~In the driveway the morning of the yeast trials, I put my car into first gear, moved forward and felt the right front end fall to the ground. The suspension spring had popped, and a piece of it dug right into my tire.
~The estimated $1200 damage to my car kept me from making it to the yeast trials and so I will to talk about BYOB instead of yeast.
~When I was a young man in New York City, BYOB meant a party was going on—you went to the party, you brought your own booze, and I mean booze. Few brought Bordeaux to a party.
~These days, BYOB has taken on a new meaning, at least with wine geeks (being the sticklers that they are, you would think wine geeks would hate the idea that wine is considered booze).
~Anyway, wine geeks use the initials BYOB to bring wine from their cellar to a restaurant when they go out for dinner.
~The only times I have ever brought wine to a restaurant are those times when the restaurant I chose hadn’t had a license to sell wine. Because of weird licensing laws, New Jersey has a bunch of such restaurants and I used to live in NJ. Otherwise, I consider BYOB an insult to the restaurant, if not a loss of income. A restaurant is in the business of serving food and drink. If I operated a restaurant that’s what I’d be serving, and it would not be from the customer’s cellar.
~Many wine geeks claim that they bring their own wine because they have better wine in their cellar than the restaurant offers on the wine list.
~That may be the case, and if it is, I suggest they eat somewhere else.
~To be fair, these geeks often don’t mind paying a so-called corkage fee when they bring their own wine, and I suppose that mitigates the situation somewhat. But the geeks also want to dictate what the corkage fee should be, which essentially means that the restaurant is being told what its margin should be on wine.
~I would not like that if it were my restaurant.
~Other wine geeks claim that they bring their own wine because they do not like the restaurant mark up on wine?
~These same people will often say that they don’t mind paying a corkage fee and that they always tip the staff enough or more to cover what the wine would have cost them had they bought from the wine list—seems to me they could just as well pay the restaurant mark up.
~By the way, if you don’t like a restaurant’s wine mark up you still have the choice to eat somewhere else.
~I wonder if these wine geeks have any idea what the mark up on food is at a restaurant? Having to account for preparation and waste, plus service, I can assure them that the mark up is not low.
~If the wine geek is unhappy with the mark up on wine, why isn’t the geek unhappy with the mark up on food?
~Maybe the geek should bring wine and food to the restaurant and pay a corkage plus cooking fee to the management for the privilege, plus a hefty tip for the wait staff that would be equal to or higher than had the geek bought both wine and food from the list and menu.
~Don’t misunderstand me: I think most restaurants over-charge for wine. The truly egregious ones don’t get my patronage. The reasonably egregious ones get less than I would spend for wine had they been better priced. The smart ones get my money and my loyalty. But none of them ever get my BYOB, because I don’t BYOB.
~I am considering, however, that the next time I go to the movies I will tell the manager that I really need only a seat and some darkness. Not liking what the theater has playing, how about I pay $1 for the privilege of bringing my own movie and laptop with DVD player?
Copyright, Thomas Pellechia
July, 2007. All Rights Reserved.
July, 2007. All Rights Reserved.
May I present a counterpoint?
ReplyDeleteFirst, I live in the land where you can bring your own wine to just about every restaurant that serves wine. It's great! Really great!
Most restaurants have three things: Bad winelists, crappy stemware/wine service, and high markups on these bad wines. But, STILL, the food might be good or great. Yet the number, no, the percentage of restaurants with pleasing winelists is small. Or, depending upon where you live, nonexistent.
So, if the winelist is poor (and, it is at 98% of the restaurants in the US and more than 99% in the world), you either have to drink beer, water or suffer drinking some miserable industrial wine. Or, if they have a corkage fee, bring your own wine(s).
But you say, "Many wine geeks claim that they bring their own wine because they have better wine in their cellar than the restaurant offers on the wine list." Of course they do!
So, I can only conclude that you either rarely dine out or have 1-3 restaurants you eat at all the time and drink beer everywhere else.
You also say, "By the way, if you don’t like a restaurant’s wine mark up you still have the choice to eat somewhere else." Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. You might be at the airport, you might be at a restaurant chosen by friends or a date, your kid my be starving out of his mind, you're in the damn middle of nothing but chain restaurants, etc., etc.
What I also like to be able to do is share "cellar treasures" of mine when I dine out with a couple of friends who are also winelovers.
I also go out of my way to not bring bottles to restaurants that have thoughtful/excellent wine lists.
My biggest point is, Why should I have to drink a wine I don't really want to drink just because the restaurant I'm dining at doesn't have a savvy wine buyer? I mean, com'on, most small but good restaurants have no one with any real wine knowledge. Likely, their winelist (chosen by their wine distributor) doesn't at all complement their food. Why shouldn't I bring a bottle and pay corkage? (And I don't mean cheapo $5 corkage.)
