Bite into a Trend

Some food trends are seasonal. At the moment every restaurant special is likely to feature salmon, asparagus, or strawberries. In the fall months we will be treated to 101 ways to cook butternut squash.

Some food trends are cyclical. Are carbs good or bad at the moment? How about dairy? Coffee? Is red wine actually better than grapes or do we just all want to feel justified in pouring that third glass? Food studies come and go and contradict each other and new diet fads rise up to meet each new study, and there's a sort of rhythm to it, if you care to pay attention.

Some food trends are personal. The thing about working at hotel restaurants, is that you deal with a lot of groups. Hotels play host to tour groups, and expos and conventions. My previous restaurant was located across the street from the Convention Center, which amplified things. And its amazing the way certain groups of people eat certain things. When the Penny Arcade was in town we ran out of hamburger buns. Burgers are always a popular order, and any restaurant that serves them keeps a good supply on hand. But when you are overrun with groups of twenty something vintage gamers who apparently survive on an exclusive diet of hamburgers and coke, even a well stocked kitchen will find itself taxed beyond capacity. Any convention that caters to middle aged women will find you serving salads with dressing on the side, and bringing separate checks. Always separate checks, a table of fifteen women dining together will all want separate checks and will all pay with $20's. Men don't seem to have this problem, at least not with the same frequency. Male colleagues who regularly dine together have developed a system of alternating treating each other, rather than most women's the need to split the check down the middle every single time.

And some food tends defy explanation. I have no logic for why I won't sell a single order of french toast all week, and then serve fifteen of them on a random Wednesday. Or the equation for a sudden run on fish and chips. I do know that there is almost a trend to these trends, chances are at any given meal period, something will be in favor, you just never know what it will be.

Crazy Things that Actors Do

Last Saturday was closing night of my play, The Cat's Meow. Its been a fun run, for the most part. We had a great cast, and lovely costumes, and normally at the end of the run of a show I indulge in a little time feeling listless and bittersweet before hunting down the next cast to bond with. This time, however, I do not have that luxury, because my next show opens in two weeks, and I have to get off book.

This is one of the crazy things that actors do. They overlap productions. You can manage to start rehearsals for one production, while still in performance for the next one. You can manage this because most plays rehearse during the week, and perform on the weekends. So it is completely possible, but it is also, I have discovered, completely insane. And in honor of my own insanity, I have decided to take a little time away from memorizing, and explore some of the other crazy things that actors do.


They commute twice as far for a show as they would for a paying job.

I have a cut off for theaters I will even audition for: Renton is as far South as I will travel, and Edmonds is as far North. Both of these destinations are about half an hour from my home in Seattle, at least in good traffic. I have done two shows in Tacoma, but both had limited rehearsal and performance commitments, and even so, that is not an experience I care to repeat. There are actors, however, who will travel from much, much farther. Actors who live in Seattle and do shows in Olympia, for instance. Or actors who live in Olympia and do shows in Renton, I have known actors who will drive from Everett to Tacoma, or take a ferry out to Bambridge, or in from Vashon Island.

And forget about the commuting time commitment once you land a job, I know actors who will fly to other cities, on their own dime, just to attend an audition.


They will compromise their personal appearance

A frequent question on audition forms is: are you willing to cut/color your hair? I always say yes to cut, no to color. I have never, in my almost thirty years, colored my hair, and it it would take more than being cast in a show to make me start now, that's what wigs are for. But I will cut it, I will also spend an hour and a half every night curling or straightening my hair, securing the look with massive amounts of hairspray and bobby pins, only to wash it all out when I get home, and repeat the process the next night. Also, every time I do a show, my skin freaks out, because it is unused to being subjected to massive amounts of makeup. Small price to pay for a little applause. And oddly enough this is one area where men actually have it worse. While their prep time to get is costume is usually a fraction of the womens, when men change their look for a part, they have to wear it around in the real world, not just on stage. I know actors that have grown mutton chops, or spent months apologizing to their bar patrons for a porn star mustache.  They also shave, I know an actor who shaved a mustache he'd had for nearly forty years for the sake of supporting role.


