Sometimes a super burrito is not just a super burrito

 My first job was at a Mexican restaurant called Las Piramides in Clarkston, Michigan. Never mind that the bulk of the residents in this Midwestern suburb could not properly pronounce “piramides” in Spanish and had no idea that Mexico has pyramids (Pyramids? Ain’t those in Egypt?”). Never mind that they had the worst salsa in town. Never mind there was no liquor license for decades and thus no margaritas or cervezas with dinner. The locals generally loved it and its delectable foot-long “super burritos” smothered with chili and cheese.

 I started there in as a busgirl in my junior year of high school and worked my way up to waitress. By my first year in college, I was waiting tables three shifts a week and doing kitchen prep two days. With tips, I made great money – about $8 an hour, a king’s ransom for a high school student.

 I hated that job, really.

 Don’t get me wrong: I loved the people I worked with. A good-hearted Mexican couple owned the place, and any number of their nine children worked there at any given time. They encouraged me to do homework and study when the restaurant wasn’t busy.

 Funny aside: The whole time I worked there, I also took Spanish in school, and the first day of my first college intro course, the instructor pulled me aside and said, “What are you doing in my class? Trying to get an easy ‘A’?” I was stunned. She said, “You obviously have a perfect Mexico City accent.” I laughed; I explained; I went on to almost minor in it (one class short), but I’m still not totally fluent, despite my admirable pronunciation.

 Sounds like a perfect setup, but for one thing. It was restaurant work. It was hard labor, and I am not cut out for physical jobs. I got huge calluses on the balls of my feet; I cut myself; I was so fatigued after working 7 at night until 4 or 5 in the morning that I don’t know how I drove home sometimes.
 To this day, I sometimes dream that I’m the only waitress working (which was often the case) and suddenly people enter en masse and sit at 8 or 10 tables and get upset when I cannot wait on them all at once. The panicky feeling, the sense of being overwhelmed, returns as clear as it was yesterday. Every time I entertain the idea of opening my own restaurant or wine bar, I think of those days. The anxiety level rises and the brain kicks into gear: Don’t do it!

 So I can’t imagine a family keeping a restaurant in business for over 35 years, which they have managed to do. The owners’ youngest son took over the restaurant a few years ago after his parents’ health declined. My sister, who still lives in Michigan, told me a while back that the recession hit his business and he was planning to close. I felt sad, like I’d heard about a death in the family.

 It kind of clattered around in the back of my mind for a while, and today it hit me. I’ve had enough death. I lost my dad three years ago and my mom a year ago this month. I lost a sister nearly 20 years ago. I’ve lost friends. That restaurant connected me with a piece of my past, and I just didn’t want to lose another loved one. Yes, I hated the job, but I loved the place and the way that it shaped so much of who I am today.

 I Googled Las Piramides. I called. A young-sounding girl, probably one of the owners’ granddaughters or maybe a local teenager, like I once was, answered. She had no idea how much it meant to me to hear someone pick up that phone. My heart leapt in my chest.

 “Oh, I heard you were closing,” I said. “You’re still in business?” Yes, she replied in a chipper tone. Yes.

 I have never wanted a super burrito worse than this in my whole life. 

A dressing down

The other day I was talking with Romeo Taus, owner of Romeo’s Euro Café, about his notorious policy of no substitutions. (He is not unyielding, by the way, but does wish people would give the food a chance first.)

 Romeo used his salads as an example. He creates a salad and the dressings so that all of the flavors meld together in harmony. Certain items might add a little liquid to the mix; others might provide balance to the tang of the vinegar in the dressing. So if a customer asks for something to be left out, or for the dressing on the side, it can throw off the whole thing. Kind of like going to a concert, but the bass player didn’t show up and they play anyway.

 I sympathize with Romeo. It must be tough to laboriously slave over a dish until you think you’ve achieved perfection with it, and then some picky bastard comes in and messes everything up.

 On the other hand, Romeo and a few others aside, there’s an epidemic in our kitchens of cooks over-dressing salads until they’re gloppy messes. I had to laugh while watching Hell’s Kitchen last night (OK, you got me; guilty pleasure) when one of the newbies slathered poor Romaine leaves with a gooey Caesar, and Chef Ramsey had a fit.

 My husband always orders dressing on the side for that very reason. He doesn’t care for vinegar to begin with, but can abide a small amount. If a salad is drowning in it, he is repulsed. Even if he likes the dressing, he abhors an over-abundance of it, preferring to taste the lettuce and ingredients.

 I’m more in the Romeo camp. I want my salad dressed and tossed with flavors fully integrated the way the chef intended. But you can’t douse the poor thing, OK? Lettuce is delicate. So are my taste buds. Go easy.

The Tipping Points

A waitress told me recently that her tips have declined noticeably since the recession began. People still want to eat out, but they’re being stingy tippers to make up for the squeeze they feel. I’m not sure if it’s across the board, but I’d love to hear from servers on this. In the meantime: People, tip or stay home.

The onus is on you as the customer to sufficiently compensate your server. Restaurant owners pay them less than minimum wage, so tips are their livelihood. If you’re not willing to pay 20 percent for good service, please, get familiar with your own kitchen. Notice I say “good.” I have no patience for slacker servers and have no compunction about leaving less, though I think it’s just rude, petty and juvenile to leave a penny – if it was that bad, call over the manager and have a conversation right then and there.

For the record, I don’t like the system. I wish servers were trained well, treated as professionals and paid a full salary. But as Mom always said, “Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one gets full first.”

True story: A friend of mine a couple of weeks ago went out to eat with a large group. Everyone chipped in, and they realized they were short. They all threw in more, and then one diner counted the cash, removed a small sum of money (no one is sure if it was a couple of bucks or more) and left in a hurry. In effect, he stole money from the server.

