Hi, I'm Julian Sanchez. My friends call me "Dirty Sanchez," "Sancho," "Tubby Bitch," and sometimes "Jeff," because they really don't know who the hell I am. It's my girlfriend who's friends with everyone; I just sort of tag along. In fact, I spend most of our happy hours, dinners, and other gatherings gazing into my iPhone screen, typing desperately boring and misspelled Yelps and Tweets with my sausage thumbs.
So, last night, we all went out for one of my girlfriend's friend's birthdays, to some nice restaurant that they all like for some reason. I don't get it. I think the best meal in town is the "Big Ass Burger" at Carl's Jr. It goes down awesome with a vodka Red Bull, which is my favorite drink because it not only makes me go to the dark place, but it gives me plenty of energy to pick fights with strangers while I'm in it. Fuck yeah, dawg!
So there were about 14 of us—at least I think so—I only got ten fingers to count on, you know. And the waitress was this sassy little bitch—kept trying to act all smart, like talking to people about what wine they'd like to drink, or what beers were the "hoppiest." Shut up and refill my glass of ice so I can pour vodka Red Bull in it from the plastic bottle I brought in. Oh yeah, and bring more glasses of ice for this end of the table, so they can all drink free booze in your stupid fancy restaurant, too. Let the elitist assholes at the other end of the table drink your "wine" and "draft beer," thankyouverymuch.
Lucky for me, the restaurant likes my girlfriend's friends enough to have let us bring in our own hootch, because this party sucked; those guys weren't even looking my way or talking to me at all, which I didn't really care about because I had my iPhone and my vodka Red Bull. But when that smartass broad came to wipe down our table and set more silverware or whatever whoopty-doo-I'm-all-important-look-at-me thing she was doing, I was bored, so I said, "Hey! Hey!" and when I had our half of the table's attention, I pointed out how she was running her ass off.
Women like to hear stuff like that, like what a good job they're doing, blah blah blah. I expected her to high five me, or maybe suggest a meeting in the bathroom, you know? But instead she said, all snarky like, that she hoped that wasn't a "verbal tip," and when everyone asked what that was, she explained it. That it's when a customer says something really nice about a waitress and then tips her, like, 13% or something. They all thought that was funny for some reason but then this blonde lady next to me—no one was talking to her, either (I checked her out for a second, but she was fugly, a real butterface, if you know what I mean)—anyway, this hag says "Well, it's better than nothing." Man, you shoulda seen the hideous sneer on this witch when she said it! I wanted to high five her right there. The waitress was all, "Hey, I've got med school to pay off," like she's some fuckin' comedian or something, and the hag's husband or whatever laughed.
If there's one thing I hate, it's chicks getting the last laugh. So when she split all our checks and laid them down, announcing that she forgot to put a gratuity on 'em but she's not worried because they're all regulars or whatever, blah blah blah and they all had their cutesy laugh and lovefest, I showed her.
On the tip line of my credit card receipt, I drew an unhappy face with tears spraying out of it and wrote "wah wah wah!" Ha ha! I nearly had to put down my iPhone to keep my hands steady I was so excited. I kind of hoped a little that she'd confront me about it so I could choke the life outta her. I told you I go to the dark place, yo.
When we all walked out to our car, I saw her standing outside with the chef and owner who had come talked to our table before. She had brought out a signed menu for their birthday and all this stuff. I bet she thinks she's so great. I just stood there in the parking lot and they were looking at me and I was looking at them, and although it was dark, I'm pretty sure she could see the truth, cause it was right there in my eyes. I'm the fuckin' king. You mess with me, I'm gonna mess with you.
Later, some joker said that they hoped she didn't find out where I worked and somehow find a way to mess with my income. Whatever. A dumb waitress wouldn't know how to do that.
Would she?
Showing posts with label week in wankers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label week in wankers. Show all posts
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Week in Wankers: the weekend crew
Working both Friday and Saturday this week, which, for an old pro (or even a young and spritely tyro) is just one of those necessary miseries that you don't bother to complain about, like how a chambermaid dumps a piss pot.
