When the Customer is Wrong July 31, 2008

Posted by Alexander Sawit in The Opinion Page.
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By Alex Sawit

31 July 2008

[Revised 06 August 2008]

 

It was a busier than usual Wednesday night when two young women walked into the shop and asked if we had a ladies room. I answered yes and welcomed them in (I know firsthand what it feels like to be in a pinch, so I don’t refuse polite strangers who enter the shop seeking personal relief, regardless of whether they are giving us business or not).

After I pointed them in the right direction, the girls ordered two glasses of house wine, which they said they would come back for. So while they were gone, I opened a fresh bottle of our house red and poured two servings, leaving the glasses on a spare table for them.

About ten minutes later, I was busy with my other customers when I noticed one of the girls standing in front of the store counter, smiling as she waited for me to attend to her. I thought she wanted to settle the bill, so I was feeling at ease when we came face to face.

“There’s something wrong with the wine,” she complained.

That caught me off guard. Had I inadvertently opened a damaged bottle? Feeling apologetic, I listened as she confidently expressed her opinion.

“It smells old,” she asserted, “and acidic.” She proudly suggested that the wine, a French vin de pays Cabernet Sauvignon, had turned harshly unbalanced and was well past ideal condition. Neither she nor her friend bothered to drink it, she assured me, because she insisted on returning the wine.

I looked at her with a blank stare. I was not amused and I let it show.

“Didn’t you notice it?” she asked after seeing the displeasure on my face, realizing that I wasn’t taking her word for it.

“I didn’t try it,” I replied curtly.

I told her to bring both glasses back to the counter and she complied, after which she and her friend left. Once they were out of view, I waited a few more minutes to give the untouched wine extra time to breathe. When I picked up one of the glasses, I twirled it to further aerate its contents.

I took a good whiff and then tasted it. True enough, the wine was exactly as I expected. It was perfectly fine. Here was an uncomplicated, fruity Cabernet blend that smelled of blueberry syrup and violets and evoked the taste of sweet cherries at the end. It was nothing special but it was pleasant. Unfortunately, the young woman didn’t understand that the old and acidic smells she was complaining about were clues that the wine just needed some air.

Old and acidic… yeah, right. It was beneath her to even taste it, good grief.

To be fair, she had complained quite cordially. The problem was that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I have to think that some ignorant wine snob must have taught her and, worse, told her that it is fashionable to show off one’s “knowledge” about wine as a complaining customer. Luckily for her, I was not in the mood to unsettle my other guests by embarrassing her in front of everyone over a mere two glasses of generic house pour. It was my prerogative, so I gave her a pass. Had this been a whole bottle of wine from our main selection, however, I would have corrected her outright and flatly refused to allow the wine to be returned.

Entertaining complaints is a fact of life at Cyrano, so I make it a point to attend to such matters as quickly and fairly as possible. Nevertheless, I also have a strict policy when it comes to complaints about our wines. It is a policy that I have steadfastly enforced ever since our doors opened.

My policy is simple: In any dispute over wine, my judgment alone rules.

I am the final arbiter. If a customer complains and it is my judgment that the customer is wrong, then the customer is wrong. End of story. My decision is beyond contestation no matter how much a customer may disagree. And if you also happen to be a pretentious wine snob, then be ready to get what’s coming to you.

That’s the way it is. I won’t have it any other way. At Cyrano, wine snobbery is not welcome.

Needless to say, I’m sure that any other wine shop would regard it as business suicide to do what we’ve been doing for the last couple of years. But as our loyal patrons can tell you, Cyrano is not any other wine shop.

“He’s the only bar owner I know who argues with his customers,” one of our patrons once bragged admiringly about me to his friend while they were at Cyrano (thanks for the compliment, Joey, although I should point that we are actually a wine shop, not a bar). Other patrons have over the years voiced similar pride in our willingness to stand our ground. In fact, that’s actually how some of them became our friends.

