Food & Wine

On customer service and being “seen”

/ lintqueen / Leave a comment

One thing that really delights me[1] is being “seen.”

When someone notices my little quirks, habits, mannerisms or things that make me happy and comments on them — or better yet, acts on them — it makes me feel special. In fact, it was one of the first things I found fascinating about Adrian: not long after we met he observed that I “do a thing” when I meet someone new, whereby I use a relatively consistent system (an “algorithm,” if you will) to figure out how the new person and I are connected.  I knew I could nearly always find a connection, but I hadn’t realized that I had a method for doing so.

My definition of good exceptional service (at a restaurant, on a plane, at a hotel, etc.) is a combination of two things that (at first) may seem contradictory: it should be both unnoticeable and it should make me feel “seen.” 

The example I always use for the unnoticable part was the casual bar/restaurant at my Dad’s club in Charlotte, where at lunch a basket of individually wrapped packages of crackers (melba toast, saltines, captain’s wafers) was served along with the meal. I love melba toast2 and would usually eat several packages3, yet not once do I remember seeing any of cracker detritus on the table — and that includes the (numerous) crumbs!  They were all whisked away, silently and immediately, without a fuss (as it should be).

The other component of exceptional service happens when people whose job is ostensibly to perform a specific service (serve the food, check me into the hotel, ring up groceries, etc.) do more than that, and *see* me: an employee at a restaurant that, upon learning that I’ll buy cupcakes just to get the icing, *gives* me a tub of icing, or a random hospital employee who walks me to the elevators for parking when it’s clear that I’m not only lost, but also so directionally challenged that any verbal directions would be, uh, lost on me.

Back in August, Adrian and I had dinner at minibar, a molecular gastronomy restaurant owned by José Andrés (who you may also know as the founder of World Central Kitchen). The overall experience was delightful — even in early exchanges about dietary preferences4 I felt like they were *glad* to be making me happy. 

The meal itself was stunning — 26 courses, each plated and served at once to all 12 guests (the restaurant does two seatings of 12 guests every night) along with a narrative about the dish. As is common with molecular gastronomy many of the dishes seemed to be one thing but were actually another entirely: the butterflies in the first image were actually made of beets! 

Minibar is also known for its drinks and is next door to barmini, José Andrés’ molecular gastronomy-inspired craft cocktail bar; however, like many upscale cocktail bars these days, most of the cocktails are based on brown liquor5, which I’m not a huge fan of.

Ok, enough backstory — this is where things get spectacular.  Each pair of guests had someone who was sort of like their concierge. I’m sure there’s a proper restaurant term for their role, but I don’t know what that is, so I’ll just tell you that ours was Rita, and she was fabulous. When the time came to take our drink order, I hesitated as I’d seen the ones listed and, though they looked interesting, they were, like barmini’s drinks, very brown-spirit based. I asked Rita if she’d mind if I told her what sorts of drinks I’m fond of and maybe they could surprise me?  Rita seemed delighted by the challenge and asked what I liked, to which I replied “vodka-y and sweet.”  After clarifying that fruity-sweet was my favorite sweet, Rita briefly vanished, only to return with a great big smile as a tray was brought out with my drink-to-be6…

My drink was vodka, mango juice, and a little vanilla whisked with liquid nitrogen until it made a sorbetto. The sorbetto was rolled into little canelles, which were placed into a coupe glass with a tiki pattern on the stem, then topped with cava.

Alongside the presentation was a wee tiki-styled vase containing a demitasse spoon, for stirring my drink as my sorbetto melted.

When Adrian tasted a sip, he asked if they’d sampled my DNA or something, as they’d nailed The Best Drink for Gina so thoroughly. The way Rita absolutely aced the drink order was both: (a) overall indicative of our experience at Minibar and (b) a great example of someone making me feel “seen.”

As it turned out, though, the most delightful bit was yet to come.

Yesterday I received a FedEx box, which contained the letter below7 and three packs of Peeps:

OH WOW. Mind absolutely blown. POOF!

Also note that she sent this letter with the peeps (meaning I hadn’t yet sent her my address), which also means she went to this site, followed the link to my store, and found my address there!