But for those of us who, while in good shape (thanks, YMCA's clean and well-maintained facilities!), may be yellowing around the edges a bit, clocking in on a Saturday after the ass-kicking received on a Friday feels exactly like this. If Friday night (Amateur Night, Part One) is any indication of the cross-section I can expect to wait upon this evening, I will be faced with the following:
But then, sitting at the bar later tonight, counting my rubles, I'll think of this.
But for those of us who, while in good shape (thanks, YMCA's clean and well-maintained facilities!), may be yellowing around the edges a bit, clocking in on a Saturday after the ass-kicking received on a Friday feels exactly like this. If Friday night (Amateur Night, Part One) is any indication of the cross-section I can expect to wait upon this evening, I will be faced with the following:
- Loud, older Texans with loads of money and absolutely no taste, whose wigged wives wave their turquoise rings in my face and describe the "big, oaky, buttery Chardonnay" they want me to bring them. (Hint: Bring them anything, so long as it's undergone malolactic fermentation. That's all they really want. And if everything you have is stainless-steel-fermented, bring them a glass of half & half with some popcorn floating in it.)
- Aging hippies who take off their shoes and sit cross-legged on the banquette, so that all incoming persons will be forced to be witnesses to her rock-bottom Britney moment. Aging hippies part two, who come in reeking of patchouli so that everyone around them, instead of enjoying the native aromas of their eye-poppingly good lamb chops and Chinons, are forced to recall that college performance of "Godspell" they had to usher for fine arts credit.
- That champion douchebag who insists on sitting next to—instead of across from—his lady at a two-top, thus invading the personal space of whoever is at the table next to him, performing an unnecessarily raucous turning of the table to fit their needs, and in such a way that sends silverware rocketing off said table and onto the floor. As waitress first protests, "Please, sir, let me do that for you," is ignored, and then forced to return with new silverware, heroic asshole smirks, "Did that just totally mess up your vibe?" (Find out if having the busboy fart on his salad messes up his vibe.)
- The young lady who, because she ignored my brief (and apparently necessary) overview of the menu at the beginning of the night, is stunned to find out that the "Whole Grilled Branzino" on the menu is, in fact, whole, and forces me to send it back to the kitchen for fileting. Which, by the way, no modern kitchen or chef who has cooked abroad wants to do, because it not only kills the exquisite presentation, effectively reducing the glorious fish to a pile of glossy flakes, but because it's fucking lazy. ("Make my food into a pile I can shovel into my mouth without focus." America, what a country!) If you're blind and have no teeth, you can still negotiate a branzino's skeletal structure. Then again, if you're blind and have no teeth, I suggest the soup.
- This being date night, any number of the men who will be walked out on by their drunk, belligerent wives/girlfriends/ex-wives/mistresses/"nieces" and who will leave me a 12% tip, despite having forced me into an incredibly awkward situation, which I will have handled with great aptitude, if I do say so myself. When he asks a group of us at the front if we saw where she walked off to, one of us supposes she went to find an ATM to get the rest of my tip.
But then, sitting at the bar later tonight, counting my rubles, I'll think of this.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Week in Wankers
Dear William Preston,
I got your name from your American Express Platinum card - the one you used to pay the bill for dinner for yourself and your friends the other night at our restaurant. I'd like to thank you all for coming, for being only slightly threatening when I told you we were dangerously low on heirloom tomatoes, and for making self-effacing jokes about how you would be my "nightmare table," which you followed up with a laugh that suggested you weren't totally joking.
In fact, you were all perfectly lovely. I enjoyed how easily and swiftly you chose your wines without asking for my help (someone's been reading their Wine Spectator!) and I loved hearing the sound of your laughter for the hour and a half after you paid out. It was the carefree, melodious laughter of the upper middle class, content in the knowledge that your Lexus SUV was right out the window where you could see it, that your gated community home was safe from harm, and that vigilant forces like Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly were at work against our evil Socialist (might we even suggest Nazi?) administration and their attempts to make us Sweden.