They will adhere to superstitions they don't believe in

Everyone knows not to say Macbeth in a theater. Doesn't matter if you believe in the curse, you just don't do it. If you slip up for any reason, you must immediately go outside the theater, turn in a circle three times and spit. There are variations on the antidote, some say you have to run around the theater three times, and I've never had the logic of the antidote explained to me, but I have done it. Actors are, as a group, very superstitious. They love their rituals. The whole experience of being in a play is full of little rituals and traditions, and most actors have individual ones they layer on top of the group ones. Lucky underwear is a common one. Actors, unlike musicians, will never drink before a performance, they will get completely shitfaced afterwords, opening and closing night parties are legendary, sometimes they will begin drinking backstage once their big scene is over, but never before a show, not even a glass of wine with dinner. They give cards and presents to the entire cast on either opening or closing night, but never on both, and never on any intermediate performance. They have warm up routines. When I was in the Vagina Monologues, we did Kegels as part of our group warm up. At Redwood Theater, every performance, regardless of the director, or who's involved, starts with a back stage cheer of "Doooon't Suck!"


They will stay in contact with people they hate

Theater, like so many things in life, is all about who you know. And, as I have already detailed, actors will do almost anything to get on stage. There are a couple people I've sworn I'll never work with again, but we are still friends on Facebook, and if they dangled the right part of front of me, I'd probably bite.  And I'm not alone, in an industry they relies so heavily on networking, personal issues often take a back seat. A person's value is measured by how likely they are to be able to get you a job, anything else is gravy.


I'm sure their are quite a few actor quirks missing form my list, but I've tried to keep it limited to the farthest reaching insanities, also, I have lines to learn.

How to pick up your Server

All right, everybody, hands up if you've ever found your server attractive. Good. Everyone put their hands down. Now, for those of you that have waited tables, hands up if you've ever wanted to get with a customer. Good, that's everyone again.

Now, who has actually made it happen?

Its a tricky equation. The balance of power is off, and not too many people dine alone, so you've got friends, family and co-workers complicating things. I've been on both sides of the table, and I'm sorry to say that I don't have a magic formula. There really is no surefire way to make this work.

There are a few things that I know don't work, though. First thing that is guaranteed not to get you that server's number: asking if you can take them "to go". This has happened to me. I was working in an Indian Restaurant, during my college years, and an elderly gentlemen, who was hooked up to an oxygen tank was dining with us. I wasn't waiting on him, but it was a small restaurant, so I was present, and very capable of overhearing, when his server asked him if there was anything else he could bring him, and he pointed at me and said, "put her in a box, I want to take her home."

Another thing that doesn't work: little hand written notes. This is a weird one, you'd think that written communication would be subtle and solve the whole 'other people dining with me' dilemma. But I have never seen note passing go well.  For one thing, its not subtle. I know this because, while I have never received one of these notes personally, I have read a couple that were given to other servers at restaurants where I worked. For another, they seem to be the method of people who haven't taken the time to lay a little ground work, do a little flirting, ascertain if the server they have their eye on is even available. Both the notes that I read were given to servers who were in serious relationships.

If you simply must communicate your interest in writing, use the check. This doesn't work very often, but, unlike the handwritten notes, which are just creepy, writing your number on the check is kind of cute. I don't know why. It also has the advantage of working both ways. Once when I was visiting a friend in North Carolina, we had our server write his name and number in our check. We were both eighteen, and only in town for the night, and had no idea which one of us the number was intended for, but it was thrilling non the less. Writing your number on the check is not likely to get you results, but it probably won't get you laughed at. So, if you have a good base of flirting, and your not a regular at the establishment, its worth a shot. Servers sometimes flirt because they find you attractive, then again, sometimes it's just to get your money.

