I’ve been sick much of this past week and didn’t even get out of the house for two days. So I was able to watch a bit of food television, but missed Top Chef Masters semi-final and will have to catch it on Wednesday, hopefully, before the finale.
Kitchen Nightmares was my fodder. Can Chef Ramsay be insufferable, crude and arrogant much of the time? Yes. Is his restaurant expertise spot-on much of the time? Yes. Plus we did stay in Scotland for several months and I miss hearing the accent: he was set to join the Rangers in Glasgow, where we lived. I also miss bagpipers in the streets, so if anyone can send one to Utah, please do. I miss the daily sounds off George Square.
So I saw a few episodes and it appears that Rule #1 is: Don’t Piss Off The Locals. Now I know what’s wrong.
We came here late March and found a local eatery with great pizza, ambiance and the owners and our regular waitress were fantastic. When our favorite waitress was on, we’d each get a hug, and she even offered to take me to find an acoustic guitar from the same place she bought hers, a funky place near the University. Summer came. I came in alone one evening because I didn’t feel like cooking for one and Jim was at a software user group meeting downtown. It was crowded, but the owner blew past me with no recognition. The “hostess” stared at her fingernails for five minutes before the people in front of me said they weren’t in line but waiting for a pick-up. I asked for a table. She told me if I could find a place at the bar I could sit there if I wanted to. I walked out, found a place five minutes away and was treated well and had a lovely dinner.
To add insult to injury, I wrote a glowing review of the first restaurant on TripAdvisor. And a month later, we ordered pizza for delivery and it’s a five minute WALK away. They said it would be here in 40 minutes. Ninety minutes later it arrived, stone cold. I called to complain and they took it off my card.
Eight months of the year these restaurants need the locals desperately. Ski season, July and August the tourists come in and they conveniently forget who we are. There is a message to be sent, and that’s Don’t Piss Off The Locals! Find a place for us, if you can, and we’ll remember you fondly. If you can’t, try, and tell us you couldn’t do it and offer for us to share a free dessert next time. We’ll be back. We were going there twice a week!
It’s time to write a review of the second restaurant I walked to that night, where we ate lunch today. ‘Nuff said. Goodnight now, Dee
Cooking with Dee 