My Restaurant Pet Peeves - Part 2

It’s time for more restaurant pet peeves, and I have a lot of them! This installment of “My Restaurant Pet Peeves” series will focus on wine service in restaurants, something that is near and dear to my heart! So, it’s time to get angry and vent again – let’s blow off some steam together!

Before I start venting, I need to provide a bit of background on the photo for this blog. It was late summer in 2020, and COVID-19 restrictions had started to relax. Restaurants in Washington DC had transitioned to accommodate outdoor dining since most folks still weren’t comfortable gathering in large groups indoors. Laurie and I were desperate to actually enjoy a dinner out after half a year of eating at home. One of our favorite Italian restaurants in DC, Centrolina, had recently reopened and was offering outdoor dining. We snagged a reservation for a table and headed out on a beautiful mid-70’s degree day.

We started out with two of their famous negronis, and then decided to order a bottle of wine to celebrate our first evening out in what seemed a lifetime. The first wine we ordered wasn’t available, so the sommelier delivered an alternative wine to our table that she thought we would enjoy. Unbeknownst to us, a Washington Post photographer was taking photos for the upcoming edition of the Washington Post food critic’s yearly restaurant review writeup. It turns out that Tom Sietsema, the food critic, loved Centrolina as much as we did, and showcased the restaurant in his fall restaurant review.

Later in October of the same year, I was out on my deck reading the Post’s restaurant review and quickly swiped past a picture to the next page to read his review of Centrolina. A few seconds later, something made me go back to the picture, and I suddenly realized that the full-page picture in the Washington Post Magazine was of Laurie and I, at Centrolina, talking to the sommelier about the wine she was recommending – we were finally famous!!! It turns out that the Post used that picture on three additional occasions in Sietsema’s weekly restaurant column. Alas, Laurie and I haven’t been professionally photographed since!

OK, on to my wine- and cocktail-related restaurant pet peeves – I have many of them!

• Ridiculous mark ups/upcharges on bottles or glasses of wine. In principle, I have no issue with restaurants marking up the price of their wines, either by the glass or bottle purchases – storing wine properly, and all the glassware required for wine service costs money. Add in the cost of employing a sommelier and a mark-up of 100% makes sense to me. But too often, I see ridiculously high markups of even 3-4 times the normal retail value of the wine, and that’s just offensive and demonstrates a restaurant’s disdain for their customers. Wines offered by the glass often have the most egregious markups. Recently at a restaurant Laurie and I visited, I saw a basic Kendall Jackson Chardonnay that sells for about $11 at Total Wine being offered at the price of $10 by the glass. Given that you can get 5 glasses of wine using a standard pour (5 oz.) out of a single bottle, that represented a 455% markup – absolutely criminal. Now, if the restaurant has a fine wine program with a wine cellar, extensive inventory of high quality wines, dedicated wine staff with a sommelier and high end glassware, then I’m fine paying more for that wine, but most restaurants don’t invest that much money into their wine programs. Also, just FYI, my approach for tipping on wine purchases in restaurants is to tip 20% generally on the value of the wine we purchase, and 30% if the restaurant has invested significantly in their wine program and the sommelier has contributed to our selection and enjoyment of our wine that evening.

• Cheap wine stemware. And speaking of wine glasses and stemware, another of my pet peeves is when restaurants have glass stemware that doesn’t match the quality of wine they are serving. I get it – good wine stemware is expensive and breaks easily, so it makes sense for restaurants to buy wine glasses that are sturdier and thicker so they don’t break so easily and can easily take the heat and abuse of a restaurant dishwasher. That glass of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay I mentioned above doesn’t require a $50 Riedel Sommelier Series Chardonnay glass to enjoy it. But, if I buy a $175 bottle of Shafer’s Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay at a restaurant, I expect for that wine to be poured into a high quality, appropriately selected wine glass so I can enjoy it properly.

