Lunch!

Having spent much of the last three years either working or going to school almost every evening of the week I haven't been one to really "go out to dinner" much. Most evening meals are a quick slice of pizza or some Chinese takeout. When I do go out to eat it's an occasion, planned in advance with the location deliberately selected.

The flipside? I I've had the pleasure of enjoying what very few normal folks get to do.... Frequent long leisurely off-hours lunches on a whim. I don't have to blast through a sixty minute power lunch, nor do I have to eat between noon and 1:30.

Lunch has its advantages.... It's more laid back, especially if you get there after the rush. The menu, while generally smaller, will usually offer the dishes the restaurant's known for and usually have a broader array of sandwiches, salads, and smaller plates which often are a better showcase of a kitchen's abilities and innovation. And also the servers are typically less experienced, which means they're usually younger and cuter.

So in my travels I've found some rockstar fabulous lunch spots worth a drop-by.

First, the good cheap spots:
1. Sophia on Solano Avenue in Albany
2. Yammy Sushi in El Cerrito Plaza
3. King Tsin on Solano Avenue in Berkeley (Dim Sum!)
4. Magnolia Pub at Haight/Masonic in San Francisco

But recently I rediscovered A16 and have quickly found one of the best lunch spots in town. I found myself with time to kill in the Marina and I caught A16 on one of its open days for lunch (Wed-Fri only). Assortment of salads, a few pastas and small plates, and their full array of pizzas--probably the best in town.

Glass of wine, salad, and a pizza and I was out the door for $43. Of course one didn't need the wine or the salad, and I took half the pizza home so realistically you could be out of there sated and pleased for under $30.

Hard to beat for a meal at one of the better restaurants in SF.

A16
Chestnut at Divisadero
www.a16sf.com
Reservations: 415-771-2216 or www.opentable.com

HFF Quickie: Uncle Yu's at the Vineyard

Growing up in the California suburbs there's one cuisine that you come to love more than any other: American Chinese food.

I'm not talking authentic Szechwuan cuisine or ducks' tongue congee. I'm talking General Tsou's chicken. Kung Pao chicken. Lemon chicken. All forms of chicken, pork, and etc loaded with deep-fried goodness and serious sweetness.

It's what mom or dad picks up on her or his way home from work when they don't want to cook. It's what you and your friends get for lunch when you go out to eat like grown-ups (but still can't spend more than $10 a person). It's what your parents tried every now and then to cook at home but could never get to taste as good as at Mandarin Garden down on the corner.

My dad always said it was the "dirty oil" at Chinese restaurants that made it taste so distinctive. If that's the case then dirty oil is delicious.

It's something that you don't find in the cities, but you'll find in every suburb (or even rural town) where a Chinese immigrant has set up shop to sell versions of cuisine from their home land delightfully corrupted for the American palate.

One of my great frustrations is that despite living in an area with a significant Chinese-American population, I have to return home over the hills to get really good American Chinese food. Everything out here is about authenticity, which is all well and good every now and then, but what about some nice Szechwuan eggplant and chicken chow mein on a $7.95 lunch special?

I had the pleasure of recently eating at the pinnacle of American Chinese: Uncle Yu's at the Vineyard in downtown Livermore. It was a family affair as we celebrated my brother's birthday, and everything we had was great. Only in the appetizers was there even a hint of "east-west" fusion, overall everything was authentically true to mid-20th century American Chinese food.

Duck spring rolls, dry-fried garlic green beans, fried eggplant, tender fried squid, chicken chow fun, fish in black bean sauce--it was fucking awesome. Flavors were thick without being overly salty, fried food was crisp and airy, meat was tender and of significantly better quality than most establishments of its ilk.

Plus there's none of the annoying gimmickry or pretension of a shitty-ass P.F. shitty shitty Chang Chang's.

But I have yet to get to the best part.... Uncle Yu's has an enormous wine list that offers a brilliant (if relatively conventional) array of wines from primarily California and France, including an enviable Alsatian selection to pair well with the cuisine. We enjoyed a great 2004 Guerra California Chardonnay and a pretty much flawless 2001 Pernand-Vergelesses red Burgundy with lightly steeped tannins and tasty cherry fruit.

Dinner was pretty reasonable too, about $190 for four of us for more than enough food (and that includes $90 on wine).

So there you have it. Uncle Yu's is the first restaurant east of Walnut Creek to get the HFF seal of approval. Pretty fucking great.

Uncle Yu's at the Vineyard
39 South Livermore Ave.
Livermore, Ca 94550
Reservations: 925-449-7000
www.uncleyuatthevineyard.com

Why Yelp! Sucks, Volume 2

I hate Yelp! I really do. I don't just hate what a lot of people write on the site, but I actually hate the site itself and everything it stands for. Which is essentially providing limitedly relevant information while exploiting a false sense of community for a profit.

But that's a rant for a much older post.

The principal problem with Yelp! is that there is no oversight or moderation. Unlike Chowhound, which is a moderated message board with specific relevance criteria, Yelp! is a haven for uncorrected misinformation and irrelevance.

I'm no longer working in restaurants, so I feel compelled to speak a bit more freely. Some things I've encountered on Yelp!:

1. T-Rex BBQ in Berkeley was given a one-star rating by a user because it's menu "didn't seem like barbecue."

2. The restaurant where I worked was lambasted for our french fries being "obviously frozen." We barely have a freezer (it has ice cream and a few odds and ends in it) and have never, ever, ever, ever, not once, ever, frozen our french fries. In fact they're cut fresh every day.

3. The restaurant where I worked was also "lambasted" because of our wine service. Nevermind that the professed "wine connoisseur" waited until all the glasses had been poured and his wife complained about the temperature of the wine before he tried to somehow finagle a free bottle. Sack up and know what the fuck you're doing and make this judgment BEFORE you nod for the waiter to pour the rest of the table. Here's what you do, you say, "Why that tastes fine but I think it's a little warm, could you put it on ice for a bit before pouring the rest?" Come on! Care enough about your wife's taste to know that maybe she likes colder wine than you do. Or just slap the bitch for making you look bad. That's what I would do.

4. A two-star review of the venerable Rivoli: "if they happen to have something you like that day-- bully-- otherwise your sort of SOL." Wow, no fucking shit. What do you want some fucking terrible shithole restaurant that has chow mein, ravioli bolognese, and steak frites? How retardedly retarded. "Hey, if this place doesn't have what you like than they won't have what you like." Fuck those fucking restaurants and their small changing menus! Curse their, freshness, seasonality and restraint from wasting food! Last time I checked Rivoli typically offers a chicken/duck, pork, beef/lamb, vegetable, and a couple fish dishes on every menu! That covers pretty much the range of menu proteins. What the fuck do you want? Falafel? Then go to a fucking falafel joint.

I'm getting to a point here.

On a place like a Chowhound, such asinine reviews or such blatant misinformation could be immediately responded to by other users and done so directly in a thread, not buried a dozen posts later on Yelp! Moderators could also redirect, clarify, or in some instances delete posts that are malicious or clearly false. But even an unmoderated message board allows for immediate user correction. This is why edits on Wikipedia declaring George W. Bush's penchant for a2m pornography don't last very long. And why Wikipedia might lock certain controversial pages from further editing.

Yelp! doesn't do that because Yelp! needs happy users to visit their site and see their ads so that restaurants will pay Yelp! money to pick which reviews a user sees first.

So I guess in the democratic world of the internet Yelp! is the ultimate example of American democracy. Keep the citizenry placated by pretending that their input matters and let those with money pay to create their own reality.

And so what if Yelp! might give you a lead on a good banh mi place in downtown Oakland? You could also just walk around downtown Oakland and look for a banh mi joint, eat a banh mi, decide if you like it, then decide if it's a place you'll go back to. It's called adventure and discovery. Take that big plunge and go eat somewhere without asking a dozen of your closest internet friends whether it's good or not.

Besides, they're probably just a bunch of ignorant assholes with poor taste anyway.

Sebo - San Francisco, Ca

I operate my life on two basic principles:

1. Inconvenience others as little as possible.
2. Be as productive as possible as quickly as possible.

When principle 1 and 2 are in conflict, 2 trumps 1. This sometimes causes problems for coworkers and loved ones.

Going out to a sushi bar and ordering omakase is the only way I can think of to dine out and fully and completely abide by these principles.

You show up, you sit down, somebody brings you a few drinks, and then the sushi chef starts sending out food. He doesn't have to ask you what you want, you don't have to pore over a menu. And then when you're done you pay your bill and leave. It's liberating. The chef makes food, the eater eats. No middle person. And by eliminating the stresses of ordering food and dealing with waiters, your meal will be just that much more goddamn tasty.

I started reading The Zen of Fish recently and as a result I developed a serious craving for some reasonably authentic Japanese food. Girlfriend Charlie and I were out shopping in Hayes Valley when I noticed Sebo's unassuming storefront. Why how fortuitous! We returned right when it opened at 6pm and grabbed a spot at the sushi bar.

Omakase was the name of the game and pretty much the only way to eat at an upscale sushi bar like Sebo. The courses came steadily. First was a tender marinated octopus appetizer followed by a mountain vegetable salad. Excellent. Next up were steamed clams in sake, simply but tasty. The first round of sashimi was really nice. Your usual suspects, but all impeccably fresh. The nigiri was similar, though the uni, ama-ebi (with accompanying grilled shrimp head), and tamago were all strikingly good. The rice was warm, loosely packed, and well seasoned. We also snagged two of their rolls--one was a fresh blanched asparagus roll, the other was a deliciously refreshing combination of daikon sprouts, tuna, avocado, lemon, and sea salt. Last dish was a vegetable and shrimp chirashi sushi topped with broiled eel.

