Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh Unknown (books to read for 13 year olds .txt) 📖

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A L A N R I C H M A N

It seems absurd to me that I should have been affected this way.

I know celebrities are generally the most remote and unapproachable individuals on the planet, rarely bursting with love. I realize everyone who patronizes celebrity restaurants is supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to taste celebrity cuisine, even if the sous-chef is preparing it. Still, I felt cheated. Seeing those famous faces is important. We can go anywhere if all we want is a hot meal.

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P A L A T E C L E A N S E R

Ten Commandments for Restaurants

1. Don’t Underestimate Our Intelligence — or Our Math Skills I once ordered the three-dollar cheese plate at a New York restaurant and got an ungarnished chunk of “cave-aged” Gruyère so tiny that I shook my head in despair. The waitress huffed, “It’s a full half-ounce.” Maybe the cheese was raised in a cave, but I wasn’t. Using my junior high math skills, I calculated that the Gruyère was going for a mere $96 a pound, the sort of markup that would make even truffle salesmen blush.

2. Don’t Put Me On Hold More Than Once Maître d’s (sorry—reservationists) have mastered this art. “May I put you on hold?” asks Chad, who punches the button before you can reply. I’ll put up with this once, but when Chad does it again, I hang up and never call back. Restaurants that continually have customers listening to Kenny G’s greatest hits should have a truthful recorded message: “We’re so popular we don’t give a damn if you come to our restaurant, so we’re putting you on hold again and again, and if you even think of complaining, your name will go on our blacklist and you’ll forever be deprived of our ninety-dollar ‘market menu’ consisting of small portions of stuff the chef got cheap.” 3. Don’t Banish Us to the Bar as Punishment The all-too-common phrase “Your table isn’t quite ready” invariably means the customer is sent off grumbling to a packed bar. Restaurants that can’t honor reservations on time should offer some sort of conso-2 3 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

lation to inconvenienced guests, even if it’s nothing more than a complimentary glass of the not-very-good house wine. The first kind word to a customer shouldn’t come after he’s seated, when the bread boy asks, in various fractured languages, “You want the chapati, the focaccia, or the ficelle?”

4. Don’t Push the Austrian Zweigelt Unless You Know Something About It

Wine lists are becoming packed with obscure bottles from all over the world. Having a Portuguese Castelão on a list is fine as long as there’s a sommelier on hand to describe it, but too many restaurants are leaving the job to waiters who have no clue—no restaurant would put bar-ramundi on its menu without explaining that it’s an Australian game fish. By the way, both the Zweigelt and the Castelão are red.

5. Specials Should Never Be Expensive

Nothing is more annoying than an off-the-menu côte de boeuf special for two that turns out to cost $38.95 per person, way out of line with other prices. Granted, the waiter who lovingly described the steak to you shouldn’t have to announce the price—that makes everybody feel cheap and creepy. But if a maître d’ with a phony Italian accent is going to shave white truffles over your tagliatelle, the dish shouldn’t cost $72, unless everything else does. Nobody should have to take out a home equity loan just to afford the venison of the day.

6. Knock Off the “Day-Boat” Routine

Sure, like I really believe there’s an armada of fishing boats sailing off every morning at daybreak and returning at dusk, just so every restaurant in America can put day-boat halibut or day-boat cod on its menu.

7. Waiters Must Never Ask “Who Gets the Soup?” While I’m Regaling My Guests

I know, I know, our waiter is very busy. A lot to do. There isn’t a waiter alive who doesn’t believe the restaurant would close without him. That’s F O R K I T O V E R

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why he can’t wait for me to finish my sentence before he interrupts my lively conversation to ask the eternal question, “Would you like fresh pepper on that?”

8. Don’t Ask “Is Everything All Right?” Unless You Want an Honest Answer

In a world filled with perfunctory gestures, this is the worst. When the restaurant owner comes by the table to ask this question, he wants us to tell him that his joint is unrivaled. Sure it is. The chef is putting canned pâté on the tournedos, the sommelier is into the cooking wine, and the carpet in the dining room hasn’t been replaced since 1973. And we’re supposed to tell him everything is all right?

9. Ban the Banquette

What is this, the Last Supper? I hate sitting side by side with my friends (and their coats), all of us up against the sticky red Naugahyde cushion. Why is it that everybody hates the middle seat on an airplane but doesn’t mind banquettes? (At least on airplanes, the sparkling water comes free.) By the way, I don’t like booths, either, but I know everybody else does.

10. Bring Back the Dress Code

I’m tired of putting on a jacket to go out to dinner and finding myself surrounded by velour tracksuits. At the very least, announce your lack of standards with a sign: we welcome slobs.

S I D E S

M Y B E E F W I T H V E G A N S

My first contact with hard-core veganism occurred in the offices of GQ, heretofore never thought of as a breeding ground for countercul-tural doctrine. An editor who is a fierce vegan sent me a