• Restaurant wine lists that aren’t kept updated. I also get irritated with restaurants that don’t keep their wine lists updated. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ordered a bottle of wine and the server has come back to the table to tell me the wine isn’t currently available. That situation is simply unacceptable for a restaurant that has a modest wine list of 100 or fewer selections – keep the inventory updated and if you run out of something, make sure the servers know so they can notify the diner before they order the unavailable wine. For restaurants that have extensive wine programs with large wine lists, things get a bit more complicated and I tend to be more forgiving when they come back and tell me my selection isn’t available. In those cases, I would expect the sommelier to come back with some alternative recommendations based on their knowledge of the bottle I ordered. My worst experience with an outdated wine list actually occurred at the famous Bern’s Steak house in Tampa, FL. They are well-known for their huge and extensive wine list, which numbers upwards of 6,500 different wines with 120 of those on their wines by the glass list. The wine list itself runs 195 pages, …!!! A few years back I was in Tampa for a command visit with the Commander, Marine Forces Central at McDill AFB and I took our field rep and his wife out to dinner at Bern’s. They were both wine lovers so I decided to order a nice Napa red wine. The sommelier came back and told be that regretfully, they didn’t have my selection available. I then ordered a different bottle and after a long wait, he came back and notified me that that bottle wasn’t available either. This happened TWO MORE TIMES before I finally asked the sommelier, “Why don’t you just tell me which wines you DO have in the cellar and we can go from there!” We all had a good laugh, but I was only “kind of” kidding. So message to restaurants: keep your wine lists updated – everything is computerized these days so it shouldn’t be that difficult!  

• Wine served at the improper temperature. About 50% of the time, the wines I’m served at restaurants are either served too cold or too warm. For restaurants that invest in their wine programs, that percentage is much lower of course. Wines served by the glass are where most of the problems occur – the white wine bottles are usually stored in refrigerators and the red wine bottles at room temperature. That means these wines are usually served either 20+ degrees too cold or 15+ degrees too warm. You can’t properly enjoy a wine if it’s served freezing cold or lukewarm, and restaurants should simply do better. If the glass of wine is served too cold, I simply hold the bowl of the glass cupped in my hands for 2-3 minutes to quickly warm it up. If it’s served too warm, I send it back and ask them to chill the bottle for a bit before pouring me a new glass. For wines served by the bottle, I’ll ask them to provide an ice bucket if the red wine is too warm – I sometimes get looks from other patrons when I do that, but who cares – I want to drink my wine at the proper temperature. Is that too much to ask??!!

• Ridiculously light pours of wine. Revisiting my math calculations above, a bottle of wine (750 ml) usually provides five standard 5 oz. glasses of wine. To be honest, when I order a glass of wine at a restaurant I actually expect a more generous pour given the huge mark ups most restaurant’s charge – at least 6 oz. and more appropriately 7 oz. In some cases, especially if the restaurant is serving higher quality, more expensive wines by the glass, they will shortchange you on the pour and give you exactly 5 oz. or even less. In those cases, I’m not shy about calling them out politely. And if they actually bring the bottle over to the table to pour my glass of wine which often happens when they have a high end wine by the glass program, I’ll ask them to pour a bit more if it looks like I’m being shortchanged. What are they going to say? That a short pour of 5 oz. for my $25 glass of premium Chardonnay is more than enough?!  

• Weak cocktails, or overly sweet cocktails. I also get irritated when the cocktails are so weak that I can’t even taste the spirit in the drink. With the exception of vodka, you should always be able to taste the spirit whether it be gin, rum, bourbon, or tequila. A proper pour of a spirit in a standard classic cocktail (daiquiri, margarita, cosmopolitan, etc.) is about 2 oz. for a 4-5 oz. drink – at that ratio the drink should be nicely balanced. I also get annoyed when cocktails are sugary sweet. A properly constructed cocktail that includes simple syrup or agave syrup should be just slightly sweet instead of cloyingly sweet. The better restaurants with professional bartenders know how to do this right, and paying a premium for a high quality cocktail is appropriate. Unfortunately, many restaurants over-sweeten their drinks which usually makes patrons drink them quicker and hence, drink more – they know what they are doing, but they should stop doing it!!

  
  

I'll take a break from my restaurant pet peeves for a week or two, but then I'll be back with my next installment of my restaurant pet peeve series, which focuses on my biggest pet peeves with servers at restaurants.