December 6, 2025 • 39 mins
Amuse Booze: Negroni
Tanner and Jerry dig into the world of reviews and why restaurants seem to get more feedback—solicited or not—than any other profession. They explore how chefs handle criticism, including the story of one who famously banned a critic from his restaurant. Then they sit down with D Magazine’s food critic to learn how the job really works: what to taste for, how to write with clarity and fairness, and the backlash that sometimes follows. After that, Tanner and Jerry turn the spotlight on themselves as they read and respond to reviews of Flavorphiles. And finally, Tanner flips the script by offering his own “critiques” of memorable guests who’ve come through his doors over the years.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
Tanner and Jerry dig into the world of reviews and why restaurants seem to get more feedback—solicited or not—than any other profession. They explore how chefs handle criticism, including the story of one who famously banned a critic from his restaurant. Then they sit down with D Magazine’s food critic to learn how the job really works: what to taste for, how to write with clarity and fairness, and the backlash that sometimes follows. After that, Tanner and Jerry turn the spotlight on themselves as they read and respond to reviews of Flavorphiles. And finally, Tanner flips the script by offering his own “critiques” of memorable guests who’ve come through his doors over the years.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for joining us on another edition of Flavor Files.
Often we have a theme we're working off of, and
today's Everybody's a Critic. We're going to talk about restaurant
reviews and how restaurants react to them. We'll talk to
a restaurant reviewer. We've been on long enough now with
Flavor Files that we're starting to get criticism against us
or sometimes thumbs up and that sort of thing, so
(00:20):
we'll respond to that, and then Tanner's could do something
I've never seen a restaurant do or before do. Before.
Tanner's going to review some of his customers and what
he thought of them at the restaurants and bars. But
as always, you're starting off with a drink with an
amuse booze.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Our ammuz boos. Today it's something that's a little sweet
but is definitely bitter. It's than a grony. It's a
superclassic cocktail, and like reviews, it's a little bitter to
read them sometimes. So this cocktail really easy, superclassic, and
really great for winter. I find you take equal parts,
so it's three things all equal parts. You can use
(00:55):
a jigger to measure, but I measure with my heart.
So I'm going to take a little bit of This
is gonna be a modern gin still Austin, down in Austin,
but any general work camp pari. Campari is in more
bars than any other spirit in the entire world. It's bitter.
It kind of tastes like the outside of an orange,
or that white part of an orange.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Really bitter.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Quite a stringent. The red color that it has that
makes them the grony bright red. The bright red of
campari actually used to come from an insect called the
coach and eal insect. It grows on cactus in Mexico
and Peru. But that's a different story for a different time.
Then you always want to top this final component is
(01:37):
sweet vermouth. If you don't have sweet vermouth or I
mean definitely wanted to use something else. What I've got
right here is port is also a fortified wine product
with spices, so you can use port if you don't
have vermouth. But great cocktail really love it for the winter,
So cheers to that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Is comparing something that you wouldn't drink on.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Its own, drink campari on your own can, But yeah,
I guess you always can. I don't know of anyone
who drinks campari on their own that isn't a really
tenured bartender. The longer you bartend, the more into weird
stuff that maybe isn't that good that you start to
get into. And campari is definitely one of those things.
(02:21):
I like to just have a campari and soda. Actually
it's kind of intense on its own, but with just
a little soda, it's kind of fresh. It's nice. But
that's more of a summer drink than the Agrony's a better
winter drink.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All right, let's get into reviews here. Everyone's a critic
is our theme on today's episode of Flavor Files, and
your industry might be more subject to public criticism whether
the people criticizing know anything other than their own opinion
because they liked the food or they didn't, than almost
any other industry.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
This is one of the things I don't like about
my job about being a restaurant tour Obviously, anybody who
creates something for the public is welcoming criticism. Musicians get this.
You get this being on the radio. Writers get this
all the time. Athletes, athletes get this right, Athletes talk
about that. Musicians talk about this. I think the difference
(03:09):
is when I google an athlete. The first thing that
doesn't come up isn't a YELP page where anybody who
thinks they know anything can just right mean vicious stuff
or in some cases make up stuff. Google doesn't apply
themselves to validate that you even went to the restaurant,
(03:30):
or that you know what you're talking about. We've gotten
bad reviews for other restaurants before.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Wow, I remember a person who gave you a bad
review on the first night you opened your bar apothecary.
You did a little research and found out that the
place was so instantly popular there was a lineup down
the sidewalk. It turns out he never got in.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, he couldn't get in. He couldn't get a reservation.
When he showed up and tried to bribe the people
at the door, they said no, And so he wrote
us a review for how he couldn't get in, even
though reservations are online and they're free, so you can't
get in. But it's frustrating because everyone can write one
and you don't have to know what you're talking about.