Take the following story. About a year ago, an American customer walked in with his Filipina wife and asked me to recommend a bottle of wine they could drink on the premises. The fellow described what he wanted, so I selected a powerful, densely packed reserve Malbec from Argentina. I served it and then went about my business. A short time later, the American called me to complain that the wine hadn’t turned out to his liking; he asked that the bottle either be replaced or be priced off. So I reached for a clean glass and tasted the wine for myself. Without flinching, I told the fellow that there was nothing wrong with it. I reminded him that I had cautioned earlier that this heavy style of red required at least half an hour to breathe before it could be appreciated properly. But he continued to disagree, so I put my foot down.

“I’m sorry, but there is nothing wrong with the wine,” I said firmly. “If there was something technically wrong with it, if it had been damaged by heat or some other kind of spoilage, then I would have been the first to say so and I would have replaced the bottle immediately. But if the wine simply disagrees with you, then I’m afraid it can’t be returned or discounted. In this place, I am the final arbiter, therefore my judgment is final.” Having ruffled some feelings in the room, I decided to offer him and his wife complimentary glasses of white wine as a show of good will and I left it at that.

Believe it or not, less than an hour later the American was chatting with me and my Friday group at the dining counter, eating cheese with us and, above all, enjoying the Malbec that he had earlier complained about.

“You know, you’re right,” he finally admitted. “It really tastes better now after half an hour.”

All’s well that ends well. Ted and his wife Naty have been visiting us ever since, dropping in every so often for good vino and friendly conversation (and, once, to listen to our Boz Scaggs Greatest Hits Live concert on DVD). The fellow even had his birthday party at Cyrano last year.

Yeah, that’s the way it is here.

There are lots of things we do at the shop that wouldn’t work most anywhere else. But at Cyrano, when we honestly tell customers when they’re wrong, things still manage to go right. Funny, isn’t it?

So to all the wine snobs out there, like those who are clueless about “old” and “acidic” smells, please feel free to be wrong anywhere else. Here, I will make sure that you answer to my rules.

Like I said, I won’t have it any other way.

 

 

Realizing Ratatouille February 19, 2008

Posted by Alexander Sawit in The Opinion Page.
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By Alex Sawit

19 February 2008

 

As part of the Chinese New Year celebration at Cyrano (we officially celebrated on the 15th so as to include a few folks we had been waiting for), I thought I’d mark the Year of the Rat by revisiting a movie that extols the virtues of our four-legged friend, honored in the Chinese zodiac for its cleverness and hard-working nature. “Kong hei fat choy!”

 

 

“Anyone can cook.”

So goes the catchphrase from my favorite film of 2007, Ratatouille, that computer-animated movie about a heroic little blue rat who goes to Paris with dreams of becoming a great chef. I love that movie from start to finish, from the moment I hear the opening bars of “Les Marseilles” to the moment I see Rémy’s happy new bistro overlooking the rooftops of Paris at the ending. It’s a whimsical yet thought-provoking tale (thanks to the storytelling genius of writer-director Brad Bird), which persuades us in a most imaginative way that no one be disqualified when it comes to food. There are cooks and there are great cooks. But while not everyone can be a great cook, anyone can strive to make food better.

Yes, anyone can learn to cook.

Not surprisingly, the folks in France loved this movie. Take it from a people who are proud of their culinary spirit to rejoice about a movie like this. Even the narrator’s opening line affirms what the French believe about themselves, that “the best food in the world is made in France” (although the narrator hedges by conceding that other countries that will dispute this…buon appetito, anyone?).

 

 

“It’s been a long time since any film celebrated, with so much kitsch energy, France: its cuisine, its finest features, and Paris, capital of taste,” gushed the weekly entertainment magazine Télérama as the movie went on to make almost $16 million on its first week, eventually shattering French box-office records for an animated feature film. So unanimous was the affection that no less than their most iconic newspaper, Le Monde, was moved to proclaim the movie as “one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema.”

I understand what they mean. There have been food films before but none has portrayed the journey of the cook as heroic artist as poignantly as Ratatouille; that this has been achieved by an animated film makes it that much more unique. In the hands (technically paws) of our furry blue hero, food is transformed into something that has to be celebrated. French audiences get that. They approve when our hero exults in triumph after scoring a mushroom and Tome de Chèvre cheese outside an old country cottage; they cheer him when he takes over a disastrous sweet-bread recipe at Gusteau’s restaurant and improvises it into a sensational hit. Just like our hero, they too believe that making good food is something to be proud of and passionate about.