I particularly enjoyed the fist bump you gave me on your way out the door that said, Hey, we totally appreciated your awesome service to the point where it kind of feels like we're friends now! I half-expected to open the check presenter left on the table to find a "Great service" tacked on, as I often do whenever a guest leaves one of my tables so fulfilled that he's moved to physical contact.
But instead of such a comment, there was written: "Col. 3:23" on the credit card slip, just above the amount (over $400) and the tip ($50). Now, I admit, it is easier for me to figure out percentages in my head (12.5%) than it is for me to recall the latter half of the New Testament, so after consulting the internet, I learned that your message to me - at this point, now serving as an explanation for such an incredibly low tip - was this:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.
(NIV)
Thank you, William Preston, for those words of inspiration and guidance. Words that no doubt inspire you to wake up every morning and make your own money, which you then spend on nice (but not too nice) dinners with friends, which you then pay for, write off as a business expense, and then complain about our government taxing you to death.
I took a cue from you and wrote this Bible verse on the memo line of my rent check, but wouldn't you know it, that heathen landlady of mine just wouldn't accept less money, even though this month was pretty lean. I also tried it when paying for my dog's expensive medications, but the vet explained she doesn't work for men OR the Lord, she works for Terriers.
In trying to make sense of the generosity of your spirituality, Mr. Preston, but not of your wallet, I prayed. I prayed good and hard. I dug deep and silenced any anger I might have felt at your hypocrisy, any distress at the loss of what would have been $30-40 more (had you been anyone else), and any sadness I felt at how undermined the serving profession is in America - even at finer dining establishments like mine where the employees study wine and food passionately and make the every whim and desire of perfect strangers their priority 32-40 hours a week.
I set all these negative feelings aside and asked God to help me understand where you were coming from. Were you implying that instead of serving what I thought was a man, I was really serving the Lord? I admit I would never have guessed, given the table's obsession with discussing bisexuals and Catholics.
Or were you implying that service is its own reward? I thought, does this mean that I ought to be happy with the $2.13 per hour that I make and not be so greedy as to expect tips in excess of 15, 18, even 20 (!) percent? Are you, William Preston, with the American Express Platinum card content with the money you make?
The answer, I think, is simpler than all that.
You are just a giant turd.
Cheers,
Your Server
I got your name from your American Express Platinum card - the one you used to pay the bill for dinner for yourself and your friends the other night at our restaurant. I'd like to thank you all for coming, for being only slightly threatening when I told you we were dangerously low on heirloom tomatoes, and for making self-effacing jokes about how you would be my "nightmare table," which you followed up with a laugh that suggested you weren't totally joking.
In fact, you were all perfectly lovely. I enjoyed how easily and swiftly you chose your wines without asking for my help (someone's been reading their Wine Spectator!) and I loved hearing the sound of your laughter for the hour and a half after you paid out. It was the carefree, melodious laughter of the upper middle class, content in the knowledge that your Lexus SUV was right out the window where you could see it, that your gated community home was safe from harm, and that vigilant forces like Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly were at work against our evil Socialist (might we even suggest Nazi?) administration and their attempts to make us Sweden.
I particularly enjoyed the fist bump you gave me on your way out the door that said, Hey, we totally appreciated your awesome service to the point where it kind of feels like we're friends now! I half-expected to open the check presenter left on the table to find a "Great service" tacked on, as I often do whenever a guest leaves one of my tables so fulfilled that he's moved to physical contact.
But instead of such a comment, there was written: "Col. 3:23" on the credit card slip, just above the amount (over $400) and the tip ($50). Now, I admit, it is easier for me to figure out percentages in my head (12.5%) than it is for me to recall the latter half of the New Testament, so after consulting the internet, I learned that your message to me - at this point, now serving as an explanation for such an incredibly low tip - was this:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.
(NIV)
Thank you, William Preston, for those words of inspiration and guidance. Words that no doubt inspire you to wake up every morning and make your own money, which you then spend on nice (but not too nice) dinners with friends, which you then pay for, write off as a business expense, and then complain about our government taxing you to death.
I took a cue from you and wrote this Bible verse on the memo line of my rent check, but wouldn't you know it, that heathen landlady of mine just wouldn't accept less money, even though this month was pretty lean. I also tried it when paying for my dog's expensive medications, but the vet explained she doesn't work for men OR the Lord, she works for Terriers.