So yeah, the food was pretty fucking good. Great, even. And pretty reasonably priced for the quality. That being said, Sebo was a slight disappointment for two reasons. First, they didn't offer anything distinctive, with the exception of the one tuna roll which was still pretty straightforward California sushi, nor did they offer a particularly big selection of sushi staples. Second, in my (admittedly limited) experience with omakase, the chef traditionally offers up a course or two that isn't typically available from the a la carte menu. Sebo's omakase was simply a collection of menu items presented in a logical order. That's like finally scoring a date with a porn star, but you only ending up doing missionary. It's still good, sure... but it's disappointing. You can get any chick to do missionary.

So near as I can tell Sebo's as close to traditional sushi as you can get outside of Japan and it was effing tasty. I just wish it pushed the boundaries a little bit. Even the best sushi bars in Tokyo allow for a degree of fluidity and whimsy. It's the nature of the beast--tradition colored with faint touches of iconoclasm. Sebo felt a bit rote. Deliciously rote, but rote nonetheless.

Sebo
571 Hayes St.
San Francisco, Ca 94102
415-864-2122
Reservations: No.

Landmark Wines

Although Landmark Vineyards is an excellent Sonoma County producer of wine, I'm referring not to this esteemed purveyor of California Burgundies but rather to fine bottles of fermented liquid grapes that have changed how I look at wine.

Wine's always been a part of my life. My parents dragged my brother and me wine tasting all the time, but it pretty much all tasted like creeping death. Except for Manischewitz at Passover, which was awesome.

In the last few years I've encountered wines that have rapidly changed how I've come to understand what this vastly over-mystified, over-priced, and over-douchey product means and how it can be really fucking good.

2003 Txomin Etxaniz Getariako Txakolina. Light, crisp, slightly effervescent, and a minerally finish longer than Ron Jeremy's back hair.

2003 Michael Gay & Fils Savigny les Beaune 1er Cru"Les Serpentieres." Holy shit! There's dirt in this wine. It tastes like dirt! And not in a bad way! Awesome.

NV Bonnaire Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs. An independent champagne producer with a yeasty, bready, limey, zesty, and uber-complex glass of gold that tickled my tongue and other lame wine writing words.

2003 Wild Hog Carignane. Rich, juicy, ripe, and matched perfectly with pizza.

2002 Kuentz-Bas Tokay Pinot Gris. This was the first time I ever impressed a girl with a bottle of wine. It worked so well I bought a case. I ended up giving the rest away as Christmas presents. Because it's not worth spending money on broads, 'cause then all they want is your riches when the only thing they should be after is your jimmy. Word.

Charles Shaw Merlot. This wine fucking sucks. It made me realize that cheap wines suck and people who think they're "getting away with something" by pretending that shitty cheap wine is actually good are simply deluded assholes. It's shitty cheap wine. That's it. Enjoy it as such.

2005 Bonny Doon Pacific Rim Riesling. Now THIS is a cheap wine worth drinking. Dry, crisp, floral, and citrusy. Admittedly it's a whopping $8 a bottle at Trader Joe's, but it's like at least a million times better than Charles Shaw.

A Wine Primer Part 2

As I mentioned before, wine comes from grapes. Grapes are a plant. Some of you might eat grapes. These grapes are usually not the same grapes you make wine out of.

My point is, grapes are a fruit that grows from the ground. They're a surprisingly hearty fruit that grows well in some of the most intimidating landscapes in the world.

And as we've learned, virtually every wine-making grape varietal is the exact same species. Vitis vinifera is very prone to natural mutation. In fact new research has suggested that all white grape varietals come from a single vine that had a rare mutation of two genes.

What I'm saying is, even though they're all the same species, the cultivars are strikingly different. Different grapes have different characteristics, properties, and as a result certain grapes grow phenomenally well in some areas and grow for shit in other areas.

What are some general rules about grapes?

Generally speaking, cold climates produce white wine. Germany, Austria, and Alsace produce almost exclusively white wine, the red wine production limited to pinot noir and other thin-skinned early ripening red grapes. Why is that? Most red varietals ripen much later than white varietals, but colder climates have a much shorter growing season and wines like zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon would be painfully underripe if harvested before snows and frost freeze the grapes on the vine. Additionally, acidity (a product of near-underripeness) is a characteristic that is immensely appealing in most white wines but is not desirable in most red wines. Conversely, overripeness is almost universally deplored in quality white wines but if properly controlled in certain red wines hints of extra ripeness can be beneficial.

If something like a riesling grape is planted in southern Italy, the grape would ripen fully too early and be rich, overripe, grapey, and cloying. If a pinot noir is harvested too soon, it will be tart, bitter, and generally crappy.

Certain grapes grow better in certain regions because of how compatible the grape's development schedule is with the climate of the region.

So yeah, think about climate when you think about wine. If it's a cooler climate, think acidic white wines like riesling, gruner veltliner, pinot blanc, and chardonnay, as well as pinot noir, and some other red grapes you probably have never heard of like Dornfelder and Schiava. Sparkling wine will generally come from cooler climates as well. Warmer climates think rich ripening reds like cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel (a wild card that also likes some cooler climates), tempranillo, as well as Rhone and Italian varietals.

Really hot climates (eastern Australia, California's Central Valley, parts of southern France, chunks of Spain, southern Italy), think cheap, ripe, inoffensive, and innocuous wines with little character and complexity.

Breakfast at Brown Sugar Kitchen - Oakland, Ca

There's something about being white, middle-class, and ostensibly Jewish that makes me love soul food. Slow-cooked greens and pork. Corn bread. Fried chicken. Black-eyed peas. Corn bread. Biscuits. Hush puppies. Okra. Pecan pie. Corn bread. Mmmmmm. Corn bread.

Let's just ignore the fact that half of my extended family lives in Virginia. That has nothing to do with my love of southern food. Nothing at all.

The only thing keeping me from enjoying soul food more often?

I'm scared of West Oakland.

I decided to transcend my apprehension for locations whose addresses are "______ & Mandela" and head out to Tanya Holland's newest venture, Brown Sugar Kitchen.

The food was pretty g-d good.

Girlfriend Charlie and I headed out for a late breakfast while she had the windshield on her Bentley replaced. The restaurant's located on a pretty barren stretch of Mandela just north of West Grand on the edge of an emerging residential neighborhood.

The space is sleek and stylish while still being home-y. The smokey aromas of barbecue were present but not overwhelming. We sat at the counter and were immediately given a couple beignets with meyer lemon marmalade and plum jam. It was something the kitchen was experimenting with that morning. Light, fluffy, and crisp and dusted with powdered brown sugar.

The breakfast menu's small but has what you need--granola, baked goods, poached eggs and grits, egg and bacon sandwich, egg and vegetable tart, and cornmeal waffles (add chicken for $5).

Charlie had the sandwich (with the optional ham). It's pretty damn good, served on a soft wheat roll. I opted for the chicken and waffle. The waffle was fantastic--light and airy but with a crispy crunch. The chicken was also tasty and well-spiced. It's cooked in advance and kept warm so it lacked the immediate crunch that fresh-fried chicken has, but it was still moist. I doused the plate with Tabasco and maple syrup and it was quite satisfying.

We also got a fresh buttery biscuit (with more fabulous plum jam) and a mini pecan pie (so fresh that there was a bit of shell in the pie) with a fresh un-syrupy sweetness.

The restaurant's barely been open a month which was reflected in the inconsistent (but friendly) service and the inconsistent (but friendly) timing issues in the kitchen.

The lunch menu looks rock-star fabulous and we'll head back soon to try the jerk chicken barbecue, po'boy, and probably another couple pecan pies, for what it's worth.

Also, good looking wine list and local beers on draught.

Fresh, reasonable, rich, and tasty.

Brown Sugar Kitchen
2534 Mandela Parkway
Oakland, Ca 94607
510-839-7685
www.brownsugarkitchen.com

A Wine Primer Part 1

Wine is delicious. This cannot be contested by any single person in the entire world. I challenge ye!

Wine also is not as complicated as it is made out to be. Just because something can be expensive does not mean it's particularly more complex than beer or whatever else.

Hell, in many ways wine is simpler than beer as wine doesn't require cooking and has fewer flavoring components than beer.

But that's a digression.

Over time at HFF I'll throw out some simple explanations and studies to demystify the wine world.

Some things to know:

1. Wine is made from grapes. Most of you know this. Know however that there are over 2000 different grape varietals from which wine is made, and there are scores of varietals that are used to make wines that are held in high esteem but wine drinkers, makers, and collectors.

2. Most wine is made from one grape. Or rather, one species of grape. Virtually every table wine is made from vitis vinifera, that probably originated from the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Every wine grape you can probably name (except for Concord and Scuppernong) is a cultivar of this grape species. Think of wine grapes like dogs.

3. In most of the world, wines are NOT labeled by varietal. Varietal naming is something that is more or less unique to the New World (Alsace in France, Germany, and Austria being notable exceptions). In most parts of Europe where the grapes are grown and the wine is made is of the most importance. Over time, certain grapes became associated with certain regions and that has since been codified into regulations that now require wines labeled in a certain way to contain a specific varietal or combination of varietals. More on that in a bit.

So who makes wine?

