is it good?
As I recall, the night of the incident was a Thursday during that anticipatory part of October in which the four weeks of cool air and less oppressive sunlight that Texas is contractually obligated to hasn’t quite started, but a sporadic day or two of rain has reminded us that this time exists and is coming. In the dimly-lit dining room of this brand new restaurant, my slightly-too-small white button down tucked into my Levi’s found itself in a similar period of adjustment as I fidgeted with the fabric to remedy the discomfort that the tugging straps of my apron caused. A subtle sweat trickled from my brow in a frustrating showing of the fact that no matter how well-designed or controlled a dining room’s air conditioning system is, the workers who exist within it will never be comfortable with the temperature. From inside the vast expanse of my apron, I fished out a corkscrew boasting the same attention-grabbing branding as the rest of the restaurant - a detail that does little other than to serve as a reminder of how intentionally curated every detail in this boutique restaurant is. With my tool in hand, I was now on stage. The audience: a four-top of business-casual clad twenty-somethings - two men and two women by the look of them, but you can never be too sure so best not to be presumptuous. The show: a bottle of Borja Perez “Artifice” Listán Negro, vintage 2019.
With the bottle resting against my white-linen-laden forearm, I lean over the young woman who ordered the wine from me to present the bottle while her friends chatter. I always hold my breath during this part because I have a strange apprehension about breathing on the guests which only makes the seconds that pass between my presentation of the bottle and the guest’s approval of it seem longer. She confirms that this is the imbibement that they’ll be enjoying this evening and with a subtle smile and a nod, I return to my upright position, secure the white linen on my arm, and flip the blade out of my corkscrew. As if the small, serrated blade that I cut the foil with was a machete, the conversation stops abruptly and they all stare at me as I make two cuts along the neck of the bottle to release the cork from its foil prison.
I hate when this happens. My preference for conversation to continue and for no acknowledgement of my presence to occur while I do this is so strong that any alternative experience is borderline irritating. I quickly pop the foil cap off, sneak it into my apron, then rotate the bottle forty-five degrees to start twisting the coil into the cork. It’s at this point in time that one of the gentlemen at the table decides to test me which, ninety-eight percent of the time feels harmless at worst and coming from a place of genuine interest at best, but this immediately felt like the two percent exception. This man clearly knew something about this wine and wanted to use me as a vessel to demonstrate this knowledge to his peers.
“So what do you know about this wine?” he says to me with one eyebrow slightly raised to match the half smirk that’s recently found its way upon his face. Admittedly, wine has never been my strong point in the restaurant game. While I certainly know more than your average Joe, in this environment, I’m outclassed by several of my colleagues that, under most circumstances, I would be happy to tap for any wine-related questions that I didn’t immediately possess an answer for, but on this luckiest of days, I was within close enough of proximity from a recent wine class in which we covered this exact bottle to provide some coherent responses.
“Certainly.” I replied. “This wine is primarily composed of Listán Negro featuring some light blending in French oak with other grapes native to the Spanish Canary Islands. Canary Island wines are fun because the terroir shows a lot of diversity due to how volcanic soil has affected the land development. In this Listán Negro, the grapes see prolonged maceration and minimal intervention and are finished in the French oak for 12 months. The result is a complex, but delicate wine with a lot of smoke on the nose, but a softer palate and enough tannic structure to feel well-rounded without being overwhelming.” Not the most astute explanation I could have come up with, but for a guy who doesn’t hang his hat on wine knowledge, I got my point across just in time to silently release the cork from the bottle which is exactly what I needed from myself.
It was at this moment that the incident occurred. The other man at the table, seizing the window of silence left by me not giving his friend an opportunity to mansplain wine to me, opened his mouth and uttered the three words that leave me beside my routine sensibilities in this environment that I’m generally so comfortable in. This man, who though seemingly close in age to me clearly has had a vastly different life experience, looked up at me and curled his lips to ask:
“Is it good?”
Is it good? Is that the unflinching metric by which you judge your daily experiences? Is it good? Fuck, man. I don’t know. Do the two-hundred year old vines produce a quality grape? Do the master winemakers at the vineyards contribute quality experience to the refinement of the juice into a wine that could be considered “good”? Ask yourself how dumb that question is. If you want to ask me if I personally enjoy this wine, that’s a question that, while wholly subjective and generally unhelpful, is at least not what I would consider a dumb question. What am I supposed to say in response to such an inquiry? Every time this question comes my way about anything in a restaurant I work in, I can’t help but think of every time in my memory that I’ve had to reckon with this strange, off putting question.
It happens somewhat often. I recall a man at another restaurant I worked at asking me to tell him about some popular items on the menu and, after describing in excruciating detail a monkfish dish that I was particularly fond of, he gave me a blank stare and asked - you guessed it - “is it good though?” Why did I pick this item to discuss at length with you if I didn’t think it was good? My man, you’re paying over a hundred dollars a head at a nationally acclaimed restaurant in a city with nothing but competition; do you not think that we can source fish well and cook it in a way that people enjoy?
Now maybe I’m misunderstanding; perhaps these people are asking me if they will think it’s good? Ah. So I’m now adding telepath to my resume. What business is it of mine to have kept up with your predilections so thoroughly throughout the course of your existence to know your tastes the way you expect me to? If I could look at someone and know without a doubt which item on a menu was best for them, I think I would be in possession of a skillset that could lend itself better to something more grandiose than waiting tables. I’ve mentioned this before, but I love the hospitality experience because serving others and making their Friday nights better is fulfilling for me - especially when I get to do so by talking to them about food and cocktails which is something I think I’ve made clear that I’m passionate about. I want to contribute to enriching someone’s experience at any restaurant that employs me. If there is a piece of knowledge or information that I possess that I can use to better someone’s experience, I want to use it. But it helps when the person you want to help is helping you help them. These lazy attempts at forcing me to make a decision for them are pointless, yet overall harmless on a good day, but annoying and borderline-insulting on most.
So, dear reader, if you take anything away from this rant, let it be this: everything is good to somebody. Don’t make an ass out of yourself by attempting to erode subjectivity just because you lack imagination. Take a chance, try something unfamiliar, and fucking live a little without needing to seek validation for your decisions. I’ll close here with a quote from someone who was way smarter and more articulate about this subject than I:
“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.”