The best way to secure a date with a server, is the same as the best way to secure a date with anyone. Just Ask. Be polite, be direct, be a little bit charming if you're any good at it, and ask them out already. I have only been on one date with a customer, and it was because he asked me directly, and I like to reward that kind of thing, provided I'm single, and don't find the person asking repulsive.

Of course I made a mistake with accepting that date, so here's a follow up tip: If you manage to secure a date with a server, don't go to the restaurant where they work the next day and leave a two page handwritten letter for them detailing your hopes and dreams for your future together. Just text them and say you had a nice time. The boy I went on the date with was British, and in town for a convention, and staying in the hotel where my restaurant was located. He may also have been mentally unbalanced.

The date was just fine. We walked around, had dinner, talked about the usual first date stuff. I let him kiss me, then I went home. Then next day at work, the hostess gives me this letter. It is filled with lines like;

"I was the happiest I have been in ages when I was with you tonight, I never wanted it to end!"

"The way you made me feel tonight has made me even think about different things like maybe staying here for longer so I could see you again, or even staying here completely."

"I would do anything to see you again, absolutely anything in the world!"

"Do you believe in things like being attracted to and wanting to be with someone after just one time?"

He signed off "I love you and will never forget you!!" and included his email, phone, and room number.

I did not take advantage of any of them, instead I returned to the restaurant where we'd had dinner, and left a tip for the server, something I'd noticed he'd failed to do the night before.

Which brings me to my final point. If you manage to secure a date with a server, make sure you treat any restaurant staff you encounter on this date, very, very well.

Samuel French

Samuel French is one treacherous little guy. I know he looks innocent, in his striped stockings, sitting on his pile of manuscripts, but he is devious, out to get you, beware!

The plays he publishes may seem innocent too, they are small volumes bound in solid paper covers with muted tones, their titles and authors stamped to the cover in the official Samuel French font.

And the plays are fine, an assortment of genres and titles are available, the character names, dialogue and stage directions crammed in so as to take up as little space as possible, available for purchase in bulk for theaters to distribute among the cast and crew of their production. I happen to own a few Samuel French plays, they have have lines highlighted, and blocking notes scribbled in corners, then crossed out and re-scribbled from when the blocking was changed. He's a fine little helper in the theater, a useful tool.

Here's the problem: In the beginning of the book, there is a cast and crew list for the premier production of the play. In the back of the book is a set diagram, and a costume and properties list. The missing piece of information is that the set, costumes, and props, reflect what was designed for the original production. The one credited at the beginning of the book. They are not written by the playwright, they are not set in stone, and they may be informative to designers, but unless the goal is to do a carbon copy remount of the original production, they are not to be followed to the letter.

I once had a costume designer give me a series of really ugly coats to try on, because the costume plot described my character as wearing a "pea coat and school scarf". Never mind the rack of beautiful fake fur's  that hung directly beside her, and the fact that the rest of the characters in the scene I was entering in to were in evening wear. I finally brought in an appropriate period evening dress from home, got the director to approve it, and received a fake fur coat to match.

Thankfully, attempting to literally match the costumes listed at the back of a Samuel French script is a relatively rare problem, if only because most small theaters can't afford it. A more common problem is attempting to literally match the stage directions.

Stage directions can be an important part of a script. Playwrights can be very particular about their staging, and if you try to do a production of say, a Becket play, and get a little too creative, you may find your production closed down courtesy of his estate. Other playwrights follow Shakespeare's lead, and give little direction other than noting when a character enters and exits the stage, and other minor directives (they kiss. they fight.)

And it is in the realm of stage directions that Samuel Frenches devious nature really comes out. Because you never know, if the lines printed in italics are actual stage directions form the playwright, or merely blocking notes taken by the stage manager at that all consuming original production.