You don't have to have visited. I mean, I worked
(04:09):
at a place one time where one of the bartenders
there slept with this girl. The girl's boyfriend found out,
and then he and all his buddies wrote one star
reviews for the restaurant. And you can just do this
right because look, if you just go on Twitter and
write this athlete's terrible whatever. When you google my restaurants,
it says like website address reviews, the reviews come right up.
(04:32):
And so it's actually very important to restaurants what those
reviews are. And of course it's our goal to make
the reviews good. We want people to have a good experience.
But it's really difficult because most people. If you think
about yourself, if you're a listener, do you write a
good review when you have a great time? You know
somebody who owns a restaurant, or owns a hardware business,
(04:53):
or owns a plumbing service. Have you gone onto your
friend's business profile and written them a five star review?
Have you written a good review even if you don't
know them. Did you write one?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Now?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Have you written one when you were mad at somebody?
And that's a case, of course, of course it is.
And that's one of the things that's also really frustrating
for us. I can have people tell me, oh my god,
it's amazing, Thank you so much. And I almost feel
weird being like, Okay, could you please write that on
Google because because I'm tired of the people who can't
(05:24):
get in writing us one star reviews. Or when we
started providing health insurance for our employees, we had an
optional three percent charge you didn't have to pay, you
option to pay it to help support health insurance for
our restaurants, which almost no restaurants provide health insurance in America.
And we got so many one star reviews about how
we were applying mystery fees and it tanked our Google rating.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Okay, but you also had people come in and say
I came to your restaurant because you're doing this.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes, And the nature of being a public business, that's
part of it, right, And.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I'll I'll give you a quote from Mark Twain. Okay.
Mark Twain said a lie can get all around the
world before the truth can get its pants on in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
It's easier, right, It's easier to tell that story. It's
easier to make people look bad. But and regular everyday people.
If you work inside sales, right, you sell ads for
one of the radio stations. There's not a website. I
can log in and see if you do a good
job or not.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
But everyone I know can everyone I know socially can
see if I'm doing a good job on the internet.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think that most people would be above this. But
do you think there's a possibility that sometimes when you
see a bad review for a restaurant, it's a jealous
owner of another restaurant.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
That absolutely happens. Huh, Yes, that happens. People write bad reviews.
They try to take other people down. I don't really
see the purpose of it. You would need a lot
of people to pull something like that off. And I
would rather just focus on making my restaurant good than
trying to tear down other people.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Okay, but let's talk about how you handle the reviews.
There has to be value to it. Sometimes sometimes a
negative the review is making a good point.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's true that reviews can be good. And I would
say there's sort of three types of reviews that I get.
The first are the ones I was complaining about before. Right,
you don't know what you're talking about. I had a
woman complain because her eggs were running on her Benedict,
I said running how she said? I cut them open
and the egg yolk wasn't cooked. Well, it's an ex
(07:22):
Benedict lady, you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, she clearly likes some hard boiled.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Okay, then just ask for it. I can overcook eggs.
It's actually so much easier to overcook eggs than to
cook them properly. But so there's the reviews that don't
know what they're talking about that's frustrating. There are, obviously
the reviews that are glowing and love us, and I
love those. And then there's the reviews where I read
it and I say, okay, it sounds like we made
(07:48):
the mistake. And while I don't like those reviews, it's
not that I don't like them because of you, the reviewer.
I don't like them because I can see the reflection
of it. Sounds like we didn't get our job done.
Sounds like we didn't cook the food properly, or your
server didn't provide the expertise that you were expecting and
deserved as one of our guests. And so while I
(08:09):
don't love reading those reviews, those are not the ones
that make me upset, because then I sit down with
the staff and I say, how come this didn't happen.
How can we make this right? Can we reach out
to this guest and try to make something better, Because
at the end of the day, the only thing I've
ever wanted is to be the best. I want to
be the best restaurant possible. I want to be the
best cocktail bar possible. I want to be as good
(08:30):
as possible. And so when we get those criticisms, it's
my job to be aware of them. I try not
to read the reviews late at night when I'm really tired,
and I definitely don't review them or read them after
I've been drinking, because one thing that happens is I
get a ping notification, Hey, new review, and it's one star.
(08:51):
And if I've been drinking and this person's an idiot,
it is very hard not to just say you're an idiot,
and you know, yell at them on the internet. But
that is not the way I think you should operate
as a restaurant tour.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Well, you can tell us a story in a moment
about a restaurant tour who did that, and it's an
amusing story, but I'm gonna tell you one really quickly.
