Do restaurants understand why we are eating out?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 7th, 2009

If you follow along at home you may notice I eat in a lot of restaurants.

Call it an occupational and social hazard. First off I have two careers which keep me a little busy. Secondly, I have two young toddlers which make it sometimes necessary to eat out as a family to conserve energy. Third, I am a bit of a foodie and love to experience new tastes. Lastly, I am a military brat who has never lived more than five years in the same house and so I take 'field trips' to stay sane.

It is not an insane number of times, probably two suppers, one lunch and a breakfast every week. The thing is that I try to make the experiences as different as possible.

I have given this a lot of thought and I believe there to be a huge disconnect between restaurant owners and patrons. Here is the number one problem:

Owners are chefs, or like the food they serve, and think you are coming for the food. Patrons are looking for an experience and go for the atmosphere.

Hear me out.

If I am away from home on business, I am looking for someplace to relax and feel comforted. If I am taking my kids out it is because I am stressed and tired and need someone else to take care of things in the kitchen. If I am out with friends I am looking for a sense of fun and adventure. If I am on a date I want romance and attention to detail.

There are very few cases in which the food is the top priority. I go to the same pizza joint because I like their dough; I go to the same fast food place because I am addicted; I go to my favourite Vietnamese place despite the atmosphere because I want their imperial rolls. Most of the time, however, I am looking for a little help from the service industry to make me feel special.

I don't think people who work in and own the places understand this.

I offer this as a list of tips in case you happen to be in the food service industry. Or as a list of pet peeves that some of you may identify with.

When I sit down at a table, bring me something; a glass of water, a crayon, anything to make me feel like you know I exist; it will go a long way.

Make suggestions. I always ask my server what they would eat and some of them treat it like it is the strangest question. It is not. You see this stuff day after day, if you would still eat it, I know it is good.

Kids of any age have a short attention span. If you can't get me their food in 10 minutes, fill the time with other things, even crackers. Also, it does no good to rush their food out to them if you are still going to take 30 minutes to bring my food and I have no time or space left to eat it because they are done and crying.

Water. Every five minutes. Same with coffee. Every five minutes. I am not kidding. There are places I will never go again because I do not like feeling like I am trapped on the Serengeti.

If you are having a bad day, that is fine, tell me. I will be more forgiving. Impatience, rudeness or sloppiness are not what I am paying big bucks for.

Last, but the most serious, bring me the check. I can't tell you how many times I have sat for what seems like hours waiting for someone's attention in order to get out of the place. Once I have the check in hand, I can decide when to pay you, and I feel like you have empowered me to make my own choice about leaving.

That is the quick list, there are of course 100 stories I could tell, from the time we had no cutlery and the waitress decided to just throw a pile of knife and forks on the table and say "here;" to the myriad of times when I actually thought we must have been forgotten.

Don't get me wrong, I have had some of the best moments of my life in restaurants as well, times when the chef came and sat down at the table and talked about the food; or the waiter made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe.

Unfortunately, bad service is becoming the norm.

And that is the thing, ultimately. I go to a restaurant to feel special, to have an 'out of the ordinary' experience, and when you fail to provide it I am not coming back very often, even if it was the most amazing ribs, steak, salmon, or nachos I have ever eaten.

I think the people that work there have become so self-involved and self-important that the customer is no longer anything but a means to an end.

Here is how I handle it. I am a generous person, but I know a tip is a tip; it is an extra for value added. Mess with me and you get nothing. Smile at me and you may get 10 dollars at a coffee shop. I think if we stopped just automatically tipping some appropriate amount to people who don't deserve it, things might change.

Secondly; I tell managers that Lucy Loo has to go. I write letters.

Last but not least, restaurant owners need to become aware of the power of social networking. I tweet where I eat.

I talk about how I was treated and 500 people in Moncton read that and make their own choices. They also talk to their friends. I post on Facebook with actual photos of what I eat. We need more honest critique of the industry.

There is nothing like a good meal in a great restaurant. It is simple to make an impression, and even simpler to have it be the wrong one.

