Lots of people coming in to the restaurant at the end of the night tonight.

We sat 4 tables at 7:45.

All should have been well. No issues. Just a normal night.

Until 8:30 when a server approaches the table that chef and I are seated at. He has in his hand a half eaten pork chop.

He explains that table 12 is insisting we served her chicken instead of pork. She says it looks like chicken. It tastes like chicken.

We all look at the plate.

It’s definitely a pork chop.

The server shows the sous chef in the kitchen. He confirms. It’s a pork chop.

The chef asks what the guest wants to do. The server has given her a menu to choose a new item.

But.

As I’ve said before.

There is no fire.

We might have enough to cook a skirt steak. But definitely nothing bigger.

I go to the table and explain that it is indeed a pork chop. We can only offer her a salad or a skirt steak, giving her my speech about end of night fire.

She declined to order anything else.

I apologized about the confusion, hoping she would change her mind.

But alas.

She did not.

She didn’t seem upset.

But I like when people leave happy. When I can turn things around.

Ugh.

Sunday night around 6:30 the phone rings.

A woman asks if there’s room at the bar around 7:30 for 2 people. She also asks if they can sit on the kitchen side so they can see the basketball game.

It’s a couple who moved to the area last fall. They come in about every 10 days or so. They’ve been out of town.

When they arrive she’s very grateful that we have room, but the game they wanted to watch is already over. They wanted to know who’s be playing in the final four.

I ask who she was rooting for. She didn’t have a team but wanted to know who was playing Duke.

I ask her why.

She informs me that Duke is her team. At which point I explain we can’t be friends anymore and that we’ll be booked the next time she calls for a reservation. She is now dead to me.

I did say all if that.

She laughs and asks why.

1992. Duke vs UK.

The shot heard round the world.

She laughs and tells me that she understands.

She then tells me that she worked at a children’s cancer center in North Carolina and that CL would make regular appearances there to cheer up the kids.

I share my experience that day bartending. O’Charley’s Nicholasville Road. Packed. Shoulder to shoulder.

The shot happens. The game is over. The bar is empty in 90 seconds.

I get them seated.

We laugh more about the rivalry in their way out.

But I’m still not sure we can be friends.

Yesterday I got to work at 1:00 as always. Hit play on the answering machine. 3 messages.

One was a cancellation.

One was a reservation for next weekend.

One was a man asking if we had menus without prices available. He was celebrating an occasion and wanted the table to order with caring what things cost.

I returned the first two calls. Then waited to speak with chef before calling call three back.

He’d created a menu without prices over Xmas for a woman treating her daughters boyfriends family to dinner.

Chef assured me he had it on his computer.

I call the man back.

We chat for about 90 seconds. He’s happy about the menus. He wants to make sure he gets the check. And he wants three desserts brought out when it’s time for dessert.

I take the notes. Tell him we’ll take care of it.

I think nothing else about it.

At 4:00 I get around to checking reservation notes.

His reservation is for his mom’s 72nd birthday.

At 5:30 they arrive. He is an early fortyish professional type. He comes in first and hands me his credit card. His parents arrive next. They remind me of my parents. His mom did all the talking. His dad is quiet. His mom tells me how excited she is. Her son has told her he’s taking her to a very special dinner at a steakhouse. She’s very sweet. And a little country. Definitely rural. Out of their element.

We get them seated.

Every thing goes off without a hitch.

They have a great time.

On their way out the parents go to the restroom. The son is so appreciative and thankful. He says they didn’t even notice there were no prices. They had a great time.

He also shares that his parents are visiting from Virginia. And he just moved here from Washington DC. He lives in Portland in one of the new apartment buildings downtown.

He goes off to the restroom.

His dad sits quietly.

His mom shared that they are visiting from Virginia. They’ve come up to stay ay his apartment to care for his dog while he goes on vacation. He just moved to Portland. You can see she is proud of her son. She tells me how much she enjoyed dinner.

They leave with more thanks.

I wish her happy birthday.

I feel like I had just watched me and my family have dinner out. 20 years ago.

I was moved by how much this man cared for his parents.

It was one of the sweet moments that I get to witness.

I pick up the phone tonight.

Hello. Thank you for calling. How may I help you.

Yes. I can’t find your menu on line. Do you serve sushi?

Did I hear what I think I heard?

I tell her I missed what she said so she’d repeat herself.

Do you serve sushi?

Uhhh. No. We don’t serve sushi.

Okay!

Click.

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Last night a woman called to let us know she’d dropped a $50 dollar bill in the parking lot.

She was hoping someone turned it in.

To be honest I admire her faith in humanity.

But alas, it was not turned in.

Tonight we had a reservation for a couple. We’ll say the name on the reservation was William Randolph Hearst, because it was just as long as just as assuming.

I realized at 4:00 that he’d made 4 reservations. One at 5:00. One at 5:15. One at 5:30. One at 5:45.

At some point he’d decided that 5:00 was his preferred time.

He’d cancelled the others.

Also he requested a booth. For every reservation.

Fun fact.

Our booths seat 4 people so we’ll put a 4 top there before a 2 top.

I was a able to move him to one.

And they were gracious which I appreciated.

But. Seriously.

4 reservations on the same day.

In August of last year three of my hosts left to go to college. A fourth couldn’t figure out how to get to work. One day she called and said time got away from her so she couldn’t come in.

Long story short, as all of my stories are, is that I’ve been without hosts since the third week of August 2021.

Whether I liked it or not, I became the face of the restaurant.

All last fall, and into the winter I was on the door.

I did hire one host last October. But she only works Friday and Saturday so I’m next to her all night.

But.

Three weeks ago I hired a new host.

