IN THE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS EVERYONE knows that the three most important attributes are “location, location and location.” In the restaurant business only a select few seem to know what most diners consider important.
There are different levels of service, even for “good” service. For example, Los Angeles is full of small, family operated restaurants where the owner is always there, and always attentive.
In the Palisades we have Sam’s at the Beach, where Sam is always on guard, always checking to see if you like the food, and to suggest that you taste some new wine he has just discovered. Angelo Sambeat is usually at Dante’s, in the Palisades, watching the waiters.
Over on Pico there is Lares’s Mexican restaurant, where I’ve been eating for 30 years, and family members of the original owners are now on guard.
The larger, more commercial restaurants have a different system. To be a waiter at Ocean Avenue Seafood one has to go to training school for two weeks, with written tests every day. As a result every waiter knows the names of the oysters, and the taste and texture of each fish on the menu. And everyone is invariably courteous.
The training program is similar at Houston’s on Second Street, where the venerable Bob Burns restaurant used to be. I guess they get the waitresses from some modeling agency, then put them through the restaurant training program.
I don’t know how they train at Patina’s restaurant at the Disney Concert Hall, but I would like to patent the system. Never have I been treated so well, even by my loving mother. It wasn’t just the cordial greeting, which has become “de rigueur.” The waiter’s description of the foods listed on the menu was focused and intelligent. There was no rush, but he was close-by. He watched the clock for us so we wouldn’t be late for the performance.
Then the wine steward Eric Espuny came over. After we chatted a while about the region of France he comes from, he showed up with six white wines and six glasses, and poured a sample of each for me to taste. They were extraordinarily well selected wines. Not one was among the usual commercial wines that most fine restaurants sell. Each had been selected because of something special. The white Chateauneuf-de- Pape Vieux Lazaret 2002 was particularly delicious, but so was an Italian wine from the far north, made from a grape I’ve rarely tasted. There was a Spanish Rioja 2000 white, with a touch of citrus, berry aromas and a long spice and fruit aftertaste. Eric correctly suggested that I finish the whites with my sweetbreads, then I had a glass of red to accompany my cheese plate from the best selection of cheese I’ve ever had in the United States (with it’s own menu). Don’t miss the “Torta del Casar.”
Wine training seems to be the least important consideration in most of the restaurants. Not everyone can afford to hire someone like Eric Espuny, who has worked in some of the finest restaurants in the world. But everyone could learn the basics. After several encounters I’ve finally taught some of the local waiters not to pick up my fine bottle of wine and shake it violently while taking out the cork. I just hold the bottle firmly on the table while they open it, and they now get it.
Years ago friends took us to the new Enoteca Drago in Beverly Hills. They could-n’t get a 7 p.m. reservation and settled for 8:30 p.m. Between 8:25 p.m., when we arrived, and 9 p.m. we stood in the entry waiting for a table. That wasn’t so bad. For the first 15 minutes I watched all the beautiful people coming in to sit at the bar. Then I spotted the “special feature” of the restaurant, the 50 numbered bottles of wine served by the glass. They offer quite an interesting selection, although too many of them are lesser known Italian wines from the same regions.
Finally by 9:15 p.m. we were seated “upstairs.” I was desperate for a bottle of wine, but not willing to spend the $200 to $300 necessary for anything really good on the wine list. Then I spotted a 1997 Barbera from an unfamiliar producer, and ordered it. Next to our table was a cabinet with fine wine glasses, and I asked the waiter if he could serve it in those glasses. Five minutes later the sommelier arrived at our table, and with a sneer announced that “those glasses are only for special customers. I’m sure you’ll enjoy our regular wine glasses.” I guess he put me in my place. But then I shouldn’t have been so cheap as to order a $50 bottle of wine. That restaurant is no longer in business.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 17, 2008. Read the original PDF.