Jack,
ReplyDeleteYour conclusion that I rarely dine out or eat at 1-3 restaurants isn't close at all. Admittedly, however, most of my dining out is in places like NY City, where there is no scarcity of restaurants with decent to wonderful wine lists...and many of the people who complain about restaurants dine in cities like that too, so I assume they are mainly complaining about the price of the wine, which I agree is way too high in most restaurants. But those wine geeks also talk about being high-rolling tippers to compensate for having brought their own wine--add that to the corkage fee and it makes me wonder what they really are trying to do by bringing their own wine? Plus, I learned a long time ago that when someone says "it's not about the money..." it usually is, but the rare times that it isn't about the money, it's often about the ego.
When I go out to eat I do it for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is to be served; to relax and be served. There's plenty of time in my life to obsess over wine. Obsessing over wine while trying to relax is not, well, relaxing to me. Obsessing over anyhting is not relaxing.
I drink wine every single day of my life; I do not expect each one to be a 1st Growth (I'd be broke quick!!!) plus, wine is not a hobby for me, which it is for many I have met over the years.
Having said that, if I am bent on having a great bottle of wine in a restaurant, then I will pick a restaurant that offers them (again, I'm usually in a great city too).
If I am stuck in a restaurant where I don't care for the wine list, I drink something else, but I do make my feelings about the list known to the manager. Still, I have often been able to find something drinkable with the food, even if I will take only one glass of it. While dining it's wine with a meal that I seek--not wine Nirvana.
As for sharing cellar treasures : I like doing that too--but I prefer doing it at home, where I can both decide on the right food pairing and the right atmosphere for a wine-oriented night (now the Nirvana). When you think about it, most restaurants really don't provide the right atmosphere for wine appreciation.
Incidentally, I don't eat at chain restaurants--even when at an airport. I value food and my life way too much for that.
A few thoughts:
ReplyDelete"Otherwise, I consider BYOB an insult to the restaurant, if not a loss of income."
Are there actually places where restaurants are required to be BYOB? If so, are the corkage fees mandated as well? If the answer to either is "no", then the restaurant has chosen their policy and fee, and I shouldn't feel bad taking advantage of it, just as I shouldn't feel bad ordering an entree that happens to be very reasonably priced.
"Many wine geeks claim that they bring their own wine because they have better wine in their cellar than the restaurant offers on the wine list. That may be the case, and if it is, I suggest they eat somewhere else."
There are plenty of restaurants with very good food but very mediocre wine lists. I would be missing out if I only ate at restaurants with great wine lists.
"Other wine geeks claim that they bring their own wine because they do not like the restaurant mark up on wine? These same people will often say that they don’t mind paying a corkage fee and that they always tip the staff enough or more to cover what the wine would have cost them had they bought from the wine list—seems to me they could just as well pay the restaurant mark up."
This is the biggest reason for me - and I'm not going to pretend that I'll end up paying the same amount, either. 100% markup is one thing if I happen to be buying a $10 bottle of wine. OK, I gave the restaurant $10. However, there's no way I'm going to pay $200 for a $100 bottle of wine at a restaurant.
"By the way, if you don’t like a restaurant’s wine mark up you still have the choice to eat somewhere else."
But if there is no restaurant where I can get an expensive bottle of wine at a reasonable markup, then my only choices are to have a less expensive bottle of wine with dinner, or eat at home...
"I wonder if these wine geeks have any idea what the mark up on food is at a restaurant? Having to account for preparation and waste, plus service, I can assure them that the mark up is not low. If the wine geek is unhappy with the mark up on wine, why isn’t the geek unhappy with the mark up on food?"
With the food, I'm paying specifically to have someone else prepare it for me. I know that the chef can make the same meal, if not better than I can, at least differently. Furthermore, I don't have to do the work of cooking. With wine, all either I or the restaurant has to do is choose it, buy it, store it, and pour it. Such a tiny amount of work, and it ends up tasting exactly the same whether I do it or they do. I don't mind giving them some percentage of the price for this, but I can't even remember the last time I was in a restaurant and thought "wow, what reasonable wine prices".
PS - I don't consider myself a wine geek. Just not a sucker!
Julian,
ReplyDeleteMostly, I am referring to wine geeks; the people who have glorified wine to an art and can't bring themselves to understand anything that tastes less than art to them. There are hundreds of thousands of drinkable wines on the market, but you'd never know it by the hype a few hundred wines receive regularly.
