[photo courtesy of Brian Benefield]
[This is the latest installment of “Cobb Cuisine, Culture and Community” by Brian Benefield]
Have you ever had a good or bad experience in a new bistro or even your favorite burger joint and felt compelled to Yelp it from the rooftops? Before you become a keyboard warrior and bash the place or offer a stellar five-star review, you should pause and think on it for a moment. Every situation that happens in a restaurant can be resolved or positively recognized before leaving the establishment, giving the owner the chance to hear the good or the bad. Some people I know have spent their life savings to follow their passion for cooking and serving others in a very competitive industry where margins are razor thin and costs have skyrocketed post-pandemic.
Mistakes happen, things get dropped in the kitchen by a new hire, and I’ll be glad to humiliate myself for the greater good. My first restaurant job was at a Cheers-type place named Houlihan’s at Lenox Square Mall in the early 90s. I was hired as a server with no experience, and during my first training shift, I heard bellowed from the kitchen, “Fajitas, pick it up for table 12!” Being the way too eager new employee, I ran to grab the blistering hot cast iron skillet with my bare hand and promptly dropped it to the floor. As my hand began to bubble and my pride sank, the manager said, “Send him home; he’s useless.” I went on to become a server trainer, bartender, and expeditor in the kitchen and worked there for many fun-loving years. But I never grabbed that damn skillet again without the fajita condom, or you may know it as a hot pad or oven mitt. Restaurant lingo was irreverently different back then, and I have a feeling it still is.
In the Insta and Facebook world, you can make your friends jelly by posting a beautiful artificially filtered picture of the mouthwatering dish you just devoured for lunch while they eat leftovers at home. Like…
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