Acting like an owner

We went to the Hackensack Maggiano's for a late dinner tonight. There was a half hour wait for a table, so we ate at the bar. The whole time the bartender was loudly complaining about how busy it was, about a particular customer who asked him if he had some cordial, etc. Normally when something like this happens, I say I'm going to write the restaurant and never get around to it, but tonight I grabbed one of the manager's business cards and fired off a quick e-mail to him at 11:51pm. Seven minutes later, I got this response from him:

Thanks for letting me know about this situation. I am still in the restaurant and will immediately follow up on your feedback which I appreciate.

I am so sorry that it was not a more pleasant experience. The bartender should be happy it was a busy night!

I would love to send you a gift certificate to make up for this. What is the best address to use?

Can't handle it better than that. Brinker must do a good job of incentivizing its restaurant managers to act like owners.

High-end chef adapts to new economy

Hat tip to Cheryl for this article from NJ.com about how Craig Shelton, the chef/owner¹ of what was once New Jersey's most expensive (and one of its best reviewed²) restaurants, The Ryland Inn, is now working in a diner. About nine years ago occasional commenter Y./TheRivers, who had won a $150-off coupon to the restaurant, treated me to dinner there for my birthday. If memory serves, he ended up paying $350+ out of pocket, even after getting the $150 off -- and we had ordered the less expensive of the two wine pairings offered for the tasting menu. We did get a couple of free cigars from the chef though, when he found out that Y. and him belonged to the same secret society/fraternal organization. From the NJ.com article,

The Skylark Fine Diner and Lounge on Route 1, with its 60s airport lounge-meets-the-Jetsons interior — flying saucer-shaped lights, retro tables and chairs, and clocks showing the time in Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, London and elsewhere — is one of the more striking diners in a state that boasts more than any other.

But still, a top chef in a Jersey diner? What’s he going to do, offer $25 patty melts?

Far from it.

Shelton, the Skylark’s guest chef, has added dozens of eclectic, globe-spanning, reasonably-priced dishes to the diner’s menu since early September. Constantine Katsifis, the Skylark’s owner, says he and Shelton are "inventing a new category of diner."

"The restaurant business across America is a horror show — down 60 percent, down 40 percent," Shelton said.

The thought of working in a diner makes Shelton laugh heartily.

"But it’s a good idea for any chef ... to have a more diversified portfolio."

After a water line break shut down the Ryland Inn in early 2007, Shelton was working on his high-end coffee line and ideas for food-related TV projects when Katsifis invited him to a restaurant trade show in Chicago.

I remember Shelton's high-end coffee line, from articles about it a couple of years ago. He was offering two types of coffee, actually: one allegedly blended and roasted for enjoyment on yachts and the other for stables. $20 per lb. for each, I believe. Back to the article,

Over dinner, Katsifis outlined a plan for the Skylark that was still evolving in his own mind.

"(There are) 20 chefs as accomplished as he is in the country," Katsifis said. "We came back from that meeting and decided to take the Skylark to the next level."

A commenter on at NJ.com wrote,

This is a welcome change. The French have bistros, the Italians trattorie and we have - diners.

NJ diners prove that anyone with a deep fryer, a can opener and a griddle can go into the business.

Well, not exactly. The most successful diners have loyal clientele who will only eat mediocre food from their favorite diner's deep fryer.

Edison is a little bit of a haul from here, but we'll have to head down there and check out the new Skylark diner.


¹A commenter on NJ.com writes that Shelton is no longer the owner of the Ryland Inn, having lost it to bankruptcy. I don't know if that's the case or not.

²From that link to the New York Times review:

Did I say words fail me? I seem to have gone on for five paragraphs about a tomato salad -- a dish you probably won't get to eat, by the way, for 9 or 10 months, the season having passed. But this is what it's like to eat at the Ryland Inn. You lose yourself in this food -- its colors, its textures, the way it works with the wine and the way the flavors seem to change and broaden with each mouthful.

[...]

Amid such riches it's easy to forget your surroundings. The 200-year-old inn, once a stagecoach stop on the road from New Brunswick to Easton, Pa., is a fine white clapboard building with Gothic touches and a green awning. The garden, open for strolling, occupies 2 of the inn's 50 acres; the rest is rolling pasture shaded by ancient trees. On a clear weekend afternoon in the fall, watching hot-air balloons drift over the forested hills of Hunterdon County, you can imagine yourself in France.

Hunterdon County is old money horse country (unlike hardscrabble Sussex County, where this pony lives).

New York Restaurants Adapt to Recession

Restaurant critic Frank Bruni of the New York Times writes that high-end local restaurants have added deals and started acting more solicitously toward diners as their business slackens due to the recession and financial crisis (hat tip to Cheryl): "Restaurants Stop Playing Hard to Get". Excerpt:

Battered hard already by the recession and petrified of what’s to come, restaurants are talking sweet and reaching out in ways they didn’t six or even three months ago. They’re cutting special deals, adding little perks, relaxing demands and making an extra effort to be accessible.

They’ve seldom wanted you so bad, so they’ve rarely treated you so good. If you can still afford to dine out, you’re likely finding yourself enfolded in what the restaurateur Stephen Hanson— who recently closed two Manhattan restaurants, including Fiamma — describes as a big, tight embrace.

The photo above, of the chef Mario Batali (wearing Crocs), Sirio Maccioni (of Le Cirque), and Jean-Georges Vongerichten (mostly cropped out by Blogger) comes from the New York Times article. Vongerichten's flagship restaurant in New York, Jean-Georges, is one of only three restaurants in the city that has earned Michelin's highest, 3-star rating.

Chain Restaurant Recommendation: Maggiano's Little Italy

The new Hackensack outpost of Maggiano's Little Italy (the facade of which is pictured above) was packed last night when Cheryl and I had dinner there (The Great Depression 2.0 doesn't seem to have hit Bergen County, NJ yet). The only complaint I had when we had dined there last week was that the sponge cake/lady finger part of the tiramisu was a little dry, but it was fine last night. Since Northern New Jersey has a large Italian-American population, there are a lot of local Italian restaurants, but the food at Maggiano's compares favorably with them, and is superior to most of them (granted, some local spots seem to have delegated their cooking to non-Italians). It would be great if the proprietors of some of the sub-par local Italian restaurants had dinner at Maggiano's sometime. The quality of the corporate chain -- Maggiano's is part of Brinker International (NYSE: EAT) -- might shame them into stepping up their games.