Tag: Letter of the Week

Letter of the Week – An Open Letter to the Overly Ambitious

The trouble with empire-building chefs is, they want the same level of respect and adoration for their tenth restaurant as they got for their first one. – ELV
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Dear ELV,

You used to love my restaurant, but ever since we expanded to multiple locations, you have gone out of your way to ignore us, and, even worse, to diss our operation at every turn. I know you had a bad experience lately, and we know we dropped the ball, but won’t you give us another chance?

Signed,

Eagerly Awaiting Redemption

Dear Overly Eager,

Here is the problem: good restaurants and chefs and owners build up a level of trust, affection and respect with the public and press when they are pouring all their energy into the excellence of their product.

Then, they often get bored, switch gears, seek expansion, try to get rich, or do a variety of things to keep their heads and wallets in the game. When that happens (and it happens much to soon and with alarming frequency with American chefs and restaurateurs) the same level of devotion starts to fade.

What replaces it is a devotion to making money.

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Letter of the Week – Incensed Over Ice (Water)

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ELV note: Some may feel “Mr. IAIOI” has gone a bit “Dog Day Afternoon” or “Falling Down” over this problem, but it will be 117 degrees in the shade today, so we will leave it to our loyal readers to put it all in perspective.

Mr. Curtas,
With your wide reader base, many of which are actual restauranteurs, maybe you can address this immensely prevalent problem and get it solved.

The following is a synopsis of what happened at four restaurants in the last two weeks (each time it was a female server, so maybe it’s an estrogen fear of ice).
Each time, it was the same ARGUMENT to try and get ICE in my drink!
The “offenders” were: Firkin On Paradise, Blueberry Hill Family restaurant, Riv Buffet, and Gordon Ramsay!

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Letter(s) of the Week – Objecting to ELV’s Objectifying

The key to a successful restaurant is dressing girls in degrading clothes. – Michael O’Donoghue

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King Hotpants recently wrote us with this somewhat miffed missive:

Dear ELV,

I guess I shouldn’t be disappointed that a critic in a town famous for its objectification of women has a regular feature that objectifies women. But I am.

Mr. Curtas, I challenge you to rise above this kind of crass sexualization and focus on food.

To which ELV responded somewhat harshly:

Dear King Hotpants,

We constantly get compliments (mostly from men, admittedly) about our Hot Hostess Watch feature. We have also, on occasion, featured Hot Hosts and Hot (male) Bartenders.

Anyone thinks ELV uses HHW to “objectify” women, ought to speak to his ex-wives. Now THEY have some stories to tell.

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