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DHagedorn

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  1. I did not hurl insults at the membership. I said the post was irresponsible and in poor taste. You all took it from there.
  2. I've noticed exactly what this site is and that is why I respond from time to time to call foul. And when I do, (to borrow the word a friend used in an email she sent this morning to express sympathy for the treatment I'm getting here) the "piranhas" attack, the people who rationalize the malignant posting of a notice for a public auction (possibly the lowest point of a restaurateur's life) by letting themselves believe it is nothing more than a benign reporting of the news. You would be hard pressed to find a journalist who would post such a link. What he or she would likely do is call the restaurateur, tell him that the auction came to his/her attention, inform him that the information is out there for all the world to see, and ask if it were true that he is closing. Then, the restaurateur would confirm the closing and ask for the journalist to keep it quiet until he has a chance to announce it himself and tell his employees. The journalist would most likely do this, understanding the delicate nature of the information and feeling empathy for the restaurateur's plight. If he/she feels he/she must report it, he/she would tell the restaurateur so and then do so, without including the link for the public auction in the item. You are right; many people knew of the auction, but no one saw the need to publish the auction link in a public forum, except here. The original poster published the link and then said he guessed RK was closing. Journalists do not guess. They do what Don did; they check the facts and report the story, without having to guess. I do not know the OP. I do know that it takes scant deductive reasoning to realize that publicizing the public auction of someone's belongings is not a lovely thing to do. The closing is the story, not the auction, especially to those who are more interested in "news of the restaurant world" than they are in "other things."
  3. Don did do the right thing; he cleaned up after someone who did the wrong thing. All I am saying is that there is no good reason to post a link announcing the public auction of someone's business. That's what I object to. The link. The auction link. What purpose did it serve?
  4. Don, I was not talking about you. I was talking about the original poster who created the reason for you having to fact-check the story. I am objecting to someone posting a link to a website announcing that the fixtures of a business will be auctioned off. I receive notices of these auctions and would not dream in a million years of publicizing that information before the owner of that business has done so him or herself.
  5. Supportive? Beneficial? Wrap it up in whatever pretty paper you choose. The smell still comes through.
  6. Almost as responsible as seeing a post for a public auction and calling the owner to say, "Hey, I saw this on a website and think you should know this information is out there" and let him handle the matter himself. Are you suggesting this person was performing a public service? Or that the motive for announcing a public auction of someone's belongings is to manifest endearment? Give me a break. It was just a juicy piece of chum.
  7. How does that "appear" to be Restaurant Kolumbia from that link and why is it your place to make this announcement? I do not blame Jamie for being upset. This post was irresponsible and in poor taste.
  8. Yes, you are, and I will. First of all, Alison Swope, having taught at DC Central Kitchen in the past and having been an active participant in Share Our Strength and other like events for many years, in addition to knowledge she possesses as a chef de facto, is fully aware of what things cost.She also knows that poor does not mean unsophisticated. People make choices with the resources they have. The question was raised at the lesson if another juice could be substituted for pomegranate or another fruit for the dates. The questions were not a function of cost; they were a function of taste. ("I don't like pomegranate juice. Can I use something else?" Another attendee said, "I love pomegranate juice!") Having had experience of my own subsisting on $5 a day, I know that avocadoes regularly go on sale for $.99, and one avocado can last for 4 days used on a salad or in a sandwich. She used spinach because it is an ingredient that could easily be donated from the Anacostia farmers market, with which BFC has a gleaning arrangement. Also, bags of spinach often go on sale for $2, and one bag is sufficient to make a salad for 4 people. Dates cost $5.99/lb, but are available in bulk and can be bought by the piece; 4 or 5 dates would cost less than a dollar for the recipe for 4 people. Raisins cost $2.79/lb. Alison, when asked, informed the clients that they could use any dried fruit they wished to. Again, the question was posed as a fucntion of taste preference rather than cost. Brined olives are also sold in bulk, and I have witnessed on several occasions, low-income people purchasing them at Whole Foods. A tablespoon of orange juice does not have nearly the flavor of a strip of oil-rich lemon zest. As you pointed out, using the zest leaves the rest of the lemon/orange, etc. in tact for other uses. Due to space constraints, not everything that occurred during the lesson could be reported. Chef Swope indicated that