In trying to make sense of the generosity of your spirituality, Mr. Preston, but not of your wallet, I prayed. I prayed good and hard. I dug deep and silenced any anger I might have felt at your hypocrisy, any distress at the loss of what would have been $30-40 more (had you been anyone else), and any sadness I felt at how undermined the serving profession is in America - even at finer dining establishments like mine where the employees study wine and food passionately and make the every whim and desire of perfect strangers their priority 32-40 hours a week.
I set all these negative feelings aside and asked God to help me understand where you were coming from. Were you implying that instead of serving what I thought was a man, I was really serving the Lord? I admit I would never have guessed, given the table's obsession with discussing bisexuals and Catholics.
Or were you implying that service is its own reward? I thought, does this mean that I ought to be happy with the $2.13 per hour that I make and not be so greedy as to expect tips in excess of 15, 18, even 20 (!) percent? Are you, William Preston, with the American Express Platinum card content with the money you make?
The answer, I think, is simpler than all that.
You are just a giant turd.
Cheers,
Your Server
Monday, June 8, 2009
Week in Wankers
Everyone was pretty well-behaved this last Friday night. I think it's because my new engagement ring is shaped like brass knuckles and could totally cut a bitch.
Oh, but there was this:
Guest: So this rosé is made with what again?
Me: Pinot Noir.
Guest: (Blank stare at glass full of salmon-colored rosé) So is it red?
Me: Pinot Noir is just the grape - it can be used in red, rosé, and Champagne. Champagnes are frequently made with it. The juice inside is white; it's the skins that are red.
Guest: Okay. So what do you call this?
Me: Rosé. Made from Pinot Noir. (It was actually Sinskey's very fine vin gris, but if I went into this, the poor guy's head would have rocketed off into space)
We've a long ways to go. I want to start by getting everyone to stop talking about varietals until they have a better grasp of wine.
It's gotten so bad that whenever someone sits down and says "I want a Pinot," I say, "No, you don't."
If you don't believe me, I give them a hot-climate Grenache/Syrah blend instead, and they love it.
Oh, but there was this:
Guest: So this rosé is made with what again?
Me: Pinot Noir.
Guest: (Blank stare at glass full of salmon-colored rosé) So is it red?
Me: Pinot Noir is just the grape - it can be used in red, rosé, and Champagne. Champagnes are frequently made with it. The juice inside is white; it's the skins that are red.
Guest: Okay. So what do you call this?
Me: Rosé. Made from Pinot Noir. (It was actually Sinskey's very fine vin gris, but if I went into this, the poor guy's head would have rocketed off into space)
We've a long ways to go. I want to start by getting everyone to stop talking about varietals until they have a better grasp of wine.
It's gotten so bad that whenever someone sits down and says "I want a Pinot," I say, "No, you don't."
If you don't believe me, I give them a hot-climate Grenache/Syrah blend instead, and they love it.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Week in Wankers
Last Week in Wankers post was a bold-faced lie. It was actually a Week in Wankers from several months ago, but I never posted it because I was recovering from the grave wound I incurred when I shot myself in the face in frustration. Then I got the new job and, well you know, bitching about the dining scene took a backseat to professionally bitching about the dining scene.
I enjoyed my first shift back at the restaurant in two weeks, and enjoyed it even more because it would be another week before I have to do it again. In all fairness, I love the restaurant, love its heart, love my coworkers, and that love sort of disgustingly carries over like sewer run-off in a big storm to my guests, who eat and drink whatever I tell them is good, and so satisfy my egomaniacal need for validation. However, there are, as always, Wankers. And this was their week:
1. Another server (who seems to be chronically blessed with encountering the highest number of douchebags of any of us) had someone return a steak they ordered "rare." The complaint? TOO rare. Too rare. TOO rare. TOO RARE. I would like to take this moment to assure all skeptics out there that we did not, in fact, slap a raw ribeye on a plate and holler "Eat up!" Our grill cooks are from Texas, for the love of GOD, TEXAS! This means they can be executed for not knowing how to grill a steak to temperature. This is the subject for another post, to be called A Note About Temperature, or Why Americans Insist on Throwing $45 Down the Toilet.