She’s been training and getting better every day.

Tonight the old host and the new host ran the door alone.

For the first time since August, I was free to run around the restaurant and get in everyone’s way.

I got to watch the new servers kill it. I got to watch the old servers kill it. I got to watch the food runners kill it. I got to watch the bartenders kill it.

Tables turned. Everyone did great.

In all seriousness, it was the easiest night I’ve had in weeks.

However, three couples tonight stopped me to say they were sad I wasn’t at the door when I came in. One couple thought I’d finally gotten a Saturday night. Another thought I might have quit.

All of them were happy to see me as I strolled through the dining room.

It made me feel appreciated.

Thank you Brooke and Jenni for hosting tonight.

Tonight was a weird night. The flow was off. First turn was quiet. 2nd turn was busy and tables weren’t turning. Just weird.

That being said. There were lots of folks in tonight that I knew. A couple who was in last night and came back tonight. The sweetest older lesbian couple that I’ve ever met. A couple who come in once a week. Another couple that just got back from Hawaii. A lovely couple who stop in every 10 days or so who were just in for drinks.

As I was driving my 45 minutes home tonight I was rehashing the evening. What worked? What I wish I’d done differently. You know the stuff that keeps me awake at 3:00 in the morning.

I sometimes think my staff thinks I just come in and make decisions off the cuff. Meanwhile, I’m awake at 4:00 trying to figure out how to make their lives easier.

So in the middle of the rehash I realized something. I now know more of my guests than ever in my life.

At David’s we didn’t take reservations so I never knew anyone’s name. I was also in the kitchen a lot so I wasn’t the face of the restaurant.

At RiRa I knew two regulars. And they both used to work there. Two. I worked for two years and never met anyone. It was really an office job. And a kitchen job.

But at my new job I’m at the door a lot. I return ALL the phone calls. I know everyone’s name. I know their kids. I know their jobs.

And I love it.

The cute lesbian couple asked me tonight when I could take a Friday night off to come to their home for dinner. Another gentleman keeps asking me to come have drinks on his front porch which over looks the ocean. Another couple has repeatedly asked me to come over on my day off to use their pool.

I love how great our guests are.

It feels amazing.

And as the season starts to ramp up, there are so many more people to meet.

I can’t wait!

Last fall I wrote a post about a food runner who skipped work without getting his shifts covered to go on a little trip.

He lost his job.

The friend he went on the trip was also a food runner but he’d gotten his shifts covered.

However.

That friend texts me the next week to tell me he can’t come to work because he’s broken his ankle playing basketball.

He accompanies the text with a photo of a leg with a swollen ankle. No head. No body. Just a shoe. A sock. An ankle.

Hmmmm.

I told him I thought I was sorry and to let us know if he needed anything.

Hmmmm.

Momma wasn’t born yesterday.

I knew he hadn’t broken his ankle. He wanted to visit his girlfriend again in New Jersey.

Who hasn’t called in sick to work to get laid? Especially when you’re 22.

I never heard from him again.

The next day a regular asked where he was. He’d seen him at the gym earlier and had hoped to see him tonight.

I chuckled to myself.

A few weeks later his mom came in and we had a little chat over the matter.

Truth is, he picked the busiest week to stop showing up. I wasn’t mad. But I was disappointed. And I let his mother know as much.

Fast forward to today, and imagine my surprise when I get an email asking me to provide a professional reference for this young man.

I haven’t heard from him since he liked my comment about his broken ankle.

I thought to myself as I read it.

I can do do three things.

Ignore the request.

Do as it asked and provide commentary on his professional qualities or lack there of.

Or lie.

I chose to ignore it.

Fast forward to even later in the day and his mom comes in for dinner. I love his mom and her boyfriend. They are always nice to me, very sweet and very appreciative when I sneak them in.

So on their way out tonight we are chatting about their upcoming wedding and she says, that her son is going to send me a request for a reference.

I take a deep breath.

I say, your son needs to reach out and apologize for leaving me in a bind last summer before he asks for a reference.

This led to conversation about what a great kid he is, what a horrible liar he is, and how he needs to do the right thing.

We chatted a few minutes. I told her I’d be happy to write the reference but I really needed an apology first.

After she left, it reminded me of something a professor at the University of Kentucky told me while I was getting my MA.

Never ask for a reference if you aren’t 9,636,905% sure of what they are going to say. She’d had a student get letters of reference not realizing that one of their professors had written a perfectly average letter. About how average the student was.

I’ve followed this advice for 30+ years.

And I’ve never agreed to write a letter if I couldn’t be enthusiastically positive about the request.

It will be interesting to see if my phone rings tomorrow.

If it does I’ll do the reference.

If it does not then I’ll ignore it.

Although I did tell his mom I could write the reference he might deserve.

Four reservations tonight, arrived and upon being led to the dining room, stopped and asked to be seated at the bar.

One woman insisted that she booked the bar because a high top table is the bar.

I did not argue.

Two women arrived, get redirected to the bar and are seated. They realize a friend is seated across the bar from them and ask to move.

Which brings me to my point.

Do not assume the single man sitting across the bar from you, who happens to know you, wants to sit with you.

Yes he might.

But he might not.

And you’ll never know because you didn’t ask.

You insisted you be moved. So now he’s having dinner with friends whether he wanted to or not.

Fun fact.

The same is true when you are two and there are two friends already seated at the bar. We had a couple last summer who requested to sit near their friends whenever they made a reservation.

Six weeks later, the friends asked if we could say it didn’t work out because they didn’t want to eat with them every time they came to the bar.

So.

When dining at the bar.

Stick with the luck of the plan. If you are seated next to your friend, great.

If not.

Maybe great for them.