In many, many cases, wines that don't do well in straight wine tastings can and often do quite well when paired with food, and the same holds true in reverse--wines that shine in straight wine tastings can and sometimes do pale next to food.
Many of those hundreds of thousands of wines are produced in cultures where the local wine is as important as the local food, and when you try the wines with the foods that are eaten where the wines are produced, you can understand why.
Instead of valuing just the big wines, which I do value for their own merit, I also value restaurants that make an effort to pair their wine lists with their food preparation. I look carefully at wine lists to find that effort. I did once walk out on a restaurant that served Italian food but offered a mainly California wine list consisting of high-priced Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays. The Italian wines it offered were mainly of the lowest plonk, and I refused to pay the price asked for them.
Again, I completely agree that restaurants generally charge way too much for wine, and that is because we have built a culture where wine has been given special status instead of daily food status. I spent many years in the distribution network trying to persuade restaurateurs that lowering prices could increase their volume sales.
I, and many like me, seemed to have failed miserably at the task of persuading people who think in immediate units as opposed to future volume. Still, it would not surprise me that if all restaurants lowered their wine prices, many wine geeks would find another reason to bring their stash from their cellar...
Julian, there are places where restaurants cannot get a license to sell wine. In New Jersey, the license is controlled within communities so that after a certain number of licenses have been issued, the only way for a new restaurant to get a licnese is to buy out an older restaurant or wait for one in the community with a license to go out of business and buy the license.
Under those conditions, restaurants are not required to go BYOB, but most of them allow it--they haven't much choice.
I agree that it's important to keep trying all sorts of wines, not just the big names. But I don't feel that BYOB necessarily prevents this (though I'm sure it does for some people).
ReplyDeleteI guess my main point was that if a restaurant that sells wine also allows BYOB, then it does so by choice, not by legislation. Therefore, we shouldn't feel that we are stealing their profits by paying whatever corkage fee THEY decided on. Market forces drive that decision, and they probably could have just as well lowered their margins on wine INSTEAD of allowing BYOB. But they're probably better off overall getting better margins on the wine they sell (which I would guess is still more common than people who bring their own), and allowing BYO. Maybe my assumptions are off, but basically, they chose their BYOB policy for a reason, so we don't need to feel badly using it.
Julian,
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you on that. It is the restaurant's choice to allow BYO. I prefer not to engage in the practice mainly because if I owned a restaurant I likely would not want it done to me--but then, I likely would choose decent wines and sell them at decent prices (my wife says I have a terrible habit of expecting of others what I choose for myself).
Why restaurants that allow BYO can't figure out that their pricing might be the problem is beyond comprehension--although I remain convinced that a lot of wine geeks I've met use pricing as an excuse to bring their own wines.
Thomas,
ReplyDeleteI must respectfully disagree with some of your reasoning. The main reason I became a wine fanatic was because of an off-the-wall bistro in DC (Cafe Riche); since shuttered, alas. The owner/chef was a magician in the kitchen but had fallen on hard financial times because of his idiosyncratic business practices. Consequently, he resorted to pushing headache-guaranteeing plonk instead of fine wine. Fortunately, he allowed BYOB and the rest is history. Frankly, I'm taken aback at your adamant anti-BYOB stance. (perhaps part of it is tongue in cheek?) I'll be the first to admit that good value is a principal goal of mine when dining out -- whether it be the food and/or wine. These priorities epitomize lifestyle choices made by many foodies and wine lovers, which is precisely why many of us have endeavored to cellar wines we hope to enjoy decades from now. You'd probably be the first to agree that if we didn't cellar certain gems today, odds are fair to excellent that we'd not be able to locate analogous bottles (with excellent provenance, mind you!) at reasonable prices. Finding well-aged wines -- even in restaurants in France -- isn't what it used to be a decade or more ago, is it? Not to mention the stories of fraudulent wine conterfeits surfacing in places like 'The Strip'. I have also read that opening a high-end restaurant in NYC now costs over a million bucks; you can be assured that the owner/investors are watching their margins with eagle eyes and aren't mom and pop operations catering to casual feeders. So please reconsider your apparent stance or at least acknowledge that the world is to varied for one perspective to be valid under most circumstances. ;-)
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ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteBefore I proceed, can I ask that you give a name--even a phoney name would help. I don't like responding to "anonymous," plus, if others do it, figuring out to whom I am responding can become confusing.
Yes, to some degree I am "tongue-in-cheeking" on this subject, but I also am dead serious and find appalling the attitude of many wine geeks that a restaurant should be in business to serve their obsession.
As for me changing my attitude--only after someone persuades me that it is ok to take my own DVD and laptop to a movie house because I don't like the movie showing there but need the darkness of the place, and I should get a reduced ticket price to boot. ;)