2. Most people are TERRIFIED of wine. So much that the wine list trembles in their hands, and they spit words at me with panicky desperation, words they read someplace but don't understad like, "RED! SMOKY! UH, UH...DRY!!" So eager are they to relinquish the decision to me--and yet still look like they are the ones making a choice--that they agree to whatever the first thing out of my mouth is. I could say "Well, this wine isn't smoky, but it DOES have that shitty smell you associate with cleaning out a moldy fish tank" and they'll go "Yeah, that one!!"
This explains the astronomical success of Wine Speculator and Robert Parker's "scoring". DESPERATION! It's. Just. Wine. In Spain, they bathe in it. In France, they drink it from gasoline cans. Americans are like horny, insecure teenagers at a school dance when it comes to wine.
3. When you order our Caesar salad without its three housemade croutons, and without its 2 fillets of white anchovies, you are paying $10 for a side salad of Romaine hearts tossed in Caesar dressing, and are an idiot. Oh, and I eat your delicious white anchovy fillets in the back and fill up on brain-enriching Omega-3 fatty acids so that I and my offspring will take over the world and put you and your dumb offspring in cages hung from the ceiling, and poke you with bones.
4. Someone ordered a bacon risotto, which comes with a giant SLAB of house-made bacon OH MY GOD YUM on top of it. When it arrived, he picked the bacon up with his fingers, plopped it on a plate and announced to the server, "You can take that. I'm not a big bacon guy."
Said the not-a-big-bacon-guy. Said the not-a-big-bacon-guy who ordered the bacon risotto.
I enjoyed my first shift back at the restaurant in two weeks, and enjoyed it even more because it would be another week before I have to do it again. In all fairness, I love the restaurant, love its heart, love my coworkers, and that love sort of disgustingly carries over like sewer run-off in a big storm to my guests, who eat and drink whatever I tell them is good, and so satisfy my egomaniacal need for validation. However, there are, as always, Wankers. And this was their week:
1. Another server (who seems to be chronically blessed with encountering the highest number of douchebags of any of us) had someone return a steak they ordered "rare." The complaint? TOO rare. Too rare. TOO rare. TOO RARE. I would like to take this moment to assure all skeptics out there that we did not, in fact, slap a raw ribeye on a plate and holler "Eat up!" Our grill cooks are from Texas, for the love of GOD, TEXAS! This means they can be executed for not knowing how to grill a steak to temperature. This is the subject for another post, to be called A Note About Temperature, or Why Americans Insist on Throwing $45 Down the Toilet.
2. Most people are TERRIFIED of wine. So much that the wine list trembles in their hands, and they spit words at me with panicky desperation, words they read someplace but don't understad like, "RED! SMOKY! UH, UH...DRY!!" So eager are they to relinquish the decision to me--and yet still look like they are the ones making a choice--that they agree to whatever the first thing out of my mouth is. I could say "Well, this wine isn't smoky, but it DOES have that shitty smell you associate with cleaning out a moldy fish tank" and they'll go "Yeah, that one!!"
This explains the astronomical success of Wine Speculator and Robert Parker's "scoring". DESPERATION! It's. Just. Wine. In Spain, they bathe in it. In France, they drink it from gasoline cans. Americans are like horny, insecure teenagers at a school dance when it comes to wine.
3. When you order our Caesar salad without its three housemade croutons, and without its 2 fillets of white anchovies, you are paying $10 for a side salad of Romaine hearts tossed in Caesar dressing, and are an idiot. Oh, and I eat your delicious white anchovy fillets in the back and fill up on brain-enriching Omega-3 fatty acids so that I and my offspring will take over the world and put you and your dumb offspring in cages hung from the ceiling, and poke you with bones.
4. Someone ordered a bacon risotto, which comes with a giant SLAB of house-made bacon OH MY GOD YUM on top of it. When it arrived, he picked the bacon up with his fingers, plopped it on a plate and announced to the server, "You can take that. I'm not a big bacon guy."