dried herbs could be used instead of fresh, with the caveat that they should use a lot less of the dried variety because of their greater intensity. The attendees were also informed that all of the fresh herbs Alison used were being grown at the Seventh Street Garden next door and they could get them there for free if they wished. Also, Bar Pilar grows fresh herbs in giant bins in front of the space and next to the bus stop at the corner of 14th and T. On many occasions I have seen people waiting for the bus avail themselves of those herbs, which they are welcome to do, or at least were when Barton Seaver was the chef there. Moreover, I purchased pots of fresh herbs at a garden center at the beginning of the summer for $1.79 each and have not had to buy any more for the entire summer. Herbs do not just come in ridiculously overpriced plastic packages for $2. An interest in gardening and the wherewithal to indulge that interest are not characteristics reserved for the economically privileged. It is sensible to reduce apple juice as a way to cut the amount of refined sugar used in a recipe that serves four people. The nutritional reward outweighs the benefit of one person using that amount of juice as a beverage, if you buy into the absurd notion that the clients of BFC are in such dire straits that they would be faced with having to choose between reducing 12 ounces of apple juice and dying of thirst. Whereas I am pleased that you read this piece, I am saddened that you seem to have missed the point of it, which, as its writer, I would view as a failure had I not received so many positive responses from others who did get it. Fit for Fun's goal is to shift the low-income-poor health paradigm by addressing directly the root causes of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease: poor diet and lack of exercise. BFC seeks to change unhealthful eating habits by educating people in a supportive, respectful environment and empowering them to participate proactively in what will hopefully be a prolonged future. As BFC's executive director says, which I quoted in the piece, "People may be poor, but they don't have to eat like they're poor." Alison Swope proves that point at her new restaurant, where the spinach salad and the braised chicken with dates and olives she prepared at BFC appear on the menu. In Alison's book, even people on K Street should eat as well as those on Seventh Street. So I encourage readers and bloggers to rethink their choices when donating to food banks. It does not take much time to cull through a cupboard, find a package of dried apricots or a bottle of olive oil, and take it to Seventh Street. In fact, it takes much less time to do that than it does to pull apart a chicken or an article about someone making a difference. David Hagedorn
  9. Hello, Derek. You should copy this question and send it to Tom Sietsema for his online chat at www.washingtonpost.com on Wednesday morning at 11. He answers earnest questions earnestly.
  10. "Napped" is not exactly a cliche; it refers to an actual technique in which a sauce is carefully applied to something in coats, spoonful by spoonful, to create a specific effect and achieve a particular balance. The word is quite evocative because it induces the reader to conjure the image of someone performing an action that is more refined than, say, ladling or covering. By the way, "napper" is a transitive verb, so the nappee is nappeed "with" a sauce rather than "in" one.
  11. I just read RG's posting deriding Captain Obvious, in which she states: "Out a blogger... and you could cause them to be fired. Yeah, you are messing with real people, and real people’s jobs." She seems not to care that she is messing with her co-workers's (and her employer's) jobs by gossiping about customers. You see, her mission is much greater: to allow readers worldwide to seek out her prose and learn of "life’s lessons, life’s trials, life’s sheer bliss." Restaurant Gal, you are a star! Since you prefer to remain anonymous, how about a pseudonym? Eve Harrington, perhaps?
  12. Bloggers have the right to post whatever they wish and so do respondents. All are subject to public scrutiny and have no choice but to accept the consequences of their own actions. There really is no reason to debate whether bloggers should or should not be outed; the fact is they run that risk whether they like it or not. The only person who has any control over the protection of a blogger's anonymity is the blogger himself. When a person blogs about his workplace and coyly releases information sufficient enough for readers to ascertain his identity, then so be it. The fault, dearly brutal, lies in himself. Moreover, a person who blogs about his workplace without previously giving his employer editorial approval must accept the fact that his behavior may be actionable. A restaurateur's livlihood depends on the good will of the public. One way to gain and retain that good will is to provide an environment that respects the privacy of his guests. That requires the strict enforcement of a policy forbidding employees from gossiping about the clientele, especially publicly. I looked at Restaurant Gal's blog. I did not find her characterization of "lady lunchers" funny; I found it snarky and offensive. I daresay those ladies would agree and would think twice before returning to that establishment, as I now will. I think the chef/owner should seriously consider RG's promulgations and do what is necessary to safeguard his, and his business's reputation.