There are two over-arching wine-growing areas, the New World and the Old World. The Old World is just that, Europe and parts of Asia. Many of the former Soviet states were esteemed wine producers in the years prior to Soviet rule but collectivization resulted in artisan wine-making being virtually halted in favor of high-yield production for cheap mass consumption. That is slowly changing. New World wine producers include North America (mostly the USA, but also Canada and Mexico), South America (Argentina and Chile, primarily), Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

In the Old World, France, Italy, and Spain outproduce all the other countries by a hefty margin. The wines of Germany and Austria (which despite the similarity in grape varietals and language are markedly different) are very highly regarded in export markets and produce white wine that is rivaled only by France (and for significantly less money). Portugal, Greece, and increasingly Slovenia are playing a significant role in the export market. Hungary produces a modest amount of wine for export (mostly the incredible Tokaji dessert wine) and Israel is increasingly working its way overseas. That being said, every country in Europe, Asia, and North Africa south of grape-growing latitudes and non-Islamic fundamentalism produce wine, most of it for domestic consumption.

In the New World, the United States, Australia, and Argentina are the major producers. Within the US, winemaking takes place mostly on the west coast, with a few well-regarded producers in New York and Virginia. Australia's Barossa Valley produces some of its most esteemed wines (as opposed to the cheaper college party staples like Yellowtail and Lindemann's). In Argentina, Mendoza is the main wine region. South Africa is a small but excellent producer of some specific grape varietals and New Zealand is garnering respect overseas for its Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. Canada is producing some of the best ice wine (a type of dessert wine) in the world.

So going back to my point about varietals, it can be very difficult, especially for Californians growing up with domestic wine labeling conventions to navigate wines from other parts of the world. Here's a basic overview of what grape varietals you'll USUALLY find in wines from the major international wine producing countries. Know that there are producers trying out many other varietals in all these regions.

New World (New World wines are almost always varietally labeled)

United States:
- California: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir (red) and Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc (white)
- Oregon: Pinot Noir (red) and Chardonnay (white)
- Washington: Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir (red) and Riesling, Chardonnay (white)

Canada:
Vidal (for ice wine)

Australia:
Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon (red) and Semillon (white)

South Africa:
Cabernet Sauvignon (red) and Chenin Blanc (white)

Argentina:
Malbec and Tempranillo (red) with very limited white production, usually Sauvignon Blanc and Torrontes

Chile:
Cabernet Sauvignon (red) with very limited white production, usually Sauvignon Blanc

New Zealand:
Pinot Noir (red) and Sauvignon Blanc (white)


Old World (Old World wines are rarely varietally labeled)

France:
- Burgundy: Pinot Noir (red) and Chardonnay (white)
- Bourdeaux: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot (primary, with Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec as subsidiary) (red) and Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc (white)
- Loire: Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc (white) and very little red
- Rhone: Grenache, Syrah (primary, with Mourvedre subsidiary) and Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier (white)
- Alsace: Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Muscat (white) and very little red
- Provence: Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah (red and rose) and very little white
- Languedoc: Carignane, Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah (red) and Grenache Blanc (white)

Germany:
Riesling (white) and very little red for export

Austria:
Riesling, Gruner Veltliner (white) and very little red for export

Italy:
- Northern: Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Barbera (red) and Arneis, Garganega, Pinot Grigio, Tocai Friuliano (white)
- Central: Montepulciano (red) and Trebbiano (white)
- Southern: Negroamaro, Aglianico (red) and Falanginha and Greco di Tufo (white)

Spain:
Garnacha, Tempranillo/Toro (red) and Verdejo, Albarino, and Sauvignon Blanc (white)

Portugal:
Too goddamn numerous to name. Portugal is very confusing.

Greece:
Assyrtiko (white) and very little red.

Hungary:
Egri Bikaver (actually a designated blend of three+ specific red grapes) and Furmint (used to make the white Tokaji dessert wine)

Israel:
Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (red) and very little white for export.

Enough for now.

Next up we'll discuss the nature of global wine growing regions and how it affects wine type, varietals, and quality.

REPOST! Dining and the Sex Trade: A Comparative Dichotomy

So this is my all time favorite post of all time. Don't worry, I'll get some new content up soon.

There's a reason that food and sex are intertwined in many aspects of our popular culture. There have been recent studies that suggest that food, cooking, and dining become sort of a proxy for the sex that gradually disappears from life as we age. The new, sleek, soft-focus, high-production value programming on The Food Network and its spin-offs reinforce this correlation. Is this a product of greater affluence and ennui? As food becomes "in" and "sexy" and therefore reaches a wider audience, is it imperative that the brainy food-nerd cooking shows and books of the past, when such programming was relegated to weekend mornings on PBS and a tiny corner of the bookstore, be replaced by the immediate gratification of Rachel Ray's apple bottom and Sandra Lee and Giada DeLaurentiis' respective racks? Not to mention Paula Deen's cockslaps of butter and Tyler Florence's panty-dropping chin dimple, all greeting us from the entire cooking wing at Barnes and Noble.

Let's look at this further.

Eating and fucking are, on a good day, total mind-body experiences that transcend their respective immediate physical gratifications. And while we're often able to fulfill our gustatory and sexual needs by ourselves to great effect (dinner for one and self-love being two of life's greatest pleasures) the addition of others can often increase the enjoyment--and in many instances make things more complicated and awkward.

And of course with all things sexual and gustatory, even numbers are better.

But perhaps the most distinctive similarity between eating and sex is how we take the activities out of the privacy of our homes and into the public world--that we're willing to utilize the services of professionals to meet the needs that we're fully capable of fulfilling on our own.

(As a side note, we use the word "fulfill" in describing our food and sexual needs I think because of its prominent compounding of "full" and "fill," two words eminently appropriate for both eating and fucking.)

For the purpose of this writing, the "sex trade" is a fairly broad term not limited to strippers, porno, dildos, and whores. I'm talking about sex-positive sex shops, mens' and womens' magazines of all kinds, sex advice columns and columnists, lingerie, swimwear, boxer briefs, plastic surgery, Abercrombie & Fitch (we sell abs!)--any business that capitalizes in whole or part upon the human preoccupation with increasing the pleasure and frequency of sexual activity. Because let's face it, we can talk all we want about these commodities increasing our self-esteem, but that increase in self-esteem ultimately comes entirely from being viewed as a more sexually attractive animal. It's cool. Roll with it.

Let's examine why we (often eagerly) seek out to exchange our hard-earned symbolic representations of our assets for food and tail.

1. It's more convenient. An acquaintance of mine is a dominatix. She once had a client pay her to put her foot into his butt. Her entire be-latexed foot into his prepared bottom. Let's say you're an otherwise normal, healthy individual with a stable home life and good job, but every now and then you need a foot in your butt. What's easier, trying to explain to your partner your desire to have a foot in your butt, or going out a few times a year, shelling out some money and discretely indulging in your secret pleasure?

I love good sauces, like a good mole or slow-simmered Indian entree, but when I feel like indulging in one of these dishes it's easier to shell out the money at a good Mexican or Indian restaurant then attempt to seek out the dozens of spices and slow-cook my food for twelve hours.

While it might be rewarding to learn to cook chana masala on your own and it might be rewarding to share your foot-in-butt fetish with your committed partner, unless your cravings for either occur on a daily basis it's probably simpler and more comfortable to leave it in the hands of professionals. Enjoy those simple, comfortable workhorse dishes at home with loved ones. And hell, definitely be adventurous with your non-remunerated partners--try out that rare artisan ingredient or exciting new bundt pan with the same titillating eagerness as a new vibrator or kama sutra position. But if you find yourself deviating into the aforementioned foot-in-butt and beyond, probably best to take that to the dungeon.

A corollary: unless you're a drug-addled rock star you probably don't want to be married to a coked-up stripper but unless you live in a Mormon cave (and even then....) you've probably enjoyed a lap dance from one. It's easy, refreshing, and probably won't result in having your bank account cleaned out and your kids grow up to be junior development executives for basic cable, things that would no doubt happen were you to marry the stripper.

Lastly--just throwing this out there--you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay for him or her to leave afterward. See? Convenience!

2. It's cleaner. Building on that previous idea, it could be said that we don't go out to eat for the food, we go out to eat to have somebody else clean up afterward. This is why rich people have man-servants. Rich people are inherently more noble and shouldn't have to get their hands dirty.

Do you really want to clean that out of your jacuzzi or wipe that off of your foot? Professionals of all kinds have the experience, tools, cleaning products, brass polish, insurance policies, and changes of clothes to deal with the gustatory and excretory problems that may arise from their lines of work. Because even if you're cooking the simplest pasta dish, you're still going to have some dirty dishes afterward and it's just so much more relaxing to not have to deal with that.

And it's also cleaner for a variety of socio-emotional reasons touched on in the previous entry and that I'll touch on in the following entry.

3. It eliminates personal responsibility. I would argue this is the most significant reason for the seemingly growing popularity of dining and sexing-up outside the home. If we cook food in our own home and it sucks, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. When I talk to people about why they don't cook, fear of failure underlies any reason that they give. And as with anything, if we don't keep reading, studying, learning, and experimenting, we'll never get better. I don't mean the quick-fix open a can and heat "cooking" that you get from Rachel Ray and Sandra Lee, but actual intuitive from-scratch cooking.

If we go out to eat and we don't like the food, we can call it somebody else's fault. If we turn ourselves over to the vicissitudes of dining trends and prepackaged commodities, we eliminate the vitality that personal opinion, culture, region, and taste plays in how we enjoy food. Fear of sexual inadequacy underlies almost every human insecurity so no wonder we like to trust "experts" and "techniques" instead of "our bodies" when it comes to sex and relationships, because then it's the technique's fault and we don't have to actually do anything ourselves.