I have had directors trip over themselves, trying to fit in every cross and wave and bit of business, that, for all we know was cut between the publication and final curtain. Worse still, I've had directors who relied on Samuel French to do their blocking for them. In high school, I was a in a production of Pride and Prejudice, where I showed up, very excited to the first blocking rehearsal, only to have the director say "So, we're just going to follow the stage directions." And we did. Samuel French was actual rather reserved in that particular version of Pride and Prejudice, so the blocking was really dull. People sat, stood, bowed, curtseid, entered and exited. Every so often, my character, Mrs. Bennet, would get particularly excited and be directed by Mr. French to kiss people. When my parents came to see the show they said the the blocking created some pretty extreme sight-line problems, problems neither the director not Samuel French had seen fit to address.

Of course, that was High School. I have never had a director give over a show that entirely to the striped stockinged fiend since then, but I have had quite a few give him a lot more say then I think he rightly deserves. I think those of us in the theater would do well, when we receive our pastel paper volumes, to judge each italicized line on whether or not it is necessary to tell the story. If the answer is no, we would be wise to take a large black marker, and cross it out.

Turnover

My former restaurant has one of the highest turnover rates in the history of restaurants. Most hosts had a shelf life of two weeks, max. Often it was more like two days, one day there’d be some fresh young thing all dressed up in her tight skirt and her little blazer earnestly rushing about trying to learn the table numbers, and the next day she’d be gone. Poof, I didn’t even bother to learn their names until I was sure I’d get a chance to use them.

I didn’t host, I served, and trained, which is worse. The new servers usually lasted more than a day, but training took eight days, and there were plenty who didn’t make it through that. Or who shouldn’t have.

Part of the reason for the turnover was that the restaurant was an evil corporate establishment in which logic was nonexistent and the management’s egos reigned supreme. The other was that it seemed to be a magnate for crazy people.

Most of the crazy people were night crew so my personal run ins with them were limited. Here is the fundamental difference between day crew and night crew.  Day crew people are in the restaurant business because they like the restaurant business. They are often older, have families, or are on a break between degrees. They bring in homemade baked goods to share, gossip a little, serve the food, pour the coffee and go home to their cats. Night crew, on the other hand, are in the restaurant business because they like to drink. They come in for their one lunch shift a week nursing a hang over and complaining bitterly about how early it is. They like the business because it allows them to sleep in, work a four hour shift, leave with a fistful of cash and immediately pour in down their throats at the bar next door. They bring store bought candy to share, gossip, and go out together. They also inter date.

There was a night bartender who was dating one of the hostesses. He was in his thirties; tall, lanky, creepy, the kind of guy who feels the need to rate every female customer who walks in the door, and ask if he can run your food or refill your waters if a girl at your table is particularly attractive. She was seventeen.  Rumor has it he took a naked picture of her and emailed it to a number of other guys at the restaurant without her knowledge or consent. Word reached management but he wasn’t fired for it. That happened the following month, when he pulled a no call no show after being late for an earlier shift.

People got fired a lot at this restaurant. Sometimes it was for legitimate reasons, like being perpetually late, or drinking behind the bar. More often it seemed to happen to people certain managers decided they just didn't like. You could sense these firings coming, the employee complaining about the managers, and the managers complaining about the employee, nit picking at them over little details in the sidework and service, scheduling them for shifts they couldn't work. In the end they would have some pretext for firing them, usually a "customer complaint", but no one was fooled. 

One disgruntled server spent a week protesting the restaurant after getting fired. He carried a large sign with slogans like “LIES! Courtesy of the Lizard King and the Dragon Lady” and, “you thought the orange juice was fresh squeezed!”. On the last day of his protest, he took one of the logo baseball caps cooks wore and set it on fire. 

There were a few other ways to leave. A lot of people just quit, especially the new hires. One day a new kid would be there, tagging along behind the host or busser, they next day they’d be gone. Just wouldn’t show for their shift. Scared or overslept, never to be heard from again.

