To tip or not to tip

To tip, or not to tip: that is the question :
Whether tis' nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous waitrons,
Or to take arms against a sea of bozos
And by opposing, end them ?

Apologies to the Bard for tampering with some of his classic prose but that's the end of apologies for today. I'm tired of wrestling with this dilemma of whether to tip or not, whether it makes economic sense, whether it's custom and practice, whether it's socially correct behaviour, whether it makes a blind bit of difference to the service or lack of it, that you get in a restaurant and I reckon that if the restaurateurs and the hospitality industry can't or won't tackle the problem then it should be legislated for and then at least there would be no confusion in anyone's mind when a Government imposed taxable service charge was levied.
Going for a meal in a restaurant is a strange sort of transaction - you are entering into a contract with the restaurant owner. He undertakes to serve you a meal at a predetermined price as indicated on the menu and you undertake to pay that specific price. At some stage in the proceedings, you, the diner, decide to pay more than what is required, effectively giving your money away - it's really quite bizarre ! When was the last time you went into one of Mr A's Emporiums (or should that be Emporia) and when asked by the cashier for R 125 you gaily replied "Just add 10% to that please".
Now I understand the concept of varying degrees of service but with other suppliers it normally works the other way. If I get bad service from the plumber or electrician then I deduct money from the bill - why should a restaurant be any different? Why should I give you money to be nice to me, to bring the food on time, to not spill wine all over me - it doesn't make sense. Why should I reward your little tricks like drawing smiley faces on the bill, touching my arm or back as you pour the wine, telling silly jokes, it's your job for cris'sake!
I'm not interested in the stories that the wages are low or non existent, that the industry can only attract drifters, that tipping encourages better service. The bottom line is that if everyone stopped tipping immediately, the waiters would not work for nothing, the restaurant owners would have to pay salaries, they would increase their prices no doubt but I would have the opportunity to vote with my feet - the businessmen would survive and the bozos go bang!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Hale and Pace trying to order some good old fish and chips in the sketch. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

This week’s Dilly Diner is in Munich. It’s not a Diner in the traditional sense of the word but it certainly is Dilly. Stephanie Fuchs has opened what she describes as “the world’s first organic butcher shop for dogs” in Munich’s Laim district.At first, “people just laughed,” says Fuchs. No surprise there. Her store, “Beutefuchs,” now has over 100 clients from the greater Munich area. Fuchs says the secret to her success is that from “start to finish,” she demands rigor in what she does: she buys the meat she sells from organic farms, checking first on site that the meat is raised and slaughtered in sustainable and humane conditions. Fuchs creates tailor-made raw food diets for dogs. After examining and weighing a dog, she comes up with a meal plan with the help of a computer program she created herself. “Menus include meat, fruit, salad, vegetables, oils, minerals and herbs,” she says. The food is then either vacuum-packed or put in jars. I’m sure the pooches are now delighted and guilt free.

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That Was The Week That Was

Rick Stein was cock a hoop this week as a beer named after his departed doggie Chalky, scooped the award as World’s Best Pale at the International Beer Awards. Ale The idea for Chalky's Bite came about as a challenge from Rick to Sharp's Brewery Head Brewer Stuart Howe. The task was to create a distinctly English beer with the character, individuality and quality to stand alongside the Belgian greats. The beer created is exceptional with a delicate flavour balance of three different hop varieties and wild Cornish fennel. Chalky's patience whilst attending the many development and sampling sessions at the Brewery is justifiably rewarded in the name.
Rick of course spends a lot of his time in Australia with the new lady in his life and yet another restaurant but a Nielsen report revealed this week that Chalky’s Bite may not be such a big seller there. In fact it appears that a new generation of Aussie blokes are choosing a cold cider over a beer at the pub. And it is Generation-Y men who are driving the trend. The Arkaba Hotel, in Fullarton, has recorded a 300 per cent increase in cider sales in its bottle shop in the past year. Arkaba promotions manager Glen Aikman said cider was no longer considered a girl's drink. "We have blokes who are footballers and guys from other sporting codes through the hotel regularly and they are now all ordering cider," he said. "It's probably been in the last six months that we've really noticed a swing on and off premises to cider." Yeah well we always knew the Aussies were a bunch of big girls!
The one thing we did like about Australia was of course Masterchef Australia, the reality cooking contest which was a truly world class production. Predictably countries around the world hastily jumped on the bandwagon to produce their own version with varying degrees of success. South Africa was no exception and this week was calling for aspiring chefs to be scrutinised in cook offs by culinary judges. We can expect to see the finished version on our screens in the New Year. Let’s hope it can emulate the original and not end up like the slew of locally produced food programmes which are about as interesting as watching the Chinese channel on DSTV!

