NYC
vs. Portland: Kimberly Paley notes the difference in diners.
You're a waiter with a table of four in section three who
are lingering so long they must be drinking their coffee out
of eyedroppers. It's not that you mind diners hanging around,
but at 7:30 pm on a Saturday, in a restaurant with fewer tables
than most people have in their homes and people with reservations
arriving en masse, well, it's a problem.
Do you:
A) Pull a fire alarm, and when the lingerers jump up,
clear away their plates and seat another party.
B) Ask them to eat and get out.
C) Tell them the restaurant is closing and could they
please take care of their check.
D) Invite them to the bar area where you'll buy them
a drink so they can finish their conversation.
Kimberly Paley, co-owner of Paley's Place and hostess extraordinaire,
will tell you that the answer is D. And even though that
seems obvious, how many times have you been rudely booted
from a table just as you and your companions were discovering
the meaning of life? The science of service looks simple
on paper, but it takes on significantly more power when
you see it in action.
Paley's Place is a restaurant where you'll get action.
The philosophy is, "Don't ever say no," says Paley. "There
always has to be a yes in there somewhere."
This heavenly dining spot, started by Kimberly Paley (who
works the front of the room) and her husband, Vitaly (the
chef), is one of the most comfortable places to eat around
town. The small, converted house at 1204 NW 21st Ave. has
only 16 tables, and Paley, who came to Portland from New
York City with her husband in the early 1990s, is as gracious
a hostess as you'll find without a blood tie. She hops from
table to table, at times busing dishes to back up her floor
staff, always with a heyhowareya smile. With grace and humor,
she handles the kind of odd incidents that occur when you
invite the public at large into your world. Once, when a
man started touching a waitress inappropriately, Paley looked
him straight in the eye and said, "Don't touch the waitstaff,
silly"--effectively telling him to knock it off but avoiding
an out-and-out confrontation. When a group of rowdy men
took it upon themselves to jump around the restaurant and
poke into the busy kitchen, Paley told them, "Next time
you come, the rule is you stay in your seats." And when
a woman complained that her "meat" was cold and pointed
to a portobello mushroom, Paley gave her a friendly lesson
in regional fungi.
But at Paley's Place, you don't need to have a Paley in
your face to get good service. The staff is informed, informal
and trained by Paley to adapt to the many situations that
occur in the drama that is the restaurant business. "I don't
like going to a restaurant and asking someone who works
there what the soup is, and they say, 'Let me get your waiter,'"
Paley says. "Everyone who works at the restaurant should
be able to tell you what the soup is."
Paley makes sure the soup is not only known but tasted.
She pushes for educated waiters who are unobtrusive and
deal with patrons without a bunch of fanfare. "I've never
enjoyed a server who quotes books on food and wine," Paley
says. "I want a server who's tasted and sipped the things
I'm asking about." To that end, job seekers who plunk down
their résumés at Paley's and get called back
for an interview are asked to take a written test. Job seekers
might be asked this question: "A couple at a table are having
halibut roasted in a white bean broth and duck with a warm
fruit chutney. What wine would you recommend, and why?"
If prospective employees know their brie from their Burgundy,
Paley will hire them for a two-shift trial period. After
that, if both sides feel comfortable about each other, the
servers go into a two-week training period, during which
they learn Paley Protocol, from place-setting forks with
the tongs down (a nod to the past when forks were used as
weapons and setting them up had violent symbolism) to not
handling used napkins too much (in France, where Paley studied
culinary arts, servers barely handle unfresh napkins because
it's unsanitary). "I've had servers with 10 years' experience
come here to work and feel like they've never waited a day
before starting here," she says.
At the end of the training period, there may be another
test in which the server is asked some Paley-o-centric questions
such as "Who makes and produces our house chardonnay?" Paley
evaluates the waiter's progress and determines whether or
not he or she has the right stuff. Her insistence that the
call to serve be treated as a profession, rather than just
an in-between step before gaining glory in another calling,
is bolstered by company health benefits for waitstaff and
employee meetings held every night after closing. "My mission
is that anyone who starts here should be able to work anywhere
in this country," she says. "That kind of training takes
time--most likely two years."
Kimberly Paley spent many years in the restaurant business
in New York.
Here are six ways she says Portland diners are different
from those in the Big Apple:
1) Though this is slowly changing, Portland diners
aren't used to making dinner reservations. In New York it's
a necessity, and even if you call ahead, you might not get
in.
2) Paley's always calls back to confirm the reservation
the day before--it's not an unusual concept in New York,
but it seems to confuse Portlanders.
3) Portland has more young diners.
4) Portlanders have less patience than New Yorkers
if they are made to wait to be seated, even as little as
10 minutes.
5) New Yorkers seem to view the whole week as an
opportunity to eat out, but Portlanders tend to concentrate
their dining excursions to Friday and Saturday nights.
6) A New Yorker will leave a small tip as a sign
of bad service, but when a Portlander leaves a small tip,
it's not necessarily a signal that there were problems with
service.
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 13,
1999
|