But If we turn our sex lives over to guidebooks, videos, Carrie Bradshaw, and "hot tips" from Cosmo, we eliminate the personal responsibility of being in tune with our own bodies, tastes, and pleasures. Not to mention it creates the presumption that all men like some degree of anal stimulation, a gross exaggeration perpetrated by womens' magazines. Food magazines also seem to suggest that we as a people are way into tiny "slider"-type sandwiches. This is (or at least should be) a similarly gross exaggeration. That's right loyal readers, gourmet sliders equals a finger on the prostate.

Moving responsibility for sexual fulfillment over to movies, clothing, advertisements, jewelry, and (oh what's this?) food allows us to sidestep the actual problems. We're too fat. We're no longer attractive to or attracted by our partner. We're not good at sex. We come too soon. We're just not sexually compatible with our current partner. We can't cook chicken without it drying out. We don't know how to clean mushrooms. We don't even know where to begin to make a pie crust. So let's go buy a new car. Or a diamond necklace. Or have a couple children. And let's go to Zuni. Or the truffle dinner at Oliveto. Or finally eat at the French Laundry (sort of the dining equivalent of two $10,000 Vegas call girls and a kilo of coke).

But you might find, just maybe, that learning how to cook really well and learning how to fuck really well will enrich your life in ways that can't be made proxy. We're talking about a critical learning experience here though. It takes effort. You need to learn how to do the things you aren't good at, not find versions of things to do that fit better with what you're already able to do. Try. Error. Learn. Get better. What's great about both cooking and fucking is that the processes are a hell of a lot of fun and worth doing a lot.

4. It's fun. And this is what it all comes down to, doesn't it? There are plenty of people who can cook really well and fuck like champs who still love the French Laundry and a good coke orgy.

Plenty of happily married people still love flirting, strip clubs, and pornography because, hell, it's just a lot of fun. They fulfill (there's the word again) needs that, without placing judgment, cannot be met by a home-cooked meal or a home-fucked partner, no matter how good the respective meal or partner. To the same tune, a loving stable partner and a fabulous home-cooked meal fill voids that no Perfect 10 model or twelve-course tasting menu can.

But going out to eat and being treated well in a beautiful space with the added reward of a spectacular meal is a blast. Going to a tastefully appointed gentleman's club to enjoy a beverage and discuss the issues of the day, while beautiful scantily-clad women with daddy issues dance to earn money to open their tanning salon is a lot of fun. They're also our Allah-given rights as Americans.

So I'm saying it's not all doom and gloom. Four star restaurants and hookers are not telltale signs of a collapsing civilization, even if they might be better indicators than gay marriage and teen pregnancy. In fact, I'd argue that going out to eat and the sex industry are not just parts of, but essential to a functional modern democracy--there's a reason that market regulation and liberalization of the sex trade is a hallmark of virtually every developed country in the world and there are very few Michelin-starred restaurants in countries' whose GDP per capita is less then dinner for four at the Ritz-Carlton (cf. sarcasm). They're market-driven animals that fill gaping voids in our aimless, postmodern societies. Of course they also filled gaping voids in our aimless, god-fearing societies of yesteryear too.

Pulitzer Prize nominating committee, this has been humbly submitted for your approval.

REPOST: California Cuisine and Gangsta Rap: A Comparative Dichotomy

Another classic from the archives....

Ice Cube. Dr Dre. Eazy E. Snoop Dogg. KRS-One.

Thomas Keller. Alice Waters. Jeremiah Tower. Narsai David. Paul Bertolli.

Each profoundly influential. Each a genius in his or her own right.

Each blazing new trails by reinventing how they used the tools that were already in front of them.

Each using their fame and reputation to support dozens of far less talented artists on their coattails.

Each responsible for spawning a generation of mediocrity behind them.

Gangsta rap and California Cuisine share far more than just being popular with rich white people. Their basic shared tenets blur the boundaries between food and music, dancing and eating, beats and beets.

Sorry.

What are those tenets?

1. Simplicity is Key

What makes an excellent gangsta rap tune? A g-funk era landmark? A simple heavy beat. Catchy, repetitive synth hooks. Maybe a few simple vocal samples. And dope, dope rhymes. No flourishes. No guitar heroics. No multi-octave diva arias. No double bass pedal thirtysecond-note sextuplets. There's nothing to it that makes you think you should like it. It's not Dvorak or Mahler for chrissakes. Yet somehow some way gangsta rap still comes up with funky ass shit like every single day.

The same holds true with California Cuisine. Chefs aren't flambe-ing tableside, stuffing turkeys inside sardines, or serving domes of flavored air over tapioca pearls. I mean, some chefs are, but not California Cuisine chefs. That would be inappropriate. Transcendent California Cuisine is perfect organic seasonal ingredients cooked flawlessly. There's no reason for the food to be s0 damn good, other than from the culinary gestalt of perfect ingredients assembled perfectly.

Just as there's no reason that an old Parliament baseline, some high sine wave synth sounds, and flows about gats, weed, and bitches should be good, other than that same gestalt.

2. Careful Selection

Just as our California Cuisine chefs pick their produce for its peak of seasonality and freshness, so too do the top producers of gangsta rap select their basslines, beats, and synth hooks. There's nothing in theory difficult about deciding to cook with kale. But what kale? From where? When is kale at its absolute best? The producer makes the same decision--this sample of a breathy oversexed woman is great, but where should it be used? When can it be inserted into a song for its peak effect? Probably right after the rapper says "bi-otch."

3. Passion and Purity of Motive

One of the reasons California Cuisine works is because the chef is committed to the ideals of the movement. Seasonality. Locality. Simplicity. When one of these tenets is compromised, the whole effect slips away. Gangsta rap came out of the frustration and rage felt by a generation of black men living in the ghetto. California Cuisine came out of a desire to eat more simply and deliciously. Gangsta rap had the crack epidemic of the 1980's, California Cuisine had the fuel crisis of the late 1970's.

But as gangsta rappers become wealthier it's hard to take them seriously. Instead, hip hop now is about going dumb, bringing sexy back, and getting between you and dat booty. Hearing Ice Cube in 1990 when he was a pissed off 20 year-old is a helluva lot more compelling than hearing Ice Cube trying to be pissed off now that he's a multi-multi-multi millionaire who makes family road trip comedies. Most prominent artists from the gangsta rap era who are still recording have moved on into slightly different genres.

And as California Cuisine becomes accepted fact for most restaurants--that the idea of using fresh local seasonal ingredients is de rigeur--I'm no longer impressed. Now you're just doing it because you're supposed to, not because you really believe in the tenets of sustainability. It's time to forge new ground. Build on that very sturdy foundation and move forward. Stop being a multi-millionaire still rapping about the 'hood.

California Cuisine needs to stop being gangsta and find its hyphy.

DISCLAIMER: The author understands that he is conflating several related genres of hip-hop. The author also acknowledges that logical gaps that exist in his argument. The author understands that he is exaggerating for comic effect and/or entertainment factor. The author makes no claims at being an expert in either hip-hop or California Cuisine. Horny for Food is for entertainment purposes only. The author assumes no responsibility for actions taken either directly or indirectly as a result of reading his words. The author encourages all diners to think critically and come to their own conclusions about dining. The author thanks you for your readership.

The Grapes of Wrath (without the Okies)

Many people ask me "Hey Dave, what're your favorite wine grapes?" To which I say, "Go fuck yourself. How'd you get my cell number? Ima cut you hard."

None of that is true, nobody asks me that. But if they did, this is what I'd say....

1. Riesling. This is a grape that is still maligned in the US by uneducated imbeciles. Admittedly the export market was flooded with insipid uber-sweet German riesling in the decades after World War II. Riesling ranges from racily dry (Austria) to sweet but bracingly acidic (Germany). It's also one of the few white grapes that grows respectably in California (Trefethen and Navarro, for instance). But there's something about an excellent German riesling that is euphoric. I speculate it's the combination of sugar, modestly low alcohol, and food-friendly acidity that gets the serotonin going.

2. Pinot Noir. It's got the robust fruit of a grenache or merlot with the earthy complexity of syrah or mourvedre. And while incredibly difficult to make really well, it's hard to fuck up as long as the fruit is grown in the right climate and managed well. In order: Burgundy, Anderson Valley, Santa Barbara County, Willamette Valley, New Zealand, Alsace, Germany.

3. Zinfandel. See above, only with fuller flavors. It's not as elegant as other reds, but it's broad and complex. And it really doesn't grow well outside of a handful of regions in California. Try Mendocino County, Dry Creek Valley, and Paso Robles for the best of the best.

4. GSM. I'm going to group the Rhone power trio of Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre as one grape here because, while I've had many single varietal wines of these grapes that I've enjoyed, when two or more of these power grapes hook-up, magic ensues. Grenache supplies the rich supple fruit, syrah the musty leathery tannins, and mourvedre the strong, broad earth. Try grenache-syrah blends from Northern Spain and GSMs from the southern Rhone.

5. Chardonnay. Steer clear of the giant overly buttery Napa versions of this excellent grape and opt for the crisper and more acidic white Burgundies from Macon, Chablis, and the Cote d'Or. In California, try excellent chardonnay from cooler climate regions like the Anderson Valley, Russian River Valley, Santa Maria Hills, and Los Carneros.

6. Carignane. What is essentially a blending grape in France has reached a rarefied art among a few producers in California. Rich dark fruit, dusty tannins, and a refreshing acidity. Contra Costa county is growing some rich, elegant carignane, as is the Dry Creek Valley.

7. Marsanne/Roussanne. Another Rhone party blend, these two aromatic whites make for some fun and funky wines. Excellent cool climate whites that tend toward overripeness in hotter years, these grape varietals, when combined, build a profile of honey, pear, and sweet spice with modest and soft acidity on the finish.

