Missing Muses...

Sometimes the muses are cracking at your brain, filling the cells with brilliant ideas and sometimes they seem to be taking a break. Like today, which reduces one to talking about banal things like ….

Weather: I know that the Mayans think the world is ending next/this(?) year in December. Some days I think they may be on to something. Have you noticed the increasing trend of violent weather lately? Big snowfalls all winter, tornadoes in March, heavy rains, strong winds, no let up. And, concurrently with this, the weather guessers seem to be sort of unable to call the shots anymore. Like last week they forecasted big storms, and we get nothing. Or light rain predictions fill up your rain gage… Eighty degrees one day, middle forties the next. Go figure.. and what do you know? we’re coming around that season that sends coastal dwellers reaching for their martini glasses, the time when storms are given names in case they want to come calling..it’s always something…

Or, you can talk about that old reliable….

Sports: Please pass the salt and pepper so I can apply it to a large serving of crow that I have to eat. After ranting about the state of women’s basketball, the men do me proud in their highest showcase of college basketball, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's National Championship Basketball game. Not. One of the teams doesn’t put 50 points on the board and both teams give a pitiful example of throwing bricks and dinner rolls at the basket, with the losing team shooting under 20 percent!! Awful. And, mercifully after tonight, both genders can put away the basketballs for a while as the women’s version of the same will determine their champion, with the pre-season favorites of Stanford, UCONN, and Brittany Griner watching on TV with the rest of us. Another benefit of the end of the Road to the Final Four, is that we don’t have to suffer Charles Barkley anymore.

And, leaving Sports, that leaves my first love

Food: As you might remember, I get the St. Louis food newspaper/magazine “Sauce”. I got another version in the mail on Monday. Okay, and also as you might remember I have taken to sort of look at Facebook without doing much posting there. I have “liked” the Sauce page (wall? Whatever the hell you call it) and glance at it occasionally. Well today, they have a thing about Tony’s (St. Louis’s long time premier restaurant – IMHO) with a title something like “Ever wonder what the trick is to keeping customers happy?” and a link to an article where Vince gives his top five tips for good service, because Open Table gave them an award in Best Service category. Well, that caught my eye as I can attest to that distinction. So I clicked and that whisks you to another place with the article..snippets:

Know the pulse of the party - Is it a business meeting? “Seat them where they can talk their business.” Date night? “Give them some walls…

Keep notes - keeps track of guests, preferred tables, favorite dishes, even birthdays

Call guests by name - staff at Tony’s is trained to speak to the guest by name at least four times during the course of a visit

Have a long-term, devoted staff - Some employees have been at Tony’s for more than 20 years.

Always look for ways to improve - ..."crew find one thing to improve every month at the restaurant and strive for betterment on a daily basis. “We earn our reputation anew every night with every guest.”

Notice that none of these have to do with the food service itself, it’s about making the diners happy.. food is only part of the equation. If you’re interested, you can read the whole thing here.

When I first saw reference to the article, I thought I would go look at it in the magazine… guess what? Nowhere to be found. Only online. I find that a disturbing trend. More and more print media is being “obsoleted” by the social media. If you don’t do Facebook you may not know. Where will this all end?

The Mayans know… wonder if they would

DFD