Day 14: Waiter Rant, Part Deux

When you go into a restaurant as a customer, please be aware that a lot of procedures in wine and cocktail service are generally done for a reason. Here are some of them and yes, I had to grin and bear through all of these in one nice 13-hour day:

1.  When you order a red wine at a restaurant, they are sometimes chilled down to the correct "cellar" temperature of 55-65 degrees. Most restaurants are not kept this cool. We are bringing your red wine down to a correct temperature so you can enjoy all the fun flavors that come out as your bottles warms up from 60 degrees. When your waitress says she is chilling your red wine, why don't you ask why instead of telling her she's wrong.

2. If a cocktail is made with mostly liquor, it is usually stirred. If it is made with a juice or mixer of any kind, it is generally shaken. Both of these methods are generally done so that alcohol is not diluted and not filled with ice chips. Please read my last post and listen to President Bartlet. He's never wrong.

3. Don't look at your waiter dumbfounded when she mentions the word "vermouth" when you order a martini.

4. When you're asked to taste a bottle of wine, just do it. It's done so you don't get a bottle of wine that tastes and smells like cardboard and wet newspaper. Make sure it doesn't smell like that and you're good to go. Also, don't smell the cork. It's traditionally put in front of you so you can check to see if it matches the bottle. This is so you can make sure we didn't fuck you over and put a cheaper wine in a more expensive bottle (which we don't really care to do).

5. If you're the last people in the restaurant and everything else around you is put away, it's time to go.

I knew very little about wine and cocktails earlier than a year ago. I have no right to be telling anybody how to go about and do this. I didn't even know how open a damn bottle of wine before last July and I'm pretty sure I still ask dumb questions but I'm pretty proud of how far I've come. So this is me sharing my knowledge with you so that none of us look like idiots when we go out to eat.

What I'm basically saying is know what you know and own it.
Be cool, humble, and open and please don't tell your waiter how beautiful it was when you went to "Vin de Pays."