8. Verdejo. The king of Rueda, Spain's verdejo is the grape that sauvignon blanc should be. Crisp bright acidity, aromatic tropical fruit, and moderate minerality. Food friendly and refreshing.

9. Gruner veltliner. Austria's grape of grapes. Gruner's citrus fruit tartness coupled with lingering minerality makes for a wine that fits where others don't. Perfect with asparagus, pesto, and pretty much every seafood, gruner veltliner's probably the most food-friendly white grape in the world.

10. Furmint. Look, it might only make one type of wine, but that type of wine's pretty much the most awesome dessert wine in all the goddamn universe, Hungarian Tokaji. I've never had the dry furmints, but the sweet, botrytis-laden grapes in Tokaji create an elegant dessert wine that lacks the insipid syrupy-ness or heafty viscosity of other sweet white wines.

And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Now never fucking call me again.

A New Blog!

For those of you who can't get enough of my opinionated rants on food and dining can now also get my opinionated rants on men's fashion and style!

Check out the new blog here:

The Substance of Style

Enjoy!

HFF Has Lunch: Redd - Yountville, Ca

Tasting menus rock. No choice. Chef’s discretion. It’s liberating, like the formal beauty of an Elizabethan sonnet’s constrictions over the tedium of unrestricted postmodern free verse, or the casual elegance of a porn star that still leaves one hole sacred.

And I don’t mean “tasting menus” where you get to pick from an array of courses, I mean an honest no-choice tasting menu.

It was Chef Scott’s birthday so we were going wine tasting. After a morning in the northern reaches of Napa Valley we worked our way back to Redd in Yountville in the afternoon.

I’d dropped into Redd once before with Charlie where we sat at the bar and had a snack. I was impressed with the space, wine list, and what little food we’d had.

Every review of Redd talks about the “minimalist space” that’s a “perfect canvas” for Richard Reddington’s “art.”

Ejaculate on a sponge and wax Michael Bauer’s Lexus with it. Christ.

Did I mention that good food is good food? And a nice space is a nice space. I guess in a city where Pat Kuleto’s over-adorned pirate handjob adventure restaurant spaces are the standard for “good taste,” the simply designed and minimally adorned Redd would be jarring.

Though Redd does have an a la carte menu we both opted for the four-course tasting menu.

The tasting menu is a comparative steal at $50 ($25 for wine pairings), a value magnified by the fact that each of our two tasting menus were different and there’s enough of each course for sharing.

First round was a raw seafood course of hamachi and yellowfin tuna tartare with chili oil, soy, avocado and crisped rice, and hamachi sashimi with edamame. The fish was impeccable, and while the tartare flavor combination was, well, let’s just say it’s been done before, every flavor was fresh and balanced, never sharp, never harsh, never cloying. The crisped rice added a crucial textural dimension that, in both our minds, made the dish. The hamachi sashimi was as good as any sashimi I’ve had.

Next course featured seared diver scallops and braised skate wing, two of my all time favorite seafoods of all time. The scallops were one of the finer preparations I’ve had and the skate was firm and fluffy, served with a few steamed mussels and bits of chorizo, leaving the whole dish redolent of spiced pork. Flavors infused the entire dish and you sensed all the components’ presence without any individual flavor pushing through. We’re talking synergy in the finest dot-com sense of the word. The one techno-flourish here, the saffron nage (a foamy cloud), actually added an integral flavor and texture dimension. It wasn't just an artsy indulgence.

Meat course: Redd’s signature horseradish-crusted short ribs and roast quail with bacon (there it is again!) The shortribs are justifiably held in high esteem, fork tender and topped with just a bit of fresh shaved horseradish. The quail was moist and tender all the way through, enlivened by the microscopic dice of bacon.

Dessert. A trio of chocolate desserts, a chocolate-hazelnut mousse, a peanut butter honeycomb parfait, and a chocolate-peanut gianduia. Also a trio of citrus desserts, including a mini lemon cheesecake, an orange sorbet, and a mini citrus float with homemade yuzu soda. Pretty fucking cool.

I almost forgot—we deviated from the tasting menu just slightly. We got the trio of cold foie gras. I’m not as big a fan of cold foie gras as I am hot preparations, but… holy fucking shit this was good. The torchon with pistachio was my favorite, though the terrine with pear, and the mousse were also retarded good. Even the toasted brioche wasn't overlooked. It was soft, warm, and slightly sweet.

So Redd was pretty great, a very solid value in the uber fine-dining world, and lived up to its reputation and hype admirably. Just ignore what reviews say about blank slates and artistry on the plate and whatever else. Redd is dining at its simplest and most unassumingly elegant. Roll with it.

Redd
6480 Washington St.
Yountville, Ca 94599
707-944-2222
www.reddnapavalley.com

New Year's Eve at Rivoli - Berkeley, Ca

I don’t have many particularly fond memories of New Year’s Eve. Last year I worked a delightfully expensive New Year’s prix fixe serving way too much to a crowd made up mostly of friends of the owner, ending the evening in a fight with a lovely but way-too-sensitive co-worker. The year before I went bowling in Anaheim, one of my very limited options while trapped near Disneyland on a work-related trip (don’t ask), a heavy storm brewing in the distance. And the year before that…. I was also in Anaheim on a work-related trip while my relationship with my then-girlfriend soured and dissolved like biodegradable plastic, exposing coffee grounds and eggshells to an uncaring world.

My last memorable New Year’s Eve? New Year’s Eve 2000 when I leapt into a 38-degree swimming pool at midnight. That was rad.

Anybody else remember how they put a big light-up “2000” in front of the Washington Monument, adding a pair of giant zero balls to what is already America’s national erection?

Just me?

So it’s fitting that my first memorable New Year’s in eight years involved the very same gentleman who took that midnight plunge with me back in ought ought. All the others chickened out and, admittedly, I would’ve too had he not stripped off his shirt, bolted past me and leapt into the chilly, leaf-strewn water. My balls were too big to be one-upped so I quickly followed. My balls were not too big, however, to not be immediately retracted deep inside my abdomen, my body reacting in protective fear to this inexplicable trauma.

Friend Randy has recently moved to Albany where he and his lovely wife Jessica bivouac in a stunning (if tiny) pre-war bungalow two short blocks from Solano Avenue. Hard work, technical acumen, and shrewd planning, have enabled them both to earn salaries well above most other 25 year-olds and has also allowed them to live the American dream: to be saddled with a (fully-prime) mortgage close to double America’s per-capita GDP.

So it was my turn, with my oh-so-careless and spendfree ways, to prod Randy into taking that New Year’s plunge, this one involving an 11PM dinner reservation (no small feat for a couple routinely waking at five most days) and a three-figure restaurant bill instead of a swimming pool and single-digit (centigrade) temperatures.

(In truth, it wasn’t all that difficult. Randy and Jessica were down pretty much from the get-go. But this is more interesting. I’m working on a metaphor here, so give a guy a break.)

Randy, Jessica, girlfriend Charlie, and myself set out from their cottage for a brisk evening walk to Rivoli, already warmed by a bottle of Roederer Estate Brut Rose (can you name a better domestic sparkling rose?) and a bottle of 2006 Chalone Pinot Noir (another favorite, though admittedly not the best vintage).

So why Rivoli? Why after my relatively ho-hum experience the first time? Simply put it was the last reservation I could get that wasn’t at a restaurant doing an elaborate and over-priced prix-fixe and did I mention we could walk there? Take that DUI checkpoints! Joke’s on you bitches!

As an aside, every fucking restaurant was doing a fucking “special celebration menu,” which as far as I can tell means charging more for the same food and coursing it out awkwardly with a free half-glass of bad champagne at midnight. Why can’t restaurants just be open like normal?

Fortunately Rivoli was doing their regular menu, albeit with tables adorned with confetti and noisemakers and co-owner/wine director Roscoe adorned with a comically tiny festive hat. Think Damon Wayans in the “Men On…” bits from In Living Color.

First we were all sent an amuse of puree of baby artichoke soup with shaved parmesan. This proved for me the highlight of the evening, warm and rich with a deep fresh artichoke-ness.

For a first course I had the butternut squash gnocchi with mixed mushrooms and hazelnut gremolata. The gnocchi were denser than the best I’ve had, but far from gummy and still quite tasty. All the components were suspended in a delicious brown butter cream sauce and we all know that brown butter and hazelnuts are the platonic lesbians of deliciousness. Charlie had a simple unremarkable mixed green salad, but the accompanying goat cheese crostini with fig marmalata was tasty. Randy and Jessica split the butter-poached lobster on a mascarpone biscuit with peas, carrots, leeks, lobster butter, and chervil. Judging from their rapt expressions it was pretty freakin’ great.

My entrée was a grilled Hoffman farms quail stuffed with prosciutto, sage, and Brussels sprouts with a sweet potato gratin and pomegranate pan jus. And more brown butter. Though the quail/bacon/Brussels sprouts combo is pretty tired (but justifiably tasty), the flavors were strong and well-developed. Much of my quail (the narrow, bony bits) were rather overcooked, but the breast was moist and flavorful.

We brought with us a couple wines, a Dieboldt blanc de blancs that was crisp, elegant, lean and apple-y, with an impossible ethereal dryness and a 2003 grand cru Corton Blanc from Chandon de Briailles that was medium bodied, dry and flinty, with a light toasted butteriness and a lingering finish. Pretty damn good, well balanced, and held up well across the palate without being overpowering. Roscoe directed us to a third wine, a 2004 Schiava from Northern Italy that was much more rich, earthy, and Burgundian in style than the lighter, fruitier, bubble gumm-y Beaujolais nouveau taste I’ve come to associate with the varietal.

