotions, and I couldn't help but feel the glass ceiling must be well and truly in place. I could be wrong of course, perhaps there aren't many women pursuing Finance and Investment Banking as a career, and this woman certainly didn't look like she'd slept her way to the top.

In contrast, the organisers of the function were two lovely women in their thirties, fun, bubbly, easy on the eye, who, while not to cast aspersions in any way, could very well have slept their way there.

At the end of the day however, people are simply people. And even well-to-do, overpaid executives get rowdy when they've had too much to drink, breaking glasses, swearing too much (dropping the C-bomb!). I think it was a successful night though, there was much laughter interspersed with the "shop-talk" and even a bit of gossip.

We farewelled them, thanked them for their tip (which was very nice Thank You)

Well there's the haves and the have nots, and the Haves (had)

Wines served included

Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 1980 This would have been close to $500 a bottle, and it was OFF!

Penfolds Grange 1995 - If you click through this link you'll see that the first Grange's can sell for $50K a bottle! When this was decanted the corks disintergrated, which is apparently quite common, but I'm glad the waiter was pouring it, I would have freaked out if that had been me!

2006 Noble One by De Bortoli (dessert wine) -Depending on the vintage, about $50 a bottle. I managed to snaffle a 3/4 full bottle to take home of this one...

We ran through approximately 110 wine glasses, for one function, with ONE TABLE! Thats how many wines were served, 2 wines for each of the three courses, plus Moët on arrival (with canapes). I was thoroughly sick of polishing the glasses by the end.

I'm certainly not built for full time hospitality, I was totally fagged at the end.

You hated it, but ate it anyway?

Now I'm not trying to make excuses, but M finally gave me his head cold after two weeks of staving it off. Take THAT immune system!

Sorry its been a bit quiet, I've got some stuff I'll put up tonight hopefully, in the meantime, a Not Always Right from our own sunny Aussie shores:

Don’t Mess With Mum

Restaurant | Sydney, Australia

(I’m working in a busy cafe that my mum owns. A man approaches the counter with his plate; it is empty.)

Customer: “Excuse me?”

Mum: “Yes?”

Customer: “This food had too much oil in it.”
(The plate is hidden from her view by the large counter, behind which, she is washing dishes.)

Mum: “Oh…? What, you want me to make you another one? You’d still have to pay for at least one.”

Customer: “No, I want a refund.”

Mum: “Can I see the plate?”
(Customer holds up plate; it is basically empty: some left over slices of lettuce, a little bit of bread.)

Customer: “There was too much oil. I didn’t like it.”

Mum: “But… you finished it off. How can you finish a whole meal you hate? Are you kidding me?”

Customer: “No.”

Mum: “Get the f*** out of my store!”

Customer: “What?”

Mum: “F*** off!”

And You'll be pleased to hear I've finally read the entire archive so I can concentrate on working again hehehehe (and submitting my own entry!)

We're suckers.

Ok, I'll wear that.
Apparently,

RESTAURANTS using fancy typeface on their menus can often get away with fancy prices too with people perceiving complicated font to mean complex food that needs greater skills to prepare.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found people believed if that if the font was harder to read then the task was harder to do.

Looked at the other way, researchers said this meant that clear font was likely to lead to the perception that the task was simple and people were more able to complete it.

My example, that I whipped up, shown below. (Forgive the terrible graphic, my ability in this is extremely limited.)


Yep, I reckon its probably true. The Left could be in a restaurant, the same menu on the right looks like it could be on the chalkboard at the pub, with the addition of "Schnitzel or Steak $10 Tuesday".

Gordon Ramsay deals a lot with issues like this on Kitchen Nightmares. Especially when there's a restaurant that is failing because they're trying to be too fancy in a small town that can't understand their menu. I'm an avid watcher so this is less surprising for me than someone else possibly. A particluar episode I recall, the chefs were all French, and they were trying to do Fine Dining, in a town in Scotland that couldn't understand what they were meant to be eating.