Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Wimpy Forks Spoil A Meal

If you think you're running an "upscale" restaurant, make sure you check your eating utensils, that you offer your customers, and throw away the very thin, very ductile, ridiculously low strength forks. The kind of wimpy forks that bend when stabbed into meat or veggies that have any resistance to them. The kind of bendable forks that are easily flattened, or bent at unusable angles, or have tines that taper (to catch & pinch your tongue) or are mis-aligned. These forks suck.

The perhaps one dollar saved, on each fork (if you make the wimpy ones out of recycled, stamped, 21 gauge cheap Chinese stainless with a high lead content) will not prevent your establishment from pissing off customers, driving away potentially big tippers (my son works in a restaurant, I appreciate a good food service), and ultimately leading your business to mediocrity or failure. Splurge a little, get the cast Korean forks, or some Eastern European ones - finding American made silver ware is incredibly rare now a days.

Dr Desert Flower and I tried to go to the Saddle Ranch Chop House last weekend here on the west side of town. Slow service. Wet / sloppy table upon arrival. Remarkably small wine glasses serving average tasting cabernet. Edible main courses, and knives that were both stout and sharp, but forks that had the strength of a wet noodle. Really, at a "Chop House"? Followed by more slow service when it came time to pay the check - we gotta start carrying more cash and using plastic less when dealing with barely capable service personnel. And when did it ever become acceptable to cut denim shorts so short that the cotton pocket linings don't just hang out a little, but flop around completely? And jean waists so short that they require mons waxing? Being dressed like a tart doesn't compensate for incompetent customer service, in this old man's perspective. We won't be going back to Saddle Ranch, even if they get better forks.

8 comments:

  1. Isn't Saddle Ranch a brothel outside of Vegas?

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  2. you're thinking of the Bunny Ranch.

    It's not a brothel here, just a tarty chain next to the (hand)jobing.com arena.

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  3. Waitress was seriously wearing daisy dukes? Is it like a hooters, or is that just normal wear for servers in AZ?

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  4. hostess showed 1/2 her butt in low low low riders and a 1/4 (not 1/2) t shirt. Waitress assigned to our table had daisy dukes that resembled high cut thong in front, and barely covered any behind. All the "kids" were in their late teens or early 20s - old enough for my son to date. I've imposed a "non mom filter" and don't gawk at all when wife is around, and don't look much when she is not around if they are under 35, deferring to my 'young lion' son instead.

    I christened this practice when Christopher had his 16th birthday party, and his female friends showed up in waist-tied catholic school girl outfits and clothes that would have gotten them suspended at highland high school in the 80s but have become status quo this millennium. I had a buddy over visiting from high school (who will remain name less) who was REALLY noticing the under aged girls... and I remember telling him "I filter it, and don't notice, but if their mom were to come to the door with them..."

    But yes... extreme daisy dukes. And they staggered the waitress tables so that they had to run all over the spread out dining area to get to all their tables, non-adjacent. I don't think out waitress was old enough to serve us alcohol legally. And the female help who were old enough to drink all appeared to have excessive silicone. The idea of going there was Traci's, so I had no culpability - we had no prior knowledge of the tarty-ness, poor quality forks, or slow service ;-)

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  5. Damn. See, your review indicates this place is mediocre at best, but your description of the wait staff makes me wanna go try it out. I'll bring my own fork.

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  6. BTW the presence of a mechanical bull may have been the tip-off that the place is not that great.

    Also the pics on the website like this one:
    http://www.srrestaurants.com/sr_assets/bullspic.png

    Was that your waitress? Looks like the same outfit.

    Oh, and th calander:
    http://www.srrestaurants.com/saddle-ranch-general-store?page=shop.browse&category_id=8

    Looks to me like the staff was wearing the required amount of "flair".

    I defintely wanna go next time I'm in PHX. ;)

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  7. Also the "Moonlite Bunny Ranch" is just east of Carson City, NV (not more than 50 minutes from Reno). I used to work about 1/2 mile from it at WSPackaging.

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  8. The girl-on-bull pic was wearing a similar "uniform top" that the hostess wore, and the "uniform shorts" that our waitress wore.

    We did not know there was a mechanical bull, until after we entered the establishment - they took names outside on the veranda, for seating.

    The calendar is misleading / air brushed / hired models. Actual wait staff may vary.

    Definitely bring your own fork.

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