Midnight was fun. Rivoli definitely has it down to a science, except for handing out the noisemakers and poppers after midnight hit. Ah well.

When dessert rolled around we were full, drunk, and happy so we grabbed two desserts to go and wended our way slowly home.

And what did I learn children? Something I’ve been getting a sense of for a while now…. You can get good food anywhere. Good food is easy. You can do it at home, on the road, at the ballpark, in an Armenian circus tent. What really makes a good meal is the who, the where, and the when and whether or not tiny hats are involved.

I give New Year’s at Rivoli three snaps in a z formation.

Rivoli
1539 Solano Ave.
Berkeley, Ca 94707
510-526-2542
www.rivolirestaurant.com

Internet Failure Crisis!

No internet right now!

Limited posting time! Busy holidays!

Sorry! Sorry!

New posts soon and a lot of big news!

-DJD

HFF On the Road: Los Angeles, Ca

I don't know what it is about Los Angeles dining that I like so much. On paper, there's nothing. Fewer fresh ingredients, restaurants focused as much or more on quality of atmosphere and "scene" than on seasonality of its product, and a propensity for restaurants in strip malls.

But getting past the plastic veneer of Los Angeles dining, I think you find restaurants committed to a level of service and quality of product that is on par with anything in San Francisco or New York and without all the baggage.

Basically, I think Los Angeles benefits from its role as the redheaded stepchild to the country's more esteemed culinary cities. When lower expectations are combined with ready availability of people looking to throw money at restaurants, something positive is born.

Say what you will about Kirin, Chaya, Tsunami, or Hime, I know of no sushi restaurant in the Bay Area that has been as good as my numerous sushi outings in Los Angeles.

On this last trip I stumbled into Sushi Masu on Westwood Blvd (at La Grange). I sat at the bar and had excellent saba (fresh, not pickled), toro (melty and delicious, close to the quality of the stuff I had at Matsuhisa), and a vegetable roll (good, but heavy on the pickles). I also had a dish of softshell crab sauteed with fresh vegetables. This was crisp, deeply textured, and rich with umami. Pretty freakin' great.

As this was a mini-trip, my culinary adventures weren't as extensive as previous visits, but my trip to Wakasan (also on Westwood Blvd., right next to Sushi Masu) was enlightening. Presenting a daily omakase menu (and only an omakase menu), Wakasan presents around a dozen courses of izakaya food for $30. Perhaps the best dining value I've encountered. As I was fairly intoxicated by the end of the meal, I don't think I can recall every course, but they included an excellent sushi course, a pickled mackerel dish as well as a grilled mackerel dish, chicken skewers, the best goddamn ebi-fry I've had, and a soft semi-set savory custard with chicken, shrimp, and mushrooms. The food was all fresh and home-y, some of it a little bit weird (the custard was questionable for me), but all very very interesting. And I also left dinner stuffed. Tell me where you can get a dozen courses of artfully prepared Japanese food for thirty bucks..... and I'll show you Wakasan, because I guess that's where you can get it.

Point is, all this fine sushi put me in an excellent mood, so much so that being accosted by a man asking if I "can spare some change for a homeless man with AIDS" didn't particularly phase me. Hell, you had me at "Can you spare some change." I wasn't annoyed until he informed me about his time as a lab researcher on a government military base where they were splicing human DNA with aliens to create supersoldiers. I rolled up my window and hit the road.

Another spot of note was Mexico City on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. Good, cheap, Mexican restaurant offering a bit more than the typical budget Mexican enchiladas and chimichangas. My cochinita pibil (though a bit overdone) was pretty tasty.

On my drive back north I stopped in Kettleman City and ate at a Taco Bell for the first time in at least five years. Pretty much my first non In-and-Out fast food experience in at least that long. And you know what? It was surprisingly alright. A nicely spiced chicken and rice burrito and a simple bean burrito (admittedly heavy on the tortilla) for less than three bucks? Fuck, why the hell not? Can't think of anything else that easy to eat as you zip from east Hollywood to Berkeley in five hours, can you?

Okay, popcorn shrimp from Long John Silver's, but that's pretty gross. Let's be honest.

So give LA a chance, SF foodies. It really is pretty damn good and the service is nothing if not deferential. Despite what you might think, there's no snarky attitude to be had.

Probably because everybody's spirit is already crushed.

Go to LA. Eat sushi.

HFF Quickie: Bar Bambino

Something's up. I'm growing skeptical of dining out.

Weird, huh?

Have I reached the peak of my abilities? Am I a 14 year old Bulgarian womens' gymnast? A 28 year old baseball pitcher? A 10 year old Thai hooker? Is it all downhill from here?

I hope not. I really do.

Maybe it's growing up in the Bay Area, being inundated with organic and natural for most my life. I've been surrounded by the best ingredients and some of the finest restaurants in the world since I was born. I grew up in a home where dining together, experimenting in the kitchen, and copious wine drinking was what it meant to be family. I've lived at the epicenter of modern American sustainable cooking for seven (Christ, really?) years. I've been working in that business for close to four.

I've easily spent the per-capita GDP of Albania on dining out, wine, and kitchen gadgets.

I'm over it. Really, I am.

Dining out doesn't have the cachet it once did. Most things I eat out I can either cook myself or am very good friends with people who can. I can get almost any weird ingredient I want to within a five mile radius of my house. Perhaps most importantly I've come up with better uses for my money (e.g. Thai hookers).

That being said, there's still room to be impressed.

Bar Bambino, on a dirty little stretch of 16th Street at Capp in the Mission, impressed me. Despite it's gross (but gentrifying) surroundings, the owners have carved out what I can only say is the perfect neighborhood haunt for the surrounding community of hipsters-cum-yuppies.

I didn't mean for that to sound as dirty as it did.

It's a tiny narrow storefront with a beautiful bar, a large communal table, a handful of banquettes, and a nice outdoor patio.

The menu is Italian wine bar/cafe type fare. Nice selection of salumi (much of it housemade) and a compelling cheese selection. Diverse selection of antipasti, salads, homemade pastas, panini, bruschette, and more substantial entrees round out the lengthy menu.

It's a fluid menu that matches the fluidity of Bar Bambino's hours (open all day 11AM until 11PM on weekdays, midnight Fri/Sat) and location (tech companies, non-profits, artists and arts agencies). Have a panino and espresso lunch. Drop in for an after work glass of wine and a snack. Grab dinner. Or get a post-theatre dessert and select from a nice assortment of dessert wines.

Girlfriend Charlie and I just had a few snacks and some wine. The salt cod and potato on toast was delicious, as was the spicy pomodoro bread stew. The homemade pasta was al dente and flavorful. While yes the wine list is all Italian, Bar Bambino offers wines from every possible region of a country that is very much underappreciated for its viticultural diversity. Italy's not just big reds and light acidic whites, folks.

We returned after our evening event for dessert and had a great not too sweet olive polenta cake with sea salt and a dense bitter chocolate mousse. Both were fabulous. Sitting outside on the covered, heated, cedar-enclosed patio with rain falling above us we felt like we were inside the world's most awesome sauna.

Was anything mind-blowing or innovative at Bar Bambino? No. Service was great. Atmosphere is excellent. Design is stylish without being trendy. Bar Bambino fits perfectly in its space.

While I can't say Bar Bambino was transcendently memorable, I can say that I'll be back frequently.

And that's something I can say about very few restaurants.

Bar Bambino
2931 16th St. (at Capp, between Mission and South Van Ness)
San Francisco, Ca 94103
Reservations: 415-701-8466
www.barbambino.com

HFF Repost! "Amateur Night"

Since I haven't had much new stuff to write about lately, here's a repost of an HFF "classic."

"Amateur Night"

There's a phenomenon in the hospitality business called "Amateur Night." These are nights that for whatever reason seem to involve a disproportionate number of inexperienced diners or diners who are out of their element in a particular restaurant. Amateur night is bad for a number of reasons, the primary one is that the amateur night diner is typically more demanding and more likely to have unreasonable expectations while also spending less and tipping worse than a more seasoned diner.

The amateur diner will often only eat someplace if they can make a reservation, by doing so they have disqualified themselves from eating at some of the most compelling dining options in the area. The amateur diner also typically must eat between 7 and 8 on a Friday or a Saturday and then is shocked and/or confused when they find themselves in a loud, crowded restaurant and their food is taking longer than they think it should. The amateur diner becomes angry and/or disconsolate when they don't recognize anything on the menu, can't find a wine that they know, or aren't given their first choice of tables. The amateur goes out to eat when everyone else goes out to eat, and is more likely to find as much pleasure dining at Macaroni Grill as they would at Nopa.

So how do you avoid being an Amateur Night diner?

1. Know your restaurant. Research where you're dining in advance. Is this the place for you and your dining companions? Are you just going there because "you heard that it's good"? Most restaurants have websites with recent or representative menus (and prices). If not, check for reviews online (but take reviews from sites like citysearch and [especially] Yelp! with a metric tonne of salt). Also, don't go to a restaurant just to have one specific thing that you saw on their menu, that way you won't be disappointed if they're out of it or not serving it that night.

2. Do you really have to eat out on a Friday or a Saturday night? If you do, do you have to eat at 7:30? If you answered yes to both questions than you are an incurable amateur diner. Plan your evening differently--go out to eat at 5:30 or 6 and then continue your evening out with the theatre, drinks, or dessert elsewhere. Or, conversely, have a cocktail hour at home or at a nearby bar and then go have dinner at 8:30 of 9:00. Or hell, go see your movie first and then go eat at 10 o'clock! It's Saturday night! Where do you have to be the next morning? Hungover in the shower, that's where. Most restaurants in any city worth living in seat until at least 10PM, usually much later (especially on weekends).