  13. This is an excerpt from a version of an article published in The Washington Post on August 31, 2005: Restaurant diners view reservations as solid contracts when they show up on time, open-ended agreements when they show up late, at-will arrangements when they show up unannounced, and tentative suggestions when they do not show up at all. The public could benefit from a refresher course in Reservations 101: What is a reservation? A reservation is an appointment whereby a person promises that a party will arrive at a specific time. An accepted reservation is a probability, not a guarantee. Why do restaurants take reservations? A restaurant’s success depends on its management’s ability to meet sales projections. Projected sales are the function of two numbers only, one a constant (average check price) and the other a variable (covers). A restaurant’s budget, how much labor it employs and how much inventory it carries, is based entirely on its projected revenue: (average check x covers). Restaurateurs accept reservations to take some of the guesswork out of calculating the number of guests they will serve. Unpredicted changes in reservations are detrimental to a restaurant’s fiscal health and have consequences that affect others adversely. Amongst these changes are: No-shows: People who fail to cancel reservations renege on a promise to help a restaurateur and his staff pay their rents. They do not care that the restaurateur has turned away other business, that the host had to wait at least fifteen minutes before seating a walk-in party in their place, or that they reduced the income of the person who was going to serve them. Many restaurateurs have instituted the terrible policy of guaranteeing reservations to a credit card and charging no-shows a fee. It is not unenforceable; if a diner contests the charge, the credit card company will issue a “charge-back” to the restaurant and then demand proof that does not exist for a purchase that did not take place. Moreover, whatever paltry fee the restaurateur could charge is not worth the bad faith its collection would inspire. The policy offends everyone, but the people who object the loudest are those who abuse the reservation system the most. Late parties have turned themselves into walk-ins. They throw everything off-kilter for everyone else. A restaurateur generally ascribes one-and-a-half hours for a lunch reservation and two-and-a-half hours for dinner. Vacationers with a Saturday-to-Saturday time-share condo understand they must still depart on Saturday even though they arrived on Monday; yet, the 7:00 reservation that “ran behind” by thirty minutes feels no urgency to vacate their table for the 9:30 reservation that was punctual. The restaurateur then gets to buy two rounds of drinks, one to buy the patience of the innocent party, the other to buy back the table of the guilty diners who have suddenly acquired a taste for aged French cognac. Incomplete parties are late. See above. Changes in party size: People who announce upon arrival that the size of their party has changed have also transformed themselves into walk-ins. It is a big deal when a party of six becomes a party of two. The restaurant has perhaps turned away other parties of six. The host has to scramble to find a deuce that does not exist. The server who was to have waited on the six-top may have lost twenty percent of his income for that evening. Adding a chair to a four-top for an unexpected fifth diner usually compromises the comfort of diners at adjacent tables. Overbooking: “Oh, restaurants always overbook,” is the reply thoughtless people offer to the question, “Don’t you think we should cancel our reservations?” Rather than an offensive ploy, overbooking is a defensive strategy to which a restaurateur must resort to avert the threat of economic disaster posed by no-shows. He overbooks by the number of guests he thinks will not show up. Squatters: Like the hairdresser’s chair and the doctor’s exam room, a restaurant table is time-shared, not purchased, space. When the hairdo is done and the physical is over, clients and patients do not “hang out” ad infinitum. When the coffee cups have been thrice emptied and the check presenter has acquired a layer of dust, the diner’s lease has expired and it is time to go.
  14. This is a from an article that appeared in the Post a few weeks ago: "The inspiration for the Roasted Carrot, Chevre, and Corn “On-the-Cob” came from crockery. For my first menu at Trumpets Restaurant, I wanted to create an appetizer just because I liked a corn-on-the-cob plate I noticed in a store. I couldn’t just offer a piece of corn, so I fashioned a trompe l’oeil cob by roasting a carrot, covering it with herbed goat cheese, rolling it in fresh corn, and baking it. What became my “signature” dish, ironically, was one I never actually tasted. I dislike goat cheese."
  15. "Do restaurant owners and managers send waitstaff on their way because of online comments?"No.
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