I'm reading: That Was The Week That Was

Hopping mad

Experts are investigating after a batch of frogs with five legs were found in a Cambridgeshire river. Froggy huggers are reported to be totally baffled with environmental agency Natural England saying specialists were puzzled by the deformity. A spokeswoman told Sky News it was thought to be the first time such frogs had been spotted in the UK."We are not sure what the reason is. A parasite; pollution - they are all possibilities. But we've reached no conclusions." She said research in the US suggested the deformity might be caused by a parasite which attacks frogspawn and disrupts growth patterns.
Well I'm not a betting man by nature, but I would wager two or three rand that it's those bloody Frogs from across the Channel that are responsible. You see I reckon that they have been following with interest the phenomenon of the populations of freshwater crayfish growing to epidemic proportions in Britain's rivers and waterways - it must be something in the water I suppose. The American signal crayfish was first imported to the UK in 1972, to stock farms supplying restaurants. But some escaped and have thrived, while numbers of the UK's only native freshwater crayfish, the 'white-clawed' crayfish, have plummeted. Now consider if you will, the insatiable, almost bizarre, appetite that the Frogs have for frogs legs - 60 to 80 million legless frogs per year at last count - and it becomes strikingly obvious how they could increase supply by 20% at one fell swoop. My theory is that they sneaked across the Channel and introduced a few cloned, five legged, frogs in British freshwater territorial waters in the hope that they would multiply like the crustaceans in a very quick period of time before offering to harvest the offending multi limbed amphibians at no cost to the British taxpayer. I tell you, they are not to be trusted, their eyes are too close together - the Frogs not the frogs !

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What grows in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is quite a surreal place with gaudy, extravagant, palaces of impropriety situated right in the middle of nowhere, in a desert. And now it’s going to become even more surreal with the news that in this most unlikely of locations, the dry desert of Nevada, a company called “Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp” has built 44 ponds from recycled shipping containers to grow and harvest shrimp on a 30,000-square-foot shrimp farm. Blue Oasis, plans to sell shrimp to high-end restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip, where Las Vegas chefs are accustomed to working with frozen shrimp. Now customers will be able to purchase the whole live shrimp, including the head and shell. It may sound like a madcap idea until you understand that the plant’s maximum shrimp production is estimated at around a mere 500,000 pounds of shrimp a year whilst Las Vegas consumes a colossal 22 million pounds of shrimp annually. More shrimp than anywhere else in the world. The shrimp is raised for up to 120 days in monitored tanks in a room that’s air-conditioned to ensure a steady temperature of 80 degrees. The shrimp are fed seafood proteins, and their waste is used to fertilize the algae that sustains the salt water system. Water is a primary concern in Las Vegas, but no water is lost from the self-cleaning tanks because Blue Oasis recycles all the water and any water that evaporates is reclaimed through the air system. So there you are, fresh organic shrimp for all those eco warriors waddling from one hotel buffet to another.

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Eau happy day

According to a new market research report compiled by The NPD Group good old tap water is becoming one of the fastest growing beverages ordered at U.S. restaurants. Now I don’t know whether that is a reflection of the economics of the current times or due to the fact that consumers are slowly waking up to the fact that bottled water is one of the most despicable scams ever conceived and frankly I don’t really care. What I do know is that what happens in US restaurants today invariably happens in South African restaurants not too long afterwards. It’s high time that restaurant diners refused to be intimidated by lisping, mincing waitroids looking down their acned, pierced snouts, rolling their eyeballs with disdain when asked for a simple glass of water. “Will that be still or sparkling for Sir?” No! it’ll be bloody tap, with ice, in a dry glass, as quick as you like! Forget about what the waitroid thinks, after all he’s only a bloody plate carrier. Consider instead that for the average bottle of designer water making the bloody plastic bottle requires takes 162g of oil and seven litres of water to produce a 1 litre bottle. To make the 29bn plastic bottles used annually in the US, the world's biggest consumer of bottled water, requires more than 17m barrels of oil a year, enough to fuel more than a million cars for a year. And if that doesn’t convince you then consider that litre for litre designer water is about 1000 times more expensive than municipal water so to hell with the waitroid's snooty attitude just tell him to shift his cute little ass and turn on the tap.

I'm reading: Eau happy day