“When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” - Maya Angelou.
When you are running a small restaurant, you try your best to attract all walks of people to fill out your customer base. You have your bread and butter die hard regulars who will come to every event and try every special. You have your last minute local folks that walk in a few nights a month who aren’t needy at all and always love everything. You have your special occasion folks who show up on every birthday and anniversary but you don’t see them for months at a time. You have “doing it for the ‘gram” folks that will come to check our restaurant off their list and you’ll rarely see them again. And then there’s some folks that will show up and just… not get what you are doing at all. They are confused by the menu, don’t really want to try anything new or out of their comfort zone, and don’t understand why you don’t have a chardonnay by the glass. What do you do with people who clearly just… aren’t your people? Case in point, the person who, instead of sharing his feelings and opinions to me when asked directly how his meal and evening was… he instead took the time to leave this 2 star review on OpenTable.
We’ll call him Dick.
“This restaurant pretends to have food that is fresh and seasonal. However, we had old flavorless tuna, woody and overly dry chanterelles, and over the hill green beans. The flavor combinations were off and overall I found the food unpleasant to eat. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for this food. The wine list is too small and too odd. I should have rejected the wine we ordered but did not want to make a stink about it. (It was fizzy when it shouldn't have been). Also, the service was slow. We had five dishes in a meal that took two hours.” - Dick Dickman, 2024
You probably looked at this review and made some assumptions about Dick. Maybe you thought, judging by the double space after each period like he’s typing on an old-timey typewriter, that Dick is likely an older gentleman. And you would be right. You might also glean from this review that clearly Dick likes things a certain way. Dick is a traditional kind of guy. Dick probably considers The Capital Grille to be a safe space, but probably hates on people who use the term “safe space.”
You might also deduce that Dick is used to things tasting a certain way. Perhaps he has never had a chanterelle that has been hand foraged by the chef in the woods of New England and lovingly cleaned and aged to concentrate its flavor. Perhaps he has never had tuna so fresh that it tastes simply like the sea instead of the inside of a can. Perhaps he’s never had a locally grown runner bean straight from the vine, instead of pre frozen. Perhaps he doesn’t know the joy of combining flavors in unknown ways to see what kind of taste journey they can weave together. Perhaps he didn’t read the page on our website that talks about our “slow food philosophy” which prides itself on extended dining experiences to foster community.
Instead, Dick walked into our restaurant with a chip on his shoulder already because his table was too close to an AC vent but also too close to the kitchen. Sorry Dick, no leather booths with glass partitions for you here. Dick immediately asked for a wine list and it was clear Dick was having trouble navigating it but wouldn’t share that information with us. Our server checked in with Dick several times to offer assistance but Dick brushed her off. Finally I went over to the table to see if I could move him along in his experience. He chose an inexpensive Txakolina from the Basque region in Spain, a bold move for a traditionalist but it seemed Dick was letting his pocket guide him. The server poured the wine and Dick nodded in approval. Now, anyone who’s had a Txakolina from the Basque region in Spain might be aware that this style of wine is known to possess a slight effervescence. In fact it is the most notable characteristic of this wine. It seems that despite Dicks extensive knowledge about wines that are not, in his words, “odd,” he didn’t realize this fact about the single most popular and widely produced style of white wine from Spain. It also seems that rather than make, in his words, “a big stink about it,” at the table, Dick chose to write a 2 star review about it which really only succeeded in publicly showcasing how basic Dick is.
Sometimes it’s very clear that some people just aren’t your people. And that’s okay. I have learned not to try to retain the business of people who just don’t get what we are doing. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Set them free to go to a basic restaurant and eat basic food and sit in their basic leather booth with glass partitions and drink basic chardonnay. There’s only so much room in our tiny restaurant anyway. Might as well fill the seats with people who are interested in exploring and learning new things.
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