Two Chaps Talking

Dear Boy,

In my time in the US I learned the one thing they definitely do better
than us is restaurants. The Americans have got this whole eating out thing
rather well organised. The food is good and resonably priced, staff are
helpful and friendly and, notwithstanding an exruciating few moments when
an out-of-work actor reads you the specials list , the whole experience
is efficiently charming.

It's not just the posh restaurants of Manhattan or Los Angeles either.
Across that great nation, the tiniest of roadside hash-houses (at least
those not owned by global industrial slop manufactories) seem to actually
care that you have a pleasurable meal. For an Englishman this is indeed
a revelation. For years we have endured a service ethic that ensures that,
even if the waitress hasn't actually spat in your lunch, you wish she
would in order to relieve the terrible psychological burden of pent-up
class hatred and personal loathing she is clearly dragging around on her
shoulders like a rucksack of resentment. The English restaurateur has
traditionally added to the bitterness of the experience through the belief
that the survival of his enterprise is dependent on getting you in, fed
and out within 45 minutes and that using ingredients of above animal feed
grade is a kind of slow commercial suicide.

So when almost any American culinary development crosses the pond I'm
the first in line to utter a loud hurrah. I even admit that, when the
first Starbucks opened here, I was a regular and happy patron. If you
worked anywhere out of reach of Soho, as those with long enough memories
will confirm, coffee was served from drip filter machines and tasted uniformly
repellent. There was a brief moment of something like pleasure, as you
slopped it into the styrofoam cup, in that you could at least imagine
you were somehow involved in a 70's American cop show. It only took one
sip before you recalled that Starsky never actually drank the stuff -
he either slammed the cup down on the Captain's desk while shouting something
about '…getting the DA off my back' and handing in his badge or
it spilled into his partner's crotch as his car powered off in hot pursuit
of a perp.

No, strange as it may seem in hindsight, there was a time when a grande
triple cap with a vanilla shot and a free cardboard sleeve was the best
thing going.

I even, God help me, remember a cold Sunday night in Edinburgh, when,
after experiencing the mid-range catering of the City, I snuck into the
Hard Rock Café in the simple belief that they'd be unable to fuck
up a burger. I wasn't disappointed - though I noted with strange pleasure
that the smaller branches in relatively out of the way places seem to
get the bin ends of the memorabilia stock. I'm as big P Funk fan as the
next guy but I found "Belita Woods' grey knit jacket worn during
an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show" hard to love. Isn't the idea
of memorabilia that it's supposed to remind you of something?

So generally, you're likely to find me in favour of pretty much anything
you feel like sending over in the food and catering dept, with one huge
exception.

A new restaurant has opened here called the Wolesley. It's run by the
same team that managed to make the Ivy so fashionable and it's very highly
thought of. I suppose I should have been put off by the mention of US
slebs in the press coverage - if 'Bob' De Niro, Brad Pitt and Gwyneth
Paltrow actually deigned to eat at all the restaurants that claim them
they'd be in constant transit between them and eating eighteen meals a
day. I'm not sure if Gwyneth actually eats any more does she? I sat next
to her at Nobu when they were filming Shakespeare in Love here and I seem
to remember she at least downed a bit of a roll - but that was some while
ago and pre-Atkins.

Now I'm obviously aware of the necessity of creating the right sort of
image in launching a venture like this so I wasn't expecting to get a
nine o'clock four-top on a Friday. I asked the bookings person for an
eight o'clock on a Tuesday. That's reasonable isn't it?

They couldn't fit me in on the next Tuesday, it seemed, but I remained
reasonable. I'm not, after all, interested in seeing or being seen - I
just want to have a nose around the place and check out the food. How
about the following Tuesday? No? The next one? By the time we were three
months out for a table and it still wasn't happening, I confess, the humour
of the situation became stretched.

'Is there some problem with Tuesdays that I'm unaware of? I asked

'Well no, Sir. At least not three months in advance. It's just that we
don't do eight o'clock. We can seat you at our seven or ten thirty sitting'.

It's not that my pride is affronted, it's just that it's so bloody unprofessional.
Sure you need to keep tables available for slebs at the key time and I'm
sure there are many who will book them, but real restaurants in Europe
have never needed to do this sort of thing. Call any proper restaurant
owned and run by Frenchmen or Italians and you'll get a table exactly
when you want it. You'll note, as you walk in, that there are many tables
in various sizes and a line of two-tops down one side that can be pushed
together to seat anything from diner a deux to the last bloody supper.
They don't turn away business if they can possibly help it and they manage
demand. If they still have too many people for places they put their prices
up. It is not, as they say, rocket science.

There is an old restaurant rule that runs something like this. A satisfied
customer will tell his friends. A dissatisfied customer will tell twelve
of his friends. What America has now sent us is a corollary. Turn one
customer away and he will tell all his friends who will, in consequence,
be desperate to eat here.

I suppose if those friends also try and are refused you get a massive
and ever increasing body of willing potential customers who never actually
attend. A world famous and entirely empty restaurant is finally a possibility.

Semper Fidelis

T