3. Don't expect too much. People who dine out irregularly, especially people who go out for a "fancy" dinner only a few times a year, are expecting those meals to be absolutely transcendant or mind-blowing. The fact is, most of these people are going to be just as sated and pleased after a meal at your basic upscale casual-dining chain establishment as they are at the finest restaurants. Frequent dining out and cooking in is the key to understanding and appreciating the differences between restaurants, flavors, ingredient quality, etc. And the fact is a lot of expensive restaurants are doing the exact same thing as your local Chili's, only with better ingredients. And once again remember if you're eating at 7:30 or so on a Saturday, you're experiencing a restaurant at its busiest, which means food will take longer and the servers and bartenders will be busier than at virtually any other time during the week.

4. Be understanding. Know that, with very few exceptions, chefs, cooks, servers, bartenders, and managers are doing everything in their power to provide you with an optimum dining experience. If you're having to wait for food, a drink refill, etc. it's not always due to laziness, incompetence, or mismanagement. It's because it's fucking busy. Also, if you've already exhibited some of the aforementioned signs of being an amateur diner, you've probably already been deprioritized (usually unconsciously) in the minds of the staff because the staff knows that, no matter what, you're going to tip a perfectly calculated to the penny 12-15% on an already sub-standard bill. Obviously you'll still get good service, but any extra attention that staff might be able to provide will go elsewhere.

And I do mean to sound bitchy and elitist, because all that I've said is true. I don't eat out often on Friday or Saturday nights when I am free for these reasons. Off-peak times, afternoons, and weeknights are the best times to eat out and have a truly good time.

Humans are creatures of habit, routine, and convention. Break out of it. Stay in and cook dinner on a Saturday night. Have people over for a party. Go out to that hot new tapas bar on a Wednesday. You'll be a better person for it.

The Perils of Blogging: A Cautionary Tale

All bloggers have opinions. Usually strong ones. That's what makes them bloggers. The drive to make unilateral declarations of "facts" (if you're a truly pompous blogger) or "opinions" (if you're marginally less pompous) is what pushes people to write into the anonymous shit-slinging universe of the internets.

But at the end of the day, a blogger's job is a blogger. That's it. He or she has a little space on blogspot or livejournal or whatever social networking or shared interest community group he or she belongs to where the blogger can rant and rave and comment and share.

Most bloggers, particularly those who deal with more controversial form or content, take deliberate steps to separate themselves from their 9-5 employment through disclaimers, pseudonyms, careful withholding of information, or whatever else.

But what happens when you combine a chef-owner's blog, an official website, marginal literacy, and an indescribably enormous ego? You get Pizzaiolo chef-owner Charlie Hallowell's poorly thought-out and even more poorly executed blog "Charlie's Rants" on the www.pizzaiolooakland.com website.

As a side note, pizzaiolooakland is really freakin' hard to type correctly the first time. Try it.

You can read all of Charlie's Rants here.

A highlight from his most recent posting (these have been transferred verbatim from the website, so let's just slap a giant "sic" on the whole damn thing):

"Today I recieved a letter of complaint from a disgruntled girlfriend of a disgruntled customer who had a less than wonderful experience at Pizzaiolo. This customer however seemed to think that the negative experience somehow manifested because her boyfriend was an African American, not because we where crazy busy on a weekend night and he asked us to do something for him that would have made our lives a little harder, and we said no, sorry, we can't do that now."

Already we're seeing a general breakdown of one's internal censor by even sharing this story. But surely we can expect a successful entrepreneur like Mr. Hallowell to tactfully address the delicate subject of race?

"So... I would be a total asshole to deny being a racist, I'm white, I'm privilaged, I have benefited from a system whose entire foundation, and whose functional metaphores are so firmly rooted in captivity, slavery, and opression, that for me to claim any kind of trancendant stance in relationship to it would be total bullshit. However, I would never make a desision about weather or not I cut someone's pizza based on what they fucking look like.!!!!!"

No. Though apparently Charlie did take a cultural anthropology course that he only halfway slept through.

Also--why didn't you cut the fucking pizza? How do you make that decision? I've eaten at Pizzaiolo a few times and don't recall having any difficulty eating my pizza, so I'm pretty sure it came to my table cut.... Weird. Also, would you have cut the pizza on a slow night but not on a busy night? That's not fair, now is it?

But surely we can resolve this issue cleanly, right? Charlie's a Berkeley kid, been working and raising a family here for a while. He's sensitive to the cultural dynamics of his tense, gentrifying neighborhood, I'm sure. Let's see:

"Listen, I want you to feel taken care of, I mean I want you, hard working, middle class, hopefully with a kid, trying to make a life in this crazy town work, you. You are why I, a thirty year old cook with two kids who never made more than sixteen bucks an hour in his life, openned a place like Pizzaiolo. A place where for five bucks you can get a bowl of the best god damn beans you ever ate and a plate of rapini that will make your mouth water for days, and it will all be organic, and it will all be local, and it will all be cooked with love, and no, I can't and won't compete with MacDonald's prices, and if people in the hood want to keep throwin away their hard earned money on shit food thats killin them and taking that same money right out of the neighborhood and into some fucking franchise owners pocket in the burbs, so be it."

Wait, did he really use the word "hood?" What is "mouth water" and how does Charlie make mine? Did anyone tell Charlie that rapini is peasant food? To paraphrase a chef acquaintance of mine: "Charlie needs to realize he's just running a fucking pizza parlor."

Not to say it's a bad pizza parlor, but my experiences there have been entirely unremarkable, as any regular reader will know. Pizzaiolo serves an entire menu of the fresh, boring Chez Panisse-style pizzas that Charlie spent his formative years spinning for Herr Waters. Unrelatedly, I've enjoyed the two pizzas I've had at Chez Panisse Cafe in the time since he's left more than I've enjoyed my pizzas at Pizzaiolo (though the clam pie was pretty damn good). It's pizza. It's easy. Get over it.

But that's not really my point. My point is--why the fuck is a the chef-owner of a restaurant putting this incoherent, strangely racist rant on his COMPANY'S WEBSITE?!?! I could forgive him if he was blogging independent of his business, but this? Fuck, I could forgive his weird sociopolitical opinions if he bothered to proofread. These rants don't just suffer from the usual collection of a few typos and dropped articles. It's written by someone who has a very limited grasp of how the English language, or at the very least a computer keypad, works. This is your public fucking business persona, man! I'm just a foulmouthed over-opinionated little douche bag and that's what my business (this blog) is! But you're a successful restaurateur with an image to uphold to your business, your investors, and (hopefully) yourself!

Honestly, I wouldn't've even brought this whole thing up, but your "Charlie's Rants" just make you sound like a seriously self-important, self-absorbed, and utterly clueless dick. And not in a whimsically ironic way.

Like me.=^)

Tipping: What You Need To Know

The application of gratuity is obviously a very American institution. In no other country is tipping expected to such a degree from so many different professions. It draws the ire of those customers who feel put upon to have to pay a premium on top of their meal. It draws the ire of servers who depend not upon their employers but upon the vicissitudes of strangers for their livelihood. And it draws the ire, in some cases, of kitchen staff who see servers making significantly more money for what is often viewed as less work.

But the fact remains that tipping is not optional. It is a de facto standard for dining out at all levels in the United States of America. If you can't afford to leave a gratuity then you can't afford to eat out. Sorry. Stay at home, get takeout, or go to McDonald's.

Where does your tip go? It really depends on the restaurant. Many restaurants operate on the traditional model where the server receives his tips in cash at the end of each night and he distributes that money at his discretion to his support staff. Typically that means 20% to the bussers, 5% to the bartender, 5% to the hostess, 3% to the kitchen and maybe 5% to a food runner or other support staff. Other restaurants will tip out each of their servers individually but will mandate the tip-out amounts to the support staff. While this eliminates the problem of the stingy server, it exacerbates the problem of the lazy busser. I'm a believer in this case of letting the market correct itself. If the server is stingy, the bussers won't help him out and his tips will go down.

An increasingly common trend in restaurants is "tip pooling." All gratuities go into one tip pool for that shift and then each server, busser, runner, host, kitchen, etc. gets a fixed percentage of the total gratuities. This works well in a busy, high-turnover restaurant where roles and sections blur. It eliminates competitiveness between servers and, assuming everyone works well together, encourages teamwork and cooperation. In this situation, stiffing a server is less of an issue since your cheapness is spread out over the hundreds of covers served that evening, and not the dozens that the one server has handled.

A third variation is one used by many fine-dining restaurants. A set service charge (usually about 18%) is added onto the bill or included in the prix-fixe price of the meal. Often in this case the server is paid a significantly higher base wage that partially is offset by that included service charge and then the server retains any additional tips given on top of that base service charge. This model is ideal for restaurants that can afford to pay their servers higher wages and maintain direct accountability for the quality of their servers' service to their customers. This is the standard operating procedure for restaurants in the upper price echelon, where a server will often only take a handful tables in an entire evening and stiffing a server is not an issue, since any server who does stuff worthy of being stiffed for will be promptly fired (and chances are doesn't work their in the first place).

So why should you tip? Let's debunk some common tipping complaints:

1. "My meal was already so expensive, why should I expect to shell out even more?" If you thought your meal was expensive before, you should see how much it would be if a restaurant had to pay a wage to their servers that was actually commensurate with their skills and experience. By turning over a small but significant portion of the payroll to the customers, a restaurant relieves some stress on their razor-thin profit margins.

