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Sunday, April 23, 2006

Get-rich tip #1: Open an all-bar restaurant. The problem: It is impossible to get a table at your popular local restaurant without a ridiculous wait. The waiters are tearing the hair out, always gone when you need them and, when you don't, bugging you to leave or buy ridiculous amounts of wine. The solution: Everyone sits at the bar. Anne and I are fond of dining this way. It started a couple of months back, when I snagged two free symphony tickets from my employer, night before the show. What better compliment to free seats than dinner at Jardiniere? With 24 hours notice, we could not get a reservation. The maitre'd suggested showing up early in hopes of a cancellation. If that didn't work, she said, we could always eat at the bar. Maitre'ds were always suggesting I dine at the bar and I was always ignoring them. The bar seemed declasse. Too public. And finding seats would be brutal, I imagined, recalling all the jostling and high elbows at the college pubs around Cal. As it turns out, dining at the bar is incredibly fun. Why it works: Better advice on wine, for one. At Jardiniere, the bartender suggested a mineraly white wine from the Italian Dolomite Mountains. It complimented Anne's scallops perfectly, and she's still raving about it months later. In comparison, our waiter at Michael Mina was a sad sack. Another plus: speedy service. Just grab the bartender and tell him what you want. On a busy night you might be competing for his attention, but there's no mystery about where he is -- right in front of you -- and far more certainty about when you'll get to order. Fewer annoying questions, too. We ordered appetizers and dinner but skipped dessert to make our show. With a waiter, we'd have to wait for him to come ask us about dessert, say 'no', do we want anything else, 'no,' would we like the check, 'please.' Plops the check, circles back 5 or 10 or 15 minutes later. Instead I just handed the bartender my Visa card and was done with it. The bar is also more social. We ate lunch at Cafe Rouge's bar recently, enjoying the best hamburger in the Bay Area and listening to our stool neighbors chat up the 'tender about his new baby. Later, we fielded flattering questions about our french fries and beer, the locally-made lager Trumer Pils. How you bank it: For the restaurant owner, bar-only seating means more drink sales, faster turn and a more satisfied customer. Better still, the close proximity of other customers forges emotional ties among patrons. The less formal atmosphere bonds people to your bartenders. The customer is buying not just food, drink and service but a unique opportunity to connect with others. Diners are more loyal to a restaurant that is a social hub, so competitors are going to have a tougher time stealing them away. Pioneers: The closest I have seen to this would be the communal tables at Rick & Anne's and Breads of India, both of Berkeley. But you still have waiters, and the drinks are still far away. Complications: Some restaurants can't install a single, long bar without wasting space. The solution is to angle or curve the bar, or put in a second bar. Failing that, remove some stools from the main bar, and have people from the tables order food while standing in this "hole" of the bar.

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