What we can learn from foreign foods

Social Studies - Published Monday August 31st, 2009

Last summer I wrote a book review for Canadian Dimension magazine of the book "The 100 Mile Diet." I also, you may recall, mentioned it in a column.

The idea is that eating locally is an ideal way to remain healthy, support regional ecological differences, and at the same time, filter most of your money back to local producers.

There are huge benefits. It forces you to eat in season, while at the same time allowing you to get to know your eco-region at a much deeper level.

We are fairly lucky here; there are very few things that are not grown within 100 miles; although oranges and olives spring to mind.

This summer, I have been experimenting with the complete opposite.

In the last week I have been touring around the Maritimes eating in ethnic restaurants that I have found. The more authentic, the better.

In Saint John I ate at the Northern Chinese restaurant, where the women did not seem to speak any English. I had a soup which was among the worst things I have ever eaten. It was a vinegar broth with three types of dried chili, as well as fried tofu chunks and some kind of chili oil floating on the surface. It was so spicy I cried the whole time I ate it. The second dish was actually among the best noodle dishes I ever had. Thick egg noodles in a brown onion sauce.

This week I went to Halifax and had, in no particular order, Transylvanian Goulash with huge chunks of paprika sausage and sauerkraut in a creamy stew at Cafe Chianti; Moussaka and stuffed peppers washed down with a Greek red wine at the Taverna Opa; Nachos and Propeller Bitter Ale at the Economy Shoe Shop, and the best sushi ever at Hamachi House; with some warm sake, of course.

It would be a good bet to say that almost nothing I have eaten in two weeks came from within 100 miles; unless it was eggs at Chez Cora.

Even the snacks I have been eating have been from as far away as you can imagine. Yesterday I bought some pistachios from Iran, Dates from Greece, and washed them all down with a burdock and dandelion beverage I found from England.

Now, you might ask, so what?

Well, here are three things that have occurred to me. First off, the world is changing, astronomically. It used to be that the most popular accompaniment in Canada was ketchup. In short order the number one accompaniment for most Canadians has become salsa. As the world changes, the foods from the less developed and southern countries are replacing the old standby items.

I would wager more people in the Maritimes eat rice, grown in the tropics, than potatoes, grown in our own mud.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, did you know they grew pistachios in Iran? I didn't. All I knew about Iran is that their leader is evil; or is supposedly evil if CNN is to be believed. But here I was eating some of the best pistachios I have ever had, and actually thinking about who grew them, and where, and what life was like for them, and how they managed to get the pistachios so rich tasting. All of a sudden Iran was a real place with a real immediate impact on me.

I realize that I should care about them anyway, and I do; but this somehow made the Iranians more a part of my actual world. I could not imagine that the farmer who looked after this crop was any different than my neighbour growing corn.

Eating the food of another country is a way to immerse yourself in that culture. If you don't believe me, take a drive up St. George and go to the convenience store across from Wesley United some day for lunch. There is a great Korean couple who own the store, and while the guy tries to teach me Korean words, the wife cooks up a fabulous lunch with red chili sauce on noodles and barbeque pork. It makes you want to know more about them.

Third, and most importantly, when you stop and think about it, all of this food tasting from around the world says something very strange about how wealthy I am.

You see, before the Americans wiped out half of the world's economy one of the big news stories making the circuit was that the world was facing an impending food shortage. Then all we have heard about for a year was that the economy was ruining the average person's life. Something strange was going on in the background though . . . nothing.

Nothing has changed for the rest of the world. There is still a shortage of food. Most people in most countries where I have been eating food from could not afford, or even find, the food I have so easily come across in the Maritimes.

So in one sense my culinary adventures have brought me closer to other cultures. In another sense, I could not be further away from the day to day reality that the majority of the world faces. Despite the fact that we all spice things differently, food is the one thing we all have in common. Not only that, but we have so much in common it is interesting.

Every culture on the face of the planet has something sandwich like, for example. Whether it is beef wrapped in a fajita, lamb in a pita, duck in a pancake, or cheese between two slices of bread.

The other thing we have in common is that food is hard to come by. It seems simple right now because we are used to cheap transportation, storage, and mass farming. But the time is coming, for all of us.

We have to realize that we are all in this together.