The Food-Service-Decor Matrix or How to Review a Restaurant

     First, let me get the shilling out of the way. Today, my first article in a series was published by ecoRI.org, a RI based environmental news site. Big ups to Frank Carini ,editor in chief, and all around "queso grande" at ecoRI, for giving an untrained, untested, previously unpublished writer a chance. Today's story is pretty straightforward, but I assure you that subsequent stories will have my signature snarkiness. Here's a link to the website ecoRI.org. The headline is, "Recyclable Waste from Small Restaurants Flows Unchecked into the State Landfill."
     Now onto today's subject. The question you should ask yourself after a meal out is, "Will I make it a point to eat here again?" Not, "Am I full?"," Did I get my money's worth?", or, "Am I sick?" There are three things you should take into consideration when assessing a dining out experience, the food, the service, and the decor.
     The food can be judged on two factors, flavor and value. Remember, value only goes so far. Food that is inexpensive but tastes like shit, or makes you sick is not a value purchase. Alternately, food that is expensive, but leaves you flat in the flavor department is no good either. Restaurants walk a fine line when it comes to what they charge for what they serve. I would certainly rather pay a little more for an abundance of flavor, but the general rule is the lower the price, the greater the value, unless the food could substitute as fertilizer. Here's the bottom line. IF THE FOOD SUCKS, THE RESTAURANT SUCKS! Great service and a beautiful decor cannot save lousy or uninspired food.
     Now, onto service. We've all eaten out. We've all had great service. We've all had shoddy service. Assuming the majority of you can tell the difference, I digress. Once again, the bottom line. IF THE SERVICE SUCKS, THE RESTAURANT SUCKS. The best food is only the best if it is served in a timely, and pleasant, manner.
      Great decor sets the bar pretty high for all newcomers to any eating establishment. Beautiful appointment of the space makes one expect beautiful food and service. Decor is the only area of assessment that, when sub- par, won't automatically preclude me from subsequent visits, but they have to hit it out of the park on the food and service. Lousy decor falls into three categories: old, grungy, and uninspired, or some combination thereof. We've all been to restaurants where the decor is right off of Mike Brady's drafting table. (If you are laughing at that, your age is showing!) Lots of greens and browns. Maybe some angled pine wainscoting. The kind of place where the first dollar they made is hanging on the wall, and it was minted in Confederate States of America. Check out Lil and Gene's Family Restaurant in Manville, RI for an example. Grungy looking places sometimes have the best tasting food. Haven Bros. is a good example. It doesn't look great, or particularly clean, but at 2 AM, after several beers, worth every penny! A lot of smaller asian and latin restaurants suffer from uninspired decor. You know, the kind with paper tablecloths and stackable banquet chairs. Luckily, most of these places take the food and service pretty seriously. Go to Apsara palce on Hope St., or El Rancho Grande on the corner of Pocasset and Plainfield on opposite ends of Providence, to see what I mean. All four restaurants that I've mentioned are worth a trip.
  
     In conclusion, if the food sucks, it doesn't matter if the service and decor are great, the restaurant sucks. No one is returning until there is an "Under new ownership/ management" sign out front.
     If the service sucks, even great food and decor can't save you, the restaurant sucks. People may return, but not for a year or maybe more.
     If the decor is old, grungy, or uninspired, but the food is delicious/ inexpensive, and the service is good, this is a "find", and most people will return.

    Here's to career changes in one's mid- thirties!

    Love, Peace, and Bacon grease!

Job Fair? More Like Job Melee!

   

  











 I used to wonder what kind of degenerate loser went to job fairs. Well, today, I was that degenerate loser! Let me say, the face of 10% unemployment in RI is UGLY! The job fair started at 10 AM, and when I pulled onto the Warwick street where the Crowne Plaza is located (approximately 9:45 AM) traffic was backed up for about a quarter mile. Traffic was backed up because the parking lot at the hotel was FULL! I was forced to park in a small neighborhood across the street, and walk a quarter mile to the hotel. Normally, a quarter mile wouldn't bother me, but I was wearing my dress shoes. Ouch!

    When I got there, there were only four or five businesses in which I had interest. One gentleman asked if I was interested in the insurance industry. I replied, "Yes. I'm interested in destroying it." That was the end of that conversation. I think in order to call your business an industry, you should produce something beside forms and paperwork. Insurance is the only product you ever buy and hope you never have to use.