2. "Here's a tip, get a real job!" It is a real job folks. A restaurant doesn't run without that layer between the customer and the kitchen. Good restaurant service is good customer service. It's a mix of acting, psychology, and good old-fashioned knowledge that can help make an unhappy customer happy and an unsure customer confident. Good servers also know the best way to streamline any problems so that by the time the problem reaches the kitchen they can deal with it with minimal difficulty. Imagine being a client-relations manager for four dozen different people every night. Oh yeah, and you walk (run) the equivalent of five miles in the course of doing your job. Are there bad, talentless servers? Absolutely. That's a product of too many restaurants and too many job openings. It's also a product of an increasingly "corporate" restaurant culture that emphasizes rules over intuition, protocol over talent.

3. "In Europe we never had to tip." So what, you want a fucking trophy? Go back to Europe, dipshit. No matter what, you're tipping. All that is eliminated in places where tipping isn't discretionary is the "sticker shock" at the end. The employees' wage is factored into the pricing of the menu (and many sit-down restaurants in Europe do add on a 10% service charge anyway). And what do you gain from this? Distracted, dispassionate servers and incongruous prices. On a recent trip to London, for example, a coworker of mine spent about $70 a person for mid-level Indian food and beer.

4. "The cooks do all the work and they don't get tipped." In most cases the kitchen does get a small share of the tips. Kitchen staff also makes significantly more hourly than servers do. Kitchen staff also work more hours than servers and are typically offered health insurance, some degree of vacation, and opportunities for advancement. Does a typical line cook still makes less than a typical server working at the same restaurant? Sure, but that's a product of the way the business works. The income that one can make as a server if one is good at it is often the only thing that keeps people with actual talent around. Think how bad your service would be if your server was making $12 an hour. Oh right, go to Europe and see. A Cote is a restaurant I know of that tips out a larger percentage to their kitchen and the servers make less overall. Service there is about as neglectful and unhelpful as you can find for that price.

Is amuses me when people talk about bad service as a reason not to tip in general. No, that's a reason not to tip your server that night. It's all the more reason to tip well the servers who are truly good at their jobs. I don't tip the stripper who performs a disinterested lap dance and tries to upsell me on the full-nude option as much as I do the stripper who holds a conversation, compliments me, and doesn't try to scam me.

Let's get down to business then. How much should you tip?

If she's good, $5-$10 extra per song.

If your service is competent and reasonably attentive you should tip NO LESS THAN 15%. Anything else, anything at all, will make you seem like a cheapskate. What do I mean by reasonably attentive service? You got everything you needed and if any problems arose they were promptly addressed. Service was professional, questions were answered reasonably effectively, and direction was given when requested.

If you had the service mentioned above with maybe a little bit extra "oomph" or helpfulness thrown in there, e.g. a server was able to get the kitchen to make a special substitution or something along those lines, you should tip NO LESS THAN 18%.

If your server made recommendations that you truly enjoyed, offered helpful direction on the wine list that enhanced your dining experience, navigated a particularly sticky situation at your table, was able to handle many special requests, or just in general left you feeling well taken care of you should tip NO LESS THAN 20%.

Same holds truth if the server was way hot and flirty.

So what's the least you should tip? That's a tough question. It really depends where the failings were. If the server was inattentive, distracted, forgot things, fucked up an order, and made no effort to correct those matters I would say that you should tip no less than 10% if you plan to tip at all. Anything less will be taken as a severe personal affront. If you do choose to take such an action (and some servers do deserve it), you should leave no tip at all and plan never to return to that restaurant.

I do encourage you to closely examine the situation. For instance, if a server is hard to find but is otherwise very helpful when he's at your table, take a look around and see how busy the restaurant is and how busy the server is. Chances are your server is doing the best he can and is simply very busy. Should you tip less than you would if you had prompt service? I wouldn't but usually a server won't take it as a slight, provided you're still tipping at or above the 15% point. A server knows that sometimes service quality suffers at the expense of volume, and that's not something he can adequately control. Also, take a look at what the problems were--did food take too long? Not necessarily the server's fault, though he should be in communication with you on the topic. Was an order messed up? Once again, not necessarily the server's fault--but did he try to correct the error promptly?

Remember that at a popular restaurant on a busy night, your server is going to be busy. Restaurants don't overstaff. Ever.

On the other hand, is your server neglectful, slow, and inattentive but you can see him chatting with the cute hostess, sitting in the back reading, or standing around drinking wine? Well then by all means get pissed the fuck off. That's the difference between a neglectful server and a busy server.

Here are a few other guidelines when it comes to tipping:

DON'T tip some arcane decimal amount to make your total bill round out to a whole number. I give you a slide if you only make whole dollar purchases on your credit cards across the board: at gas stations, grocery stores, wherever. I wouldn't care so much about this topic if people rounded up on their decimal amounts to give a marginally more generous tip, but inevitably the customer has given a 13.9% tip for the sake of having a whole number on their bill. If your total lunch is $12.36 sense, why tip $2.64? That makes you look like a cheap asshole whereas a $3 tip makes you look generous. Isn't it worth 36 cents not to be an asshole?

DON'T tip exactly 15%. This makes you look not only cheap, but amateurish. You view tipping as a rote obligation and not something discretionary. This type of customer will generally also tip 15% across the board regardless of the quality of service. Round up folks. Round up.

DON'T show your math your check. If you really need to carry a one or do a percentage calculation in longform on your check, I really question your ability to get dressed in the morning and wipe your ass without assistance. Folks, it's simple: take the total, move the decimal point over, and double it. That's 20%. Feel free to adjust it up or down accordingly.

DON'T expressly compliment your server on the quality of his service or write a nice "Thank you great service [smiley face]" and then tip anything less than 18%. Nothing is more frustrating to a server.

DON'T get huffy about the "additional gratuity" line when you're paying a bill to which an automatic gratuity has been added. Remember two things: that gratuity has been added pre-tax so it's not a full 15% or 18% or 20% and that believe it or not a lot of people DO leave extra gratuity. That automatic gratuity is included to factor in the additional labor and service complications that larger parties entail. Relatedly, don't get all huffy about a gratuity line appearing on your check for a to go order. The computer doesn't know that it's a to go order, it just knows it's a credit card receipt.

DO tip in whole number quantities. This is what professional diners do. Even if you want to leave a 15% tip for whatever reason, do that quick math in your head and round up to the nearest dollar. Always round up folks, rounding down makes you look cheap. It looks like you'd rather keep that 36 cents than give the server an extra 64. The same rule of rounding up applies with cash payment too. When in doubt, throw in that extra dollar. What's it to you? Also don't do the "double tax" thing. While tax can be a useful guide for math purposes, actually doubling the tax us amateurish and odd--it can also get you in inadvertent trouble in states with lower tax rates.

DO tip fully on wine and drinks. Tipping $1 for drinks is something you do at a bar, not a restaurant. Make no deductions for wine or drinks in your consideration of a tip percentage. There's a grey area here: if you get multiple pricey bottles of wine, or an ultra-premium spirit at the end of your meal and you want to tip a few bucks less, fine. But if it looks like you deliberately factored out the wine you purchased in your tip, you'll look amateurish. This looks particularly bad if you asked for a server's direction on a bottle of wine and he gave you a recommendation that you greatly enjoyed. How much is tip on a $50 bottle of wine anyway? $10 out of your total meal, tops? Big fucking deal. If the server recommended it, opened it and poured it well, and you enjoyed it, then by all means tip the same as if it was your food. He had as much to do with that production of that as he did the wine.

DO calculate your tip after tax. The tip pre or post-tax debate is one of the all-time great pointless debates. If that difference of LESS THAN TWO CENTS ON THE DOLLAR (in California) is so important to you, then please stay at home. Servers only look at their tips in terms of percentage of the final bill. Sorry.

DO consider tipping on top of an automatically added service charge. As I said, the service charge is factored in pre-tax and, just because the policy has provided for a gratuity to be included, that doesn't mean the server might not've earned a higher tip. If you got 20% service, tip that extra cash. It looks good, I promise.

I tip a lot and I tip well. I tip 20% pretty much across the board, unless the service was particularly bad. I do this no matter where I am, unless local custom dictates otherwise. It's not a matter of taking care of people I know or making sure I maintain a reputation within the community where I work. I believe in the gratuity system and I believe in the rigors of customer service. Tips allow servers to earn what their labor is actually worth.

Beyond that, if you frequent a world in which gratuity is expected (you eat out a lot, take cabs a lot, stay at hotels a lot), over time you'll start to see things coming back around. If you tip that bellhop $10 when he takes your bags up or you tip the hotel valet $5 the first time you meet him and say "hello" and "thank you" and engage him like a human being, see how quick a response you get the next time you need something. If you tip a stripper an extra $40, see how well you're treated next time you're in.

Here's the truth. I get good tips. Most nights I average 18% on my gross (after tax) sales. I'm also really on top of my game. I know when I'm not being as attentive as I should. It's stressful. Sometimes I get too busy to give the service I demand of myself. But you know what? Customer see that I'm busy. I communicate with my tables and usually still get good tips. What all of that adds up to is, if you tip me poorly, I'm 99% certain that the problem is with you, not me. Is that arrogant? Maybe. But it seems to work.

Most people give bad tips because they are bad tippers. Most people give good tips because they're good tippers. The key is managing the good tippers to make them great tippers and making sure that the "undecided" tippers are pushed toward the good tipper side. What does that mean for bad tippers? You get ignored. I know it's a chicken and egg thing, but I'm pretty sure that bad tippers came first.

Be generous and friendly to service staff, it's a beautiful thing.