The more dramatic method of quitting is, of course, mid shift. When the pressure builds up, and the rush is relentless, and we’ve run out of pint glasses AGAIN, and god help you if you serve that diet coke is a water glass, which is UNECEPTABLE! And you’re running around looking in every corner of the restaurant for an available pint glass when the hostess comes over sheepishly and says she’s double sat you, she’s sorry, management made her do it, and that’s when you look at the door, with its inviting entry out into a world where you don’t have to deal with this shit, and you walk through it. 

I had many fantasies of taking that mid shift door to freedom, but in the end, I went the boring traditional rout with my exit. I found a new job, put in my two weeks notice, accepted my parting gifts and well wishes and went on my way. I also lasted three years at that job, which is something of a record. While I was still there, a coworker asked me how I had survived so long, “I make myself indispensable,” I replied, “and I stay try and stay off the radar”. Staying off the radar is critical. At the time of that conversation I was the only day trainer, an important and exhausting position to hold given our astonishingly high turnover. I was important, and good at my job; In my three years I never once got written up, but I never made employee of the month either. I slid by, trying to bring each new generation up to speed, hoping a few would survive long enough to give me a break from spewing the company propaganda so I could just wait tables, damn it. We finally got another highly competent trainer and my life got easier. Still I left when I could, quietly, safely, you never know when you might have to return.

Ensemble

Sophomore year at Cornish College of the Arts, was all about the ensemble. We did endless exercises, such as "auto-core" to help develop our ensemble building skills. We came to dread the very word ensemble. It had grown and mutated during the course of the year from an innocent little term describing a group of people working together, to a significance laden label that threatened all of our egos and individuality. To be fair the journey through Cornish was full of vocab transformations. words like Action, Risk, Emoting, and Presence, became dark and foreboding and overused.

Out in the real world, several years removed from the Cornish bubble, many of these words have lost their ominous edge. A work of theater employing an ensemble does not have be a balancing act of egos or a white washing of individual talents. It will likely have a few standout performances, but at its heart, a good ensemble is a group of talented people working together to make interesting theater happen.

I had the privilege of seeing this in action last weekend. Two very different plays, two very good representations of ensemble, and both made up almost exclusively of local talent.

On Friday night I went to the Seattle Rep and saw Of Mice and Men. I'd been looking forward to this production, especially since I got wind of a few of the actors involved, and I was not disappointed. While a couple of the performances walked a fine line between truth and caricature, the production was full of beautiful, surprising, moments and images. From Charles Legget's Lenny trying to sneak his new pup into his bunk, to William A. William's melodic whistling and he walked across stage with a guitar, to the many breathtaking sunsets that lighting designer Robert Aguilar played out on Jennifer Zeyl's set. Of Mice and Men is, at its heart, a story of lonely people searching for human connection. Every character is an outsider, every character is lonely, this lends a charge to all the scenes, but a special tension to when a large part of the group is together. They talk about cards, and work, and whiskey, but their dreams are always hovering, waiting to be acknowledged. 

On Saturday night I switched gears and headed to Open Circle Theater's production of  The Rocky Horror Show. Far away from Of Mice and Men's Sweeping Sunsets, and the Seattle Rep's spacious seating, I was given instead the dark interior of a mad man's castle, carved from the dark interior of a small black box theater.  Rocky Horror also dealt a bit with longing, with the search for connection, with feeling uprooted, displaced, wanting to belong, but really, the show is about two things: Music, and Sex, and both are screamingly present in Open Circle's production. The music was loud and heartfelt. The band had a tendency to overpower the singers, despite the use of hand held microphones which were pulled out of handbags, or handed from off stage to whoever needed one. The balance improved, however, as the show progressed. I'm no musical expert, but to my untrained ear, there were a few lovely singing voices, and all the performers filled any gaps in technique with enough attitude to bowl over a charging, cross-dressing, rhinoceros. As for sex, the show was dripping with it, from the fishnets and collars, to the moments of surprising, equal opportunity, nudity. But this was a dark, twisty, ominous sex that permeated the production,  rarely lapsing in to Camp. By keeping things gritty and truthful they stayed, well, sexy, despite the number of men in thongs.

