What Takes a Meal from Good to Great? The Best-Ever Bartender
Certain touches take a restaurant meal from good to great. This week, five food-world people share their most memorable tales.
Image credit: StockFood. Illustration credit: Jennifer Fox
San Francisco–based Jen Pelka is the senior manager of restaurant marketing for OpenTable and the former research assistant to super-chef Daniel Boulud. Pelka has dined at The French Laundry in Napa and Restaurant Paul Bocuse in France, but it didn’t surprise us to learn that the woman who writes a Tumblr called Champagne Problems remembers a certain New York bartender most of all:
One bartender, I followed him from restaurant to restaurant because he’s so amazing. There was a restaurant across from The Pink Pony [in the Lower East Side], where they would make tableside steak tartare. I had just moved to New York. I’d walk in the door, and he’d see me and pour an extra glass of Champagne, and tell the kitchen “steak tartare.”
Then he left and went to Balthazar. I went to Balthazar. I’d go in, I’d see Francois, same thing. All of a sudden he was gone. And then Minetta Tavern opened, and lo and behold there was Francois at the bar. I walk in, and he fires up a steak tartare and pours me a glass of Champagne: “Oh, there’s that girl who likes steak tartare and Champagne.”
I would walk into Minetta, and there would be a line of six deep people waiting, and he would create a spot for me. (I strongly prefer sitting at the bar because you get better service.) I didn’t really know much about his life, or him about me. Eventually over time, it would get to the place of, “Hey, how are you? What are you up to? Where are you working these days?” The next time I’m in New York, I will certainly go to Minetta, and wherever he went, I would certainly go.
The way to make somebody a regular is very specifically about recognition. When that person walks in the front door, even if you don’t remember their name, it’s the very clear “Hi, welcome back, it’s great to see you again.” It feels great; of course it does.
It especially felt good when Francois moved people out of the way and got me a seat at the bar! I don’t mind waiting if I’m going to a new place, but certainly the places where I become a regular… it’s not even that you get a seat, you get your seat. It’s that extra something. That’s what gives a place a special energy.
