What Takes a Meal from Good to Great? Super Sweet Service (and Granola)

Certain touches take a restaurant meal from good to great. This week, five food-world people share their most memorable tales.

Photo credit: StockFood

Whitney Wright is the Birmingham, Alabama-based deputy food editor of Southern Living (the magazine responsible for twerking jello), and a former contestant on The Next Food Network Star. But it was a NYC meal that surprised her with its sweetly Southern touch.

One of my favorite meals of the last couple of years was right before I got married. My dad came to New York [where I used to live], and he was like, “you’re getting married; this is so crazy!” He wanted to take me for a fancy lunch, so we went to Eleven Madison Park. 

My dad lives away from me so we don’t see each other a ton, and when we arrived—my dad’s real chatty—he told the waiter that I was getting married, and that this was his last hurrah with his daughter: “She’s getting married next week, and I know it’s gonna be really busy, and I wanted to hang out with her a bit before the big day.”

Then the waiter went away, and he came back with a bottle of wine and said, “We think that’s so great, so we’re gonna pair wines for you.” Dads love free stuff. Dads who are about to pay weddings especially love free stuff.

The meal was awesome. They’d just started doing their new menu thing, where they did their version of a bagel, where it had caviar and smoked fish, and cream cheese. We kind of just ate and talked about the food. I don’t remember it being a super-chatty lunch; I think we were kind of quietly reflective together. At Eleven Madison Park, you do that; it’s such a pretty room. He knows that I know a lot about food. I did a lot of explaining, a lot of showing off my knowledge. I was secretly trying to show my dad that ditching my engineering degree [for culinary school] was at least worth a free wine tasting. My dad was so excited that we were eating together, just the two of us. The staff immediately picked up on the importance of that to the both of us. 

At the end, they were so cute, they gave us a kitchen tour, and made us our dessert right in the kitchen. They gave us bags with jars of granola in them [to take home]. Each had a handwritten note. Mine said something like, “Best wishes to the bride. Don’t ever forget about your dad,” and my dad’s said something like, "What a nice thing to do, to bring your daughter in. Congrats on a beautiful, polished young woman." 

I still send people there, just based on this meal, when they ask “where should I go in New York?”