In many ways the two productions couldn't be more different, but they had something more than their strong ensemble casts linking them together: the fact that those casts were made up almost exclusively of local actors. In a small fringe company like Open Circle, that is pretty much par for the course, but that a Big House like Seattle Rep, doing a well known script on their main stage, would cast local is more of a statement. A statement the Rep has been making with increasing frequency in recent seasons. And making to their benefit.

This is not a buffet!

Buffets are very straightforward. Some restaurants have them as an option, if this is the case, you can bet your server will point out this option and try to sell it to you. My previous restaurant ran a breakfast buffet; we severs loved it, because it cost $20 and all we had to do was pour endless cups of coffee and drop a check.

Sometimes a restaurant will only have a buffet. This is the case at 67 in the Edgewater Hotel, after you are seated the server will tell you that the buffet is all they are serving. He will bring you a mimosa and direct you to help yourself to the piles of fruit and shellfish and eggs benedict.

Sometimes you have to be given a plate before you can go to the buffet, but even if the plates are part of the layout, if you are in a restaurant, you always have to be given permission.

Hotels are ruining this concept.

So many of them offer "complimentary" breakfast these days. Often it is a "continental" breakfast, i.e. muffins and mushy apples, but the practice runs so rampant that many people seem to think "continental" and "complimentary" are synonyms. These strange little affairs are laid out in the lobby, or in a dining room, at a particular time, and you don't need a plate to go help yourself to donuts and coffee, you don't need permission, you only need to be staying in the hotel.

This puts hotel restaurants in an awkward position. I've worked in two of them now, my first in a big downtown hotel, my current one in a smaller neighborhood location, but they are both independently owned. Guests can charge meals to their rooms, but that's about it. Many guest's don't understand this, especially before their first cup of coffee."

"What is included with my room?" was a question I got asked frequently, when I worked downtown. The answer was "nothing". There is no way to phrase this so it sounds less like nothing. When people asked my other favorite question; "What comes with the pancakes?" I could at least smile sweetly and say "butter and syrup". Then I would encourage them to order a side of bacon, which is what they were hoping to get for free.

They would try to get the buffet for free too. The restaurant didn't help matters by having two different price levels for the buffet; the all inclusive "All American", and the, yes, "Continental" option, for those who only wanted to graze among the fruit, pastries, and cold cereal. Many people did just fine with this concept, but there were others to whom the phrase "continental buffet" meant one of two things.

1. It's free with my room!

2. I can order the lower priced buffet and then sneak a bunch of bacon and no one will notice!

I doubt you'll find it surprising that I do not miss working in a hotel restaurant with a buffet. My current location serves food only if ordered off the menu, which is wonderful, because most people, when ordering food off a menu, realize they are expected to pay for it. We do, however, have a beverage station set up in view of the guests. There is no food on this station, it is only a collection of different kinds of cups and glasses, coffee pots, hot water for tea, and an ice bucket filled with juices and coffee creamer. It is right next to the computer, and a pile of menus, but still, every day someone will make for it saying "how does this work?" or, "Do we just help ourselves?"

We added a sign to the wall above the beverage station, the sign says "employees only". It is on blue paper and it taped to an orange wall, so its very hard to miss, but people still got confused.

A few days ago we added a folding screen that partially blocked the view of the station. Things seem to have gotten better, but then today I came back from collecting silverware to find a Couple happily pouring themselves orange juice and taking napkins from the loose pile I was in the middle of folding. Even after I'd directed them to a table, taken their order and brought the lady a cup of coffee, she got up and went back to the station saying, "I help myself to the juice, right?"