Said the not-a-big-bacon-guy. Said the not-a-big-bacon-guy who ordered the bacon risotto.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Week in Wankers
- "This wine list is expensive. I just want a good merlot for under $20."
Bobo. Come on. Think back to a time when you found a merlot for under $20. It was an something like an aisle, wasn't it? With other products for sale around you? Yeah, we call that a store.
Restaurants buy wine at a wholesale price, just like stores do. Both places, in order to make any profit, have to sell that wine to the public at a higher cost. Since restaurants (theoretically) move less of the product than a retail store will (add to that the greater cost of running a restaurant versus a retail shop: paying the servers who open it, serving it in glassware we bought and have to pay dishwashers and a water bill to wash), and you end up with pricing that looks like this:
$15 wholesale cost of a bottle --> $22-25 retail (at a steal)
$32-36 on a restaurant wine list
That means, in order to find a $20 merlot at a restaurant, that piece of shit has to run about $8 wholesale. If you would pick up said piece of shit in a store, it would be about $13.
Your friends hate you for bringing cheap, shitty wine to their dinner parties, by the way.
2. Then there's the loudmouthed frat boy fresh out of his MBA program who interrupts me as I'm describing the food and wine on the menus to make embarrassingly erroneous claims such as:
- hanger steak is right here, where the flank is (pats my side - no seriously, the douchebag touches me. If this were a strip club, the little bastard would have two fingers broken before being tossed onto the street.)
- we didn't like this Cote du Rhone-Villages. Do you have any just Cote du Rhone? That's like saying "Fuck this Cadillac, do you have a GM?" Moron.
- (after I describe another Rhone as being kind of stinky, barnyardy goodness and his friends ask what that means exactly) Oh, lots of wine people describe wines as being stinky, it's like cow poop, you know? (Jesus, I hope you're not an MBA now that I hear you try to sales pitch your tablemates)
His girlfriend looks at the rest of the table and says "Can you believe he's only known about wine for three months?"
Really. That long?
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Week in Wankers
There was this couple griping in German about the hostess; their server happened to speak and understand German. She held her tongue until they'd ordered, received their meal and were halfway through it, then asked - in perfect German - if it was good.
Ah, sweet Demütigung!
A nice old lady asked me for a bottle of "the Tuscan Chardonnay", a roasted chestnutty little thing by Felsina, one of the most respected producers in Tuscany. Then she asked me "Is it DRYYYYY?" (See Catastrophic Post-Modernist Nightmare) I asked her what she usually likes to drink. She said, "I hate to admit it, but Yellowtail."
"Trust me. You'll love this. It's infinitely more interesting, layered and subtle than that butterball."
"Fine," she said. "And could you bring a glass of ice with it?"
Later, her trashy little granddaughter showed up, in fake tan and stiletto boots, all of 21, 22. She loudly proclaimed to her grandmother that she ought to try one of her mussels. The grandmother said, "What are they like?"
"They're just like oysters," the girl replied loudly, obviously pleased with herself. "They taste like slimy fish."
Wrong three different ways in one breath. Most impressive.
A late table came in, about five minutes before closing. She was already drunk. He was enabling. She announced, with a boredom that still managed to sound zealous, that she used to run a wine bar. Then she slurred, "I don't like sweet. Nothing sweet."
(See For the Love of GAWD, people, stop saying you hate sweet wine cause you don't and you shouldn't anyway but it doesn't matter cause you DON'T...)
I described a Salice Salentino to her as a lush and juicy blueberry with peppery wood tannins and nice acidity to balance the fruit, and she said "Hellloo? I told you I don't like 'sweet'."
It took me a second to realize she meant the reference to blueberries.
"It's not a Jolly Rancher," I said. "But it is made from fruit, so..."
Ran a wine bar, my ass. More like ran BY a wine bar.
Once.
In Borneo.
"What does brown butter ice cream taste like?"
"And the creme fraiche?"
My favorite exchange of the week, though, was courtesy of my coworker, C___, whose deadpan deliveries are the kind of genetic superpower I might have had if I weren't conceived on hallucinogens.