  1. Ok, there are a lot of things that really delight me, but that’s also kinda delightful, right? :-). Feeling like I’ve been seen is definitely a consistent Gina-delighter, though. ↩︎
  2. Though I never buy it. Note to self: look for melba toast at store. ↩︎
  3. I feel I should add that it was a messy affair, as melba toast are crumbly, but to be honest, that is putting too much responsibility on the toasts. I am the crumb-maker, not the toasts. Accountability and all that. ↩︎
  4. Wherein I explained my version of “too spicy” is Old El Paso mild salsa and was reassured it would be no trouble to modify the dishes so my face didn’t get burned off. (And it apparently wasn’t: nothing was “too spicy” for me. :-) ↩︎
  5. Whisky, whiskey, bourbon, scotch, gin (which isn’t brown but often tastes of floor cleaner, so I lump it in there) ↩︎
  6. This would have been a video save for the fact that my version of WordPress seems not to allow it. Harrumph. ↩︎
  7. I removed Rita’s address, of course. ↩︎

Quick review of Revolutions restaurant in Durham

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

Summary:

Food: very good (I wouldn’t yet say OMG fabulous)
Service: interrupted

On Monday night I took

aklikins to Revolution for his birthday dinner. We arrived at 7:30 (had reservations) and were seated promptly. Since we knew we were doing the three course tasting menu, we also ordered promptly and were brought bread and my drink (house chardonnay). Adrian’s drink (tea… ordered sweet, but they didn’t have any and didn’t tell him when he ordered it) took significantly longer (7-8 minutes?). The bread (slices of loaf bread and cornbread muffins) was quite good… the slices, in particular, had a nice tooth, slightly sourbread-y flavor and crisp crust that I really enjoyed.

Our firsts were veal with baby potatoes in a tomato sauce, served with thin crouton-y toasts. Very good, but surprisingly heavy for a first.

And then something must have happened, because there was more than a 45 minute gap between when we finished out firsts and when our seconds arrived!  At about 40 minutes in I asked our waiter if he knew where our food was, and he assured me it was coming and offered me a free glass of wine. Since I hadn’t even finished my first glass yet, I told him no thanks and thanked him for the information.

Two minutes later he showed up with another glass of wine (I remarked to

aklikins that apparently I was getting comped wine whether I liked it or not!). And finally, a few minutes after that our food showed up.

 

The second plates were saddle of rabbit with tarragon and beet risotto (I wondered if perhaps the risotto was the cause of the delay?). The rabbit was very tender and complemented well by the sweetness of the risotto, but would have been more enjoyed had we not been so full of game already, I think.  Too much too rich, you know…

The dessert, a hazelnut chocolate cake with candied quince, was very good but not exceptional. The quince was wonderful and the small amount of quince syrup livened up the otherwise very good — but not roll-your-eyes-and-sigh — hazelnut chocolate cake.

The ceilings were, IMHO, too tall, leading to the echo-y noise that is so common in trendy restaurants. The tables were wider than the norm, which was nice because there was room for all the food without feeling like you were going to knock something off the table. The light fixtures, by http://www.tordboontje.com/, are gorgeous and the table settings are minimalistic (whose aren’t these days?).

In sum, I thought that if the pairings of the food had been better and the major service gap hadn’t happened, the experience would have been excellent. As it was, it was enjoyable, but not quite what it could have been.  I am curious about what they’d have served if we’d chosen the five or seven course tastings… would there have been more balance?

I think we’ll go back, but after they get a chance to work out some kinks.

 

a splendid birthday…

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

…is comprised of:

  • the guy at Starbucks saying “That’s not you!” upon seeing the picture on your credit card, and upon being told that it, in fact, was me, only *20* years ago (in college) saying “WOW. You look much better now!”. And giving me a free mocha.
  • a delicious lunch out with new work colleagues at Sandwich in Chapel Hill (a restaurant I’ve been meaning to try forever) — grilled cheese with shaved beef and prune preserves — yum!
  • a delivery to my office of my favorite flowers (gerber daisies and roses) that were sent by aklikins
  • bonus mid-afternoon birthday cookies from work folks
  • cards and presents (from dtnorman and Adrian’s parents and sister and my aunt and uncle) in the mail (one of the presents from my Dad was a tiny remote-controlled Mini Cooper… as it turns out, I don’t have a puppy after all, I have a cat!! You should have seen her trying to catch it and batting it around!)
  • dinner out with aklikins at Rue Cler — more yummy!
  • presents from aklikins — including a new laptop with a touchscreen that is *neato* (and I just want to play with it now!!). And a remote-controlled WALL*E (who falls over rather drunkenly a lot, which is funny) !! And lots of other really swell stuff!!

HAPPY!!!!!

 

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This weekend…

/ lintqueen / Leave a comment

This Saturday, August 9th, Rod-O-Rama (

[info]aklikins‘s garage) will be hosting an open house and pig picking. It’s the Hot Rod Hoopla.