 

 

Yet even as I smiled at how the French connected with this movie, on the flipside I was taken aback by a different reaction on the opposite side of the Atlantic…in America.

Last December 2007, the influential American business magazine Fortune, famous for its listings of the world’s top corporations and wealthiest individuals, published its annual list of the “101 Dumbest Moments in Business” in its year-end issue. Described by the editors as “the absolutely dumbest of the dumb that the gods of fate and humor delivered into our laps,” the list identified a hundred and one instances of what the magazine perceived as the year’s most hilarious lapses in business judgment: the “Made in China” product recall, Eli Lily’s decision to market Prozac for dogs and Citigroup’s $11 billion subprime write-down fiasco are three of the stories that made the top ten.

 

 

Stunningly, Ratatouille was No. 9 on the list.

The editors at Fortune didn’t poke fun at it directly. Instead they singled out the French newspaper Le Monde for having lavished the movie with so much affection. Unable to contain their chuckling, the Americans ridiculed their French counterparts for daring to suggest that a movie – an animated movie at that – about something as disgusting as a rat in the kitchen could qualify as one of the great gastronomic films of all time. “Ooh-la-la, gross!” were the magazine’s exact words.

Excuse me? Did we watch the same thing here?

It takes someone who has actually seen Ratatouille to fully appreciate the magnitude of ignorance that the magazine displayed. As one who has actually done so, I have to come to the inescapable conclusion that the folks at Fortune never bothered to watch this.

What a bunch of morons.

There is something else, something that goes to the heart of what I believe about cuisine and culture. By revealing how clueless they were about the movie, the folks who dismissed it betrayed ignorance about an Old World culture that happens to be acknowledged for its culinary excellence and gastronomic judgment. How often, after all, does one read of Americans belittling the French about their core competency? It reeks of misplaced smugness for them to laugh to the tune of, “Hee-haw, do you Frenchies understand what you’re talking about?”

My point is that if the French, who appreciate great cuisine, can appreciate a charming fantasy about a four-pawed protagonist who has the courage to cook, what does this say about those who can’t figure it out?

Let’s explore this, shall we?

There is a saying among great travelers: If you want to understand a country, you have to eat it. I first heard this years ago from bon vivant cook Keith Floyd in his BBC series Floyd on Spain and I’ve been passing it to others ever since. Nothing reflects the heart of a people more expressively than their food. Put another way, a people’s food tells you a lot about who they are, what they believe in, what they value in life.

When celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations fame embarked on his first television adventure in Japan, it didn’t take long for him to be captivated – and humbled – by the Japanese culinary soul. As he traveled from one dish to another, from fresh soba in a noodle house to the creations of a master sushi chef to the Zen-like artistry of a kaiseki meal in a countryside inn, he encountered a spiritual respect for food that did not seem to have a counterpart in the West. No other people, he observed, are as obsessive about fresh ingredients and as compulsive about crafting those ingredients with impeccable precision as the Japanese (“You do not see this level of knife skills in French kitchens,” he said admiringly while watching from his seat at the sushi counter).

It was so different, he reflected, from what was back home in America, where industrial quantities of burgers, pizzas, fried chicken and barbecue are put away by folks who feel that eating is about shoveling as much as you want. In the land of the eat-all-you-can buffet, bulk is bliss. “For us, restaurants are like gas stations,” Bourdain lamented. “You pull in, you fill up and you move on, preferably as quickly as possible. The idea of volume is much more important than quality. “Hey, did you have a good meal? Yeah, they gave you all the shrimp you could eat!” That’s really silly. It explains a lot about our culture.”

To be fair, it should go without saying that there are a lot of Americans who have discriminating tastes. I for one have befriended many who take pride in cooking with authenticity and sophistication.

But Bourdain drives his point. It is his implicit observation that Americans are happy to settle for mediocre food as long as it is easy-to-cook and easy-to-eat. Hence his legendary contempt for food celebrities Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee, superstars of the Food Network who use media-savvy to cover up deficient kitchen skills and an appalling lack of talent (Bourdain has referred to both women on separate occasions as “evil”). The titles of their best-known shows, 30 Minute Meals and Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, are tragically revealing.

