So, we walk into a local restaurant not long ago and see a sign at the reception desk announcing that a 3% fee will be added to the bill to compensate the cooks for the discrepancy in wages between them and the wait staff. It goes on to explain, that while the wait staff brings you your food and receives gratuities, the cooks prepare it and, therefore, deserve a slice of the pie. Now fair compensation is not the issue. Every entity has to work out exactly what that means in their situation, and act accordingly. The question is how that is supposed to come about.
One might muse that, if the cooks are indeed doing the job they are paid to do, why they would be entitled to an extra ‘spiff’ on the side. Also, this little entitlement is automatic, whether your food was prepared well or not. That’s like that mandatory ‘20% gratuity’ added for ‘parties larger than six’. What is the servers’ motivation to not just ‘phone it in’ if they are going to get the same money anyway? And all of this is in the face of an escalating minimum wage (the discussion of which would fill many pages with macro-economic arguments and be way too boring on a Sunday morning, or any time for most folks).
Is the Bay Area-styled entitlement mentality spreading south like some sort of airborne virus? Is this kind of thinking one of the early signs that the ‘participation trophy’ generation is taking over? What’s next, an add-on for their 401K? Why restaurants think this is OK in the first place is the baffler, and where does it end? A night out can rack up pretty fast already without all of the ups and extras.
Why don’t the servers divide their take with the kitchen? The servers benefit when the food comes out on time and well prepared. The customer is merely getting what he is paying for. Why not just have a city tax on top of that because the city would like a little more money, too? Then it can be like hotels where that $120 room you snagged on Expedia ends up costing you $180 after all the taxes and fees.
Long ago some angry restaurateur took out a billboard ad on the Long Beach Freeway that read, “If you can’t afford to tip, don’t eat out.” Of course, our first response was why is it up to us to compensate your help? The whole idea of tipping used to be tied to service where, if someone gave you a good experience, you tendered a little something extra. Now there are bills that come with the tips at various percentages calculated for you, essentially shaming you into picking one of the options. And if there are six or more of you, you don’t have a choice even if your service is lousy.
Nothing against the restaurant or their cooks, but this is a precedent that seems to be proliferating and there seem to be no natural boundaries. Does any of it ensure a better experience for the consumer? Oh yeah, them. What happened to people simply doing the job they were paid to do to the best of their ability? Or is that not a ‘thing’ any more?
KEEP ON TROCKEN? PLEASE, NO
We just had our first exposure to the 2016s from Germany. We’ve been telling you for to a while now to buy up the 2015s as it is a great vintage, one of the best in recent memory. Not having a firm impression of the 2016s, we were pleased with the opportunity to work through 80-100 of them. Our takeaway thus far? Buy up the rest of the 2015s!
The wines (mostly Rieslings) showed a bit here and there, and lacked the characteristic zip that pulled many of those 2015’s together at the finish. In other words, it looks like our participation in the vintage will be sparse at best. There are always a few winners in every vintage. But given what is out there from 2015, and a more few late 2015 releases coming from top sources hitting recently, 2016 looks to be a potentially minor play with, as always, a few stars, though we still have another 100+ wines to taste, including, in all fairness, many of the top Kabinett and Spätlese wines.
Frankly, we are pretty tired of every German importer telling us how important trockens (dry) are in German restaurants. The Germans like to drink their own stuff, we get that. But this isn’t Germany. Here we have all kinds of cuisines, particularly Asian (Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese to name a few) that go beautifully with a crisp, classic kabinett or spätlese, the little bit of sweetness playing nicely against ginger, garlic, curries, and other spices. No other wine pairs as well and as broadly across a multitude of dishes.
Plus, if you want to drink dry Riesling, the Austrians, Australians, and the folks in Alsace are making better examples and have been doing it longer. And that’s just Riesling! There are all kinds of other dry whites that will offer excellent choices…Sauvignon Blancs, Chardonnays, Grüner Veltliner, and so on. We understand the Germans responding to trends in their own back yard. But aside from Germans drinking German, we can’t see why the vintners are so intent on competing in an arena where they are at a distinct disadvantage outside their borders Most trockens are sadly undernourished and lean, and far too many are simply not pleasurable.
There are those that will point to the GGs (Große Gewächse), the relatively new category of dry wines from ‘Grand Cru’ sites, as the example of elite dry German wine. Alright, sure, some of them are pretty good but they are also rather expensive for what they deliver, many in the $50-80 range in stores and much more on wine lists. There are certainly many more exciting choices for less money. Yes, there are places like Baden and the Pfalz where dry wines have been the tradition for a long time. But the Mosel’s delicate, racy demeanor does not translate well into trocken. They are a little better in exceptional, warmer vintages, but rarely ‘great’. The persistent question is ‘why?’
Given over 1000 years of viticulture in these places, where certain styles developed because of the terroir of the region, we have to wonder who came along and decided all of that was nonsense. One of the great discoveries of modern winemaking is that, no matter how much technical wizardry one can employ, the most successful wines are the ones that are true to the place that they come from…essentially the same thing the monks figured out all those centuries ago. They drink a lot of spätburgunder in Germany, too. Doesn’t mean we’re obliged to do so.