TracyFood

Reading about restaurants: The Linkery’s “Casing the Joint” blog 24 July 2007 7:50 pm

Posted by Tracy in : news, restaurants, reviews, work , trackback

I discovered the Casing the Joint restaurant blog for San Diego’s The Linkery restaurant as a result of Jay’s post Market vs. Nature last month, which got some well-deserved love from other food geeks I read. Good stuff, and rummaging through the blog archive has been fun, too. In honor of Restaurant Week here at TracyFood, I would like to call your attention to a few Casing the Joint pieces in particular:

Why 95% of U.S. Restaurants Suck and How We Learn Not to Notice Good rant, with an especially useful ending, a list of ways restaurant customers can help the 5% of restaurants that have not completely succumbed to bland homogenization. If you’re not feeling like clicking on through, at least ponder the following suggestion:

Make an effort to really taste your food when you eat out. Paticularly do this if the restaurant has a great reputation, a stellar concept, great ambience, fancy food presentation (particularly with nifty garnishes) and/or lots of attractive people working and eating there. Are you being distracted so you won’t notice that the food is the same flavorless stuff you get most other places? A lot of high-end places use heavy sauces, sweet glazes and marinades, and/or butter and garlic to disguise the fact that their principal ingredients are useless. Midrange places often do this with a fryer.

Awesome!
A Restaurant Review. I nodded along with this one from the opening line,

There is no such thing as a restaurant, really. It’s all just people. Anything else is just a diversion or a prank.

He only speaks the truth! Yay!
About Our No-Tipping Policy: The Linkery does not accept gratuities, instead charging every party a flat 18% for table service; any extra cash left behind gets donated to charity. I am still meditating on the implications of such a policy, but I was impressed by the Linkery’s Q & A page on the subject, which just happens to mention the fact that service charges instead of tipping are used by such fine establishments as The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, and my heroes over at Moosewood. My only quibble with The Linkery’s analysis is their claim that it’s not legal for them to redistribute tips, by which I hope they mean it’s not easily enforcable by any means other than the honor system, of which I rather happen to be a fan. Clearly, I should write more on the subject of tipping some other time.

Oh, and in case you missed yesterday’s post, Linley’s comment inspired me to write nearly an essay in response, and is therefore most praiseworthy indeed.