While this is an extreme case, I know from experience that most diners in groups who figure their bill forget to add the sales tax (in Phoenix and Tempe, that’s 9.3 percent), and they feign ignorance in math to avoid paying their share of the tip. I host groups on occasion and I tell people right up front: Round up the tax to about 10 percent, and figure on 20 percent for a tip, so that means whatever your bill is, expect to throw in close to 30 percent more.

If you’re in a big group, the server almost always deserves 20 percent; trust me. And don’t start the I-don’t-tip-on-the-tax argument; that is a negligible amount. Wringing your hands over whether to leave that extra $1 bill? Think about it. Are you really going to miss $1? But those dollars add up at the end of the shift, and could mean the difference between someone paying the rent this month or not.

“Can I bring you something to drink?”

“Can I bring you something to drink?”

Every server is taught to ask that probing question as soon as possible in their dealings with diners. Not because they’re keenly interested in anyone’s hydration levels, however. Alcohol sales are key to a restaurant’s profit margin and to padding the bill for a bigger tip. Everyone wants to push the booze.

I understand that, but there is something inherently backward in asking me what I want to drink before I’ve even glanced at a menu. If I’m eating out at a nice place with a full bar or even a decent wine and beer list, chances are I want to pair my beverage with my meal. I don’t want to be rushed into a glass of Pinot Noir and then think, shoot, that’s not going to go with the scallop appetizer I’m eyeing.

Even if I do just want an aperitif for starters, three seconds – the span of time between when the server puts down the drinks list to the time The Question happens – generally isn’t enough for me to whittle down the cocktail list.

The usual scenario is that my eyes race crazily all over the list in hopes of settling on something before I hear the phrase of doom: “I’ll give you a moment to decide.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Come BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

 “A moment” in server time is different than “a moment” of civilian time. It ranges from 5 to 15 minutes, I’ve found. I don’t need “a moment” and I don’t need 15 minutes. I need about 3 minutes.

Restaurant owners, please stop pushing servers to push drink orders first thing. Everything about this ritual makes me cranky. Trust me, you don’t want me to be cranky.

Servers, please don’t rush me, and don’t disappear if I can’t make a decision on the spot. I probably didn’t wander into the restaurant telepathically knowing what was on the beverage menu.

Here’s an idea: Put down the menus, ask if we’d like some water (chances are really good that we do), and tell us you’ll be back in a few minutes if we’d like to place drink orders or if we have any questions on the menu.

Simple. A good compromise. You’re still planting the notion in our heads that we might want something alcoholic to imbibe, but you’re not breathing down our necks, and you’re promising not to punish us for not being prescient about our palates.

Restaurant Week

So it's probably bad form to start out a new blog with a major bitch session, but I'm just that kind of punk food writer who would do it. Here goes.

Arizona Restaurant Week. Had a conversation with a fellow food writer this morning about it and we were finishing each other's sentences because we know it oh so well.

This is the time for restaurants to shine, to strut their stuff, to dazzle. Instead, we get a monotonous parade of (for starters) tired salads, soups and boring bruschettas, and (for entrees) glazed salmon, seared scallops, some kind of banal poultry or a yawn-inducing march of meat that inevitably includes short ribs or an inferior cut of steak -- hangar, flank, etc. Instead of providing a firecracker ending, desserts almost always flame out with an interpretation of (usually, but not always) chocolate cake, maybe a creme brulee, a bread pudding or some berries in cream. Instead of a $60 meal for $39, as my colleague said, you're getting a $39 meal for $39.

I'm painting with a wide brush here; there are exceptions. (The Mission, I'm eyeing you and your almejas al vapor and pork shoulder, rrrrarrr!) But overall, we see little creativity in the dishes and even less passion in the preparations.

Also, virtually without exception, employees hate restaurant weeks, which they call "amateur hour." The attitude doesn't just seep into the service, it gushes like a broken dam of resentment. Not without good reason sometimes, I admit -- the checks are much lower than usual, so tips sink correspondingly, even when well-meaning diners leave 20 percent. They tend to make eye-rolling demands, like asking for filet to be cooked well-done, or failing to call ahead and then proclaiming they are vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free/allergic to nuts/you name it.

And let's be honest, a lot of the RW diners don't get out much and think 10 percent on the already-discounted prices is just fine. They're not always the best-behaved or most appropriately dressed lot, either. (One manager told me that regulars ask her, "What's with the Denny's crowd?")

It's not just a Phoenix thing, either. I've been let down time and again during San Francisco restaurant weeks.

Why, then? Why do they keep having them? Why do we keep going?

Obviously, restaurant owners like the infusion of business in a still-slow season. It's the same reason they agree to half-off coupons on daily deals sites. It brings in the bodies. And they hope -- optimistic bunch that they are -- that these newcomers will be so impressed with their place that they won't be able to resist coming again and again and spending oodles more money.

Diners, meanwhile, like to give a new place a try before committing to a "real" dinner. And it's a way to get a deal, if the quality is there. I see myself as the canary in the coal mine, slinking in for a relatively cheap three-course meal to check it out before dragging my husband back for the regular menu. It's worked a few times for me -- I probably would never have gone for anything but happy hour at Chaya in San Francisco if it hadn't been for an outstanding restaurant week lunch. But too often, I grouse over my dry short ribs or overdressed frisee and decide to boycott the place.

Let's mix it up a bit next year, shall we? Let's offer up the best ingredients, let's put the best cooks on the line, let's trot out a new dish or two and not the tired old "favorites." I can't hold a gun to diners' heads, but I promise I will do my best to spread the word about proper attire, behavior and tipping practices. I don't expect miracles from either side, but we have to start somewhere, right? And I'm sorry, but that starter is NOT going to be a bowl of tortilla soup or a Caesar salad.