You should be there.

Noon to 6pm. Music by Killer Filler. Hot Rods.

Come check out the shop. Have a bite to eat. Listen to some music. Tell all your friends.

assemblage

/ lintqueen / Leave a comment

I  didn’t remember if I liked peanut butter and banana sandwiches, so I made a peanut butter sandwich and peeled a banana and am assembling them in situ.  Is yummy. Kinda nice ’cause the bananas aren’t ejecting themselves from the sandwich either…

feeling oopy

/ lintqueen / 5 Comments

I wanted cereal for breakfast more than I wanted to admit that the milk didn’t quite smell right.

This was a mistake.

(it was dated *tomorrow*, though).

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

/ lintqueen / 4 Comments

Last summer my neighborhood had a salsa walk (it was probably June-ish, I imagine?).  In anticipation thereof, I bought a bag of tortilla chips from Target (Archer Farms brand), but since *everyone* had brought chips, mine mostly went uneaten (though I confess I did get lost trying to find the right street and busted the bag open as sustenance for the finding.  I have ZERO sense of direction.  Or maybe negative sense of direction, if that’s possible).

So, the chips went home again with me.  And they got brought out again a few says later when some of the folks on my street decided to congregate for hanging out and drinking wine (I *love* my neighborhood).  A couple more chips got consumed at that point, but mostly we had wine.  :-)

For the next month or two, every time I’d get that “want-salty-and-crispy” craving thing (which happens roughly once a week), I’d go and have a chip or three.  Strangely, the chips seemed unaffected by the passage of time in between the cravings, remaining crunchily delicious from one eating to the next.

Fast forward to September-ish when it dawns on me that I’ve now been noshing on the same bag of chips for three months.  At that point it seemed like the chips had some sort of “survivor gene” going on so I didn’t feel like I *should* chuck them.  Plus, honestly, they were still  really tasty.

It’s now March of the year after and I am somewhat sad to say that this afternoon I dumped the last of the chip crumbs into my mouth.  The chips are no more.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

(Yes, I do understand what an oddling I am that I would develop some strange respect/admiration for a bag of tortilla chips.  So much so, even, that I felt compelled to immortalize them on LiveJournal.  Sigh.)

A little disenchanted

/ lintqueen / 4 Comments

I ate an apple for breakfast — healthy, environmentally friendly, etc.  Yah me! I am still a little disgruntled, though, because in my head apples are a “easy” food, requiring no extra cutlery nor plates nor cooking, whereas the reality is that they’re messy and sticky and you have to go immediately throw the core away because you can’t just put it down…like you could, say, an empty Pop Tart wrapper…

A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord, Smorgasbord, Smorgasbord

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

Or so Templeton the Rat sang, and I’d have to agree. aklikins 1 and I went to the NC State Fair last night and I did pig out mightily. A corn dog, a fried potato-spiral thing (sometimes known as “butterfly chips”), and a fried dough (aka “elephant ear”, aka “big lump of fried covered in powdered sugar”) all made their happy way into my “bellah”

In the “to go” food category, two “monster bags” of cotton candy await me at home. Oh, and fudge. And candied almonds.

And then there was the Candy Castle, a “pick-your-candy-by-the-pound” place that sucked Adrian and me in, to the tune of 2 lbs. of Tootsie “Frooties” (which I’d never seen before), BB Bats, Laffy Taffy, Atomic Fireballs, etc. etc. 2

Ride-wise, we did the great big Ferris Wheel, the Zipper, the Fireball, the swings, the bumper cars and the (can’t remember the name of it, but it was like this).

The fireworks were *amazing* — the new “sparklies” are so very very pretty.

1 His first NC State Fair ever, despite having lived in Raleigh for more than a decade!
2 Yes, I know: sweet tooth, much?

mmmmm….Candy

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

11.5 oz of Flavored Tootsie Rolls
14.4 oz. of Strawberry Cotton Candy Flavored Candy Corn
14.4 oz. of Orange Mango Flavored Candy Corn
34 oz. of Jelly Bellies
4 oz. of “Unbearably Hot” Gummi Bears
22 oz. of Candy Corn
____
100 oz. of candy ~ 6.26 lbs. of candy… all of which sounds quite reasonable until you consider that none of this was bought for Halloween and/or children.

aklikins has a sweet tooth that’s just as bad as mine!

(We also bought two new board games… must have game night soon.  Maybe early November…anyone interested?)