There's some guy who posts to this site and others connected to it called the Grumpy Old Guy. I have my suspicions who it might be and he may reveal himself later (Tony?)
Anyway, some of his gripes do hit home. One of mine is the variability of servings you get in wine bars and restaurants when ordering by the glass. I fully understand the financials involved in running a business and how important it is to correctly work out cost of goods and overheads when working out selling costs but some operators forget about the most important ingredient- consumer satisfaction. Basically this is the equity in a business, the certainty of someone coming back again to buy your stuff. The poor operators use tiny glasses with minimal pours. As a consumer I feel cheated. Better operators use bigger glasses but often instruct their staff to pour out 100ml pours which come up to about a third of the glass. Most people feel cheated. The best operators use a sensible sized glass that they fill to about a half (don't measure it like in a chemistry experiment) and everyone from wine knowledeable person to casual drinker feels well done by. Unfortunately these guys are rare (although probably the most successful).
Just a footnote though: Ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Thai,Indian, some Italian,etc) usually use small glasses but tend to fill them right up to the brim. While not looking very good and a wine knowledgable person cannot swirl and sniff, you can get a hell-of-a-lot more wine by the glass this way and sometimes (not always) it's not bad wine.
3 comments:
I can't wait for Grumpy Old Man to read this! Fortunately he's too old to have changed the draft beer habit. Look, wine guy, sometimes you get a better amount of wine than other times, but who really gives a shit? Look, after the second glass it all bloody tastes the same and your mind has switched back to thinking about women's body parts. Sod the bloody wine... its work is done!
I dislike a wine glass with a little line on it. This creates a few impressions in my mind about the manager:
1. He's a tight bastard
2. He's not giving me any more than the damn line, and don't bloody ask
3. He thinks his staff are morons
On the flip side:
Cathy and I once went to a bar in Mana where she ordered a reasonable wine by the glass and the waiter filled it up so high he had to tip toe across the room with it. We laughed (appreciatively) when he arrived at the table, and he said - with a grin - "Gotta get your money's worth, ay?"
Finally, yesterday at school the deputy principal came into my class and told off one of my students. He said "we've lost mana". Quick as a flash the boy said: "It's next to Paremata." Even the deputy principal had to smile.
Draft beer!
If you can get it. The choice nowadays is high priced designer slops pretending to come from celebrated european brewries on the one hand or watered down piss served in plastic jugs in smelly and dangerous bars on the other hand. I've switched to Chardonnay mate but ask them to fill up a handle which they usually do to stop me complaining.
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