    While there wasn't much there for a career chef, with the exception of a local farm, and of course, the host of the event, the Crowne Plaza, there were a few opportunities for a budding freelance writer. I gave a resume, including a link to this blog, to a representative from Rhode Island Magazine. Apparently, they use only freelancers, so I've got that going for me.

     Anyway, the hotel's ballroom, where the event was held, was packed, to use the local vernacular, "from butt to gut." Not a good place for claustrophobes, or anyone with flatulence. (Look it up!) I've peppered this piece with pictures, to give you an idea. It's nice to feel that you're part of something larger than yourself, and today, I was part of a desperately unemployed mass of people!

Love, Peace, and Bacon grease!

  

New Year, New Career and You Did What?!

     Welcome back! It's a new year, a new decade, and I'm still dealing with the SOS. Blogs are good, restaurants are bad! I have gotten two offers to write for websites after sending my blog as an example of my writing. Funny, that after writing it for just a couple of months, my blog has generated more income potential than my fifteen years of restaurant experience, but I digress. I say potential, because these are not paid positions, but simply opportunities to expand my audience. At least they are giving me a chance, which is more than I can say for any of the restaurant positions for which I have interviewed. 

    As you know, I have been actively looking for work in  the restaurant business since last August. I have had six interviews since then, and all of them ended in a "thanks, but no thanks" rejection email. I fear that a change in my career path is inevitable. That being said, expect more, and more frequent, blog posts.

     Here is a funny story from my past.
     About ten years ago, I was employed as the chef at a prominent french/ fusion restaurant in Downtown Providence. This restaurant had won an a award from RI Monthly for the best gourmet chicken dish. (Unfortunately, not my recipe.) All of the winners were to have a tasting at the RI Convention Center, sponsored by the March of Dimes. I had to prepare bite sized samples of the dish. The owner of the restaurant informed me that there would be approximately 500 people there, and we would have refrigeration and holding ovens for our product. Three days before the event, I placed my orders for all of the food I would need to mount such a production.
    

Two International Crisises: The Business Is Broken, and So Is the Food

                These two things don’t have much in common, one is an economic crisis, and the other is an environmental and human rights issue, but nonetheless, they are both key to the survival of our nation as a whole, the overall wellness of the planet, and the right of all men to be free.

        
            The first, most pressing issue we face in these challenging economic times is outsourcing and the domestic hiring of illegal labor. But aren’t they really the same thing? They are a way for companies to pay lower wages to people, and in most cases, forego the business of paying payroll taxes in the States. This is loss of State, Federal, and sometimes, as is the case in Rhode Island, local tax revenue.

The “agreed upon” number of illegal immigrants in this country is about 12 million, but some estimates put that number at nearly 20 million! Now, we can’t assume that they are all working in these tough economic times, nor can we assume that they all don’t pay taxes. There are plenty of illegal immigrants in this country with real enough looking documentation to get a job on the payroll. So let’s just use half. That’s 10 million by the largest estimate. We’re rounding up.

If each of those 10 million paid $100 per week in payroll taxes, that’s a BILLION DOLLARS A WEEK in taxes spread across the local, state, and federal levels. The cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq approaches $1 trillion (That’s NINE zeros, folks! Write it down. It even looks big.) That’s just over $100 billion a year. We could cut that number by half with the FIFTY- TWO BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR we would get from taxing 10 million more people! (I changed the math in this statement the day after posting it. I was off by a multiple of ten!)  Not to mention, the windfall to Social Security and Medicare! I know of a couple of restaurants where a full third of the workforce is “under the table”!

The issue of illegal workers in the United States is a double whammy, because many immigrants in this country support families in other countries. They send money out of the country, by check, money order, or wireless transfer. I knew a Senegalese gentleman who sent as much as sixty percent of his pay out of the country! This permanently removes money from our economy.

Some may think that this is a veiled racist thing, but it’s not. I don’t want illegal immigrants of any color.  Canadian? Take off, eh! Irish? Erin go home! Japanese? Tachisaru mai kuni! The real problem is the employers who don’t think twice about hiring illegal labor. I wonder how it feels to fuck every American at once.

The second problem affects the entire food industry, and the way we’ve eaten and survived for thousands of years. Genetically modified foods are the number one reason to be scared shitless in America.