After scanning the very short dessert menu for some time, a lady looked up at C____ and said,
"I like chocolate ice cream, what do you suggest?"
"Amy's," he answered, referring to our local ice cream chain.
Guess you had to be there.
Ah, sweet Demütigung!
A nice old lady asked me for a bottle of "the Tuscan Chardonnay", a roasted chestnutty little thing by Felsina, one of the most respected producers in Tuscany. Then she asked me "Is it DRYYYYY?" (See Catastrophic Post-Modernist Nightmare) I asked her what she usually likes to drink. She said, "I hate to admit it, but Yellowtail."
"Trust me. You'll love this. It's infinitely more interesting, layered and subtle than that butterball."
"Fine," she said. "And could you bring a glass of ice with it?"
Later, her trashy little granddaughter showed up, in fake tan and stiletto boots, all of 21, 22. She loudly proclaimed to her grandmother that she ought to try one of her mussels. The grandmother said, "What are they like?"
"They're just like oysters," the girl replied loudly, obviously pleased with herself. "They taste like slimy fish."
Wrong three different ways in one breath. Most impressive.
A late table came in, about five minutes before closing. She was already drunk. He was enabling. She announced, with a boredom that still managed to sound zealous, that she used to run a wine bar. Then she slurred, "I don't like sweet. Nothing sweet."
(See For the Love of GAWD, people, stop saying you hate sweet wine cause you don't and you shouldn't anyway but it doesn't matter cause you DON'T...)
I described a Salice Salentino to her as a lush and juicy blueberry with peppery wood tannins and nice acidity to balance the fruit, and she said "Hellloo? I told you I don't like 'sweet'."
It took me a second to realize she meant the reference to blueberries.
"It's not a Jolly Rancher," I said. "But it is made from fruit, so..."
Ran a wine bar, my ass. More like ran BY a wine bar.
Once.
In Borneo.
"What does brown butter ice cream taste like?"
"And the creme fraiche?"
My favorite exchange of the week, though, was courtesy of my coworker, C___, whose deadpan deliveries are the kind of genetic superpower I might have had if I weren't conceived on hallucinogens.
After scanning the very short dessert menu for some time, a lady looked up at C____ and said,
"I like chocolate ice cream, what do you suggest?"
"Amy's," he answered, referring to our local ice cream chain.
Guess you had to be there.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Week in Wankers
Best quotes of the week:
"I'll have a pee-no griggy-oh"
"So duck egg creme caramel.... is that, like, a Cadbury creme egg?"
"Duck egg? DUCK egg? Like from a real live duck?"
"Where do you get duck eggs?" (My response of course: a duck. His wife then explained to him that ducks also lay eggs)
"I like salt on my fries." (This was how she asked me for some salt, after tasting her pommes frites)
(When asked if they wanted help finding something on the wine list) "I don't think so. I know these wines. Last time I was here I had a Chateau something. It was French. It was red."
"So is that like, a cab sauv?" (After I described the Chateauneuf du Pape)
"We're big foodies, so we don't need help. Can you heat up this iced tea?"
(Upon informing a mean old lady who insisted she was twice my age "and then some" that she's not that much older than I, according to her driver's license) "Oh, you can read."
"I'll have a pee-no griggy-oh"
"So duck egg creme caramel.... is that, like, a Cadbury creme egg?"
"Duck egg? DUCK egg? Like from a real live duck?"
"Where do you get duck eggs?" (My response of course: a duck. His wife then explained to him that ducks also lay eggs)
"I like salt on my fries." (This was how she asked me for some salt, after tasting her pommes frites)
(When asked if they wanted help finding something on the wine list) "I don't think so. I know these wines. Last time I was here I had a Chateau something. It was French. It was red."
"So is that like, a cab sauv?" (After I described the Chateauneuf du Pape)
"We're big foodies, so we don't need help. Can you heat up this iced tea?"
(Upon informing a mean old lady who insisted she was twice my age "and then some" that she's not that much older than I, according to her driver's license) "Oh, you can read."
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