 

 

Clearly the most profiteering food charlatan in America today, Rachael Ray is cable television’s loudest advocate of kitchen cheats (why does she always resort to using tons of chicken stock and extra virgin olive oil to boost flavor in everything she makes?). Granted, even great cooks use legitimate shortcuts (and I emphasize ‘legitimate’). But Ray gives it new meaning by insisting, with that very wide smile of hers, that her abbreviated cooking is a method to make good food in less time, all the time. It’s a dishonest spin, if not an outright lie. Ray deliberately passes off mediocrity as excellence. She knows it sells. And she is happy to do so for as long as her fans are lapping it up. They’re buying her books and keeping her shows in the money, so expect her to continue with ditzy clichés like “Delish!” and “Yum-o!” and to keep getting paid to do endorsements for everything from breakfast cereal to donuts (mercifully, at least I never have to see her pose for FHM again…ugh, my eyes, my eyes).

But if Ray is merely an unscrupulous fraud, then Sandra Lee is one sick, twisted lady. Permit me to dramatize:

Why chop your onions, Sandra might ask with Stepford Wives innocence, when you can buy pre-chopped opinions at the supermarket? Gee, it must be so bloody hard to chop an onion, Sandra. Ooh, she continues, wanna know my secret for making Italian gnocchi dumplings in cheese that’s almost as good as the stuff in a fancy restaurant? Heaven forbid you use real cheese…I recommend Velveeta®! It’s tasty and sooooo cheap! Don’t forget to use pre-minced garlic that you can buy in a jar. None of that messy whole clove stuff, okay? That’s what “Semi-Homemade Cooking” is about! Way to go, Sandra, you psycho!

 

 

There is something insanely obscene about cooks who champion bad shortcuts to make cheap food, which they masquerade as “gourmet-tasting” cuisine. That they have become hugely successful and influential is an indictment against American popular culture. It is proof that a great many consumers want what these celebrity gurus are offering. They aren’t selling food, really. What they are selling is convenience. And in America’s consumer culture, convenience is everything.

Celebrity gurus also have well-intentioned defenders, who argue that the convenience offered by Ray and Lee is not unjustified in America’s city block kitchenettes. They point that many urban households don’t have time away from work to devote to making a proper meal, given the faster pace of today’s talk-and-text workplace (which is one reason why microwavable boxed dinners represent a $3 billion business in the U.S.).

Yet such an argument loses its validity in the face of one simple truth: Everyone can learn to cook.

Even Bourdain likes to point this out whenever he is asked to explain his polarized opinion of you-know-who. “The standard I hold her (Rachael Ray) to…is Julia Child, who wasn’t a professional chef either,” he says about the most beloved cooking presenter in the history of American television (her kitchen studio is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History). “When you watched Julia Child, you would see her make Coq au Vin, or some classic French dish, and you’d say “Wow, that’s classic French food, that’s not so difficult. Julia can do it, I can do it. I’m gonna try that.” And it made people aspire to more.”

 

 

I am suddenly reminded of Jaime Oliver, how on his first TV series he was able to teach children at his old school to cook from scratch, helping them put together an elegant menu of Chicken Breast and Mushrooms in White Wine followed by a dessert of Chocolate Cambridge Cream. And I suddenly remember that Nigella Lawson, Britain’s beautiful “domestic goddess,” has been stylishly showing global audiences for nearly a decade how to follow honest recipes to make pleasurable food that is neither too difficult nor too time-consuming. I even find myself thinking about the sometimes mad yet brilliantly easy-to-follow cooking sketches of that old drunka…er, I mean, geezer Keith Floyd, who inspired my elder sister and I as kids to try to cook on our own.

I’ll say it again. There are cooks and there are great cooks. Not everyone can be great. But everyone can strive to be better and aspire for more. And while such things as little furry blue heroes may exist only in our imaginations, they do live and breathe in the power of our ideals, inspiring us to take pride in what we do.

Yes, anyone can cook.

 

 

Re-edited 28 May 2012