It happened to my friends. They went to a resort
operation and they went largely because they had tickets to
a special show that was part of the resort. And
then dinner was just completely screwed up and it got
to the point where they had to go to the
show and there was no time to fix it. And
(09:23):
the manager came over and said, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, folks.
If you have an opportunity to come back dinners on
me will make it right. And they said, how about tomorrow.
He said, okay, because these people are from out of town.
But here's what happened. They were very unhappy. They enjoyed
the show. They came back the next day and they
(09:46):
got to the table and the waiter said, and I
understand that we're fixing you up for last night, And
they said, yeah, what's included? Whatever you want? No, but
whatever you want. They could order all the drinks, all
the food. I thought that was brilliant.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, they must have really messed up the night before
for them to be willing to spend that much. But
it's funny. We want you to be happy. We're not
in this business because we want people to be upset
with us, right, But it does happen. That story you
alluded to. I'll tell quickly. There's a famous Dallas chef here,
John Tazar. He's well known in Dallas. He proudly wears
(10:21):
the moniker Dallas most Hated chef. He calls himself this
and he opened this new place. This is several years ago. Now,
he opens this new place, and a food critic at
the time she goes. She writes in a three star review,
which you think would be okay, but she says things
like the bacon tasting is like gouty or just really stupid.
(10:44):
It's something like that, the steaks are uneven, the salt
levels aren't good. She writes this whole thing, and so
this review comes out and he tweets at her, Leslie Bresner,
f you you miserable, self serving per You're banned from
my restaurant. And then he made t shirts mocking her.
(11:05):
And this was a whole This was a whole story.
I mean, this was a big story at the time
because there were all the restaurant people going, I mean,
I don't think you should do that, but also I've
definitely wanted to do that before.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And then when she resigned her post, he went after
her again.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Right, So this story. It's like twenty fourteen. This story
happens in seventeen. She leaves the Dallas Morning News and
he makes a post of a catering event he's doing
and says, you're hiring for the newest restaurant employee who
has no job, or something like that. Three years later,
he still wasn't over it, bitter. We have been talking
(11:43):
all about reviews from my perspective, but now I want
to talk about the other side. This is a side
I never get to see, which is from the critic.
So we have reached out to Brian Reinhardt. He is
the food critic of d magazine here in Dallas. I
think you do more food writing than anybody in the
city of Dallas, and we're really excited to have you.
So welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Brian, Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
How do you pick a restaurant? How do you know
where to go?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's such an inexact science, and it's such a good question.
I think that's more than half the job almost. I'm
always trying to think of what is a good balance.
If I covered Mexican food this issue, I want to
cover something Asian next month, or I want to. You know,
I don't want it to be three really expensive restaurants
in a row or three little hole in the walls
(12:29):
in a row either. So much of it is so
motivated by whim or where my errands take me on
a day, or all sorts of just unpredictable stuff like that.
You know, we in the press get probably a dozen
plus press releases every day from restaurants that are fortunate
to have that kind of media representation and have somebody
(12:50):
whose job is to try to get our attention. But
then we also have to take the work upon ourselves
to look out for the restaurants that don't have that
kind of privilege and that don't have somebody employed to
try to catch our attention, that to make sure that
we're still giving it to them.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, I've noticed something that there's a difference between some
people who will write about food and write about restaurants
because they enjoy doing that, and they're writing about the
places they think the public will be happy with. You,
on the other hand, or a reviewer, you will give
a bad review if you think necessary.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I think I only go negative two or three times
a year, which maybe is enough to remind everybody that
it's possible, but otherwise it's not very likely. But yes,
I visit anonymously to the extent possible. I e. Even
if Tanner recognizes me, he won't know him there until
I'm actually sitting down, which has happened several times.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I think, I walk into the dining room, I think, Man,
I wish I had known Brian was here two hours ago.
That would have been nice.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Do you think that you've hurt a restaurant at some point?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You know, there are two really good examples of where
the public thought that I had done so. One of
them was a restaurant that people still three years later
tell me, oh, you reviewed the Mexican and that's the
meanest review we've ever seen. Well, there are sales numbers
in Texas. Liquor sales alcohol sales numbers are publicly available.
Their sales numbers never dropped one bit. In the second case,
(14:14):
we actually had a restaurant shut down two days after
the article came out, and I panicked. I thought, oh
my gosh, what if what if they tell the world, well,
we shut down because of this article. It turns out
that they had made the decision to close about two
hours before our article got published in a meeting, and
they didn't. Neither of us knew the timing of the
other one.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well, I was thinking as soon as you said that
if a restaurant closed hours after your review, they were
going to close anyway. Do you ever feel bad though
when you hit send, Jeez, this seems a little mean,
or do you think, hey, they deserve them.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I definitely feel both at the same time, because I'll
think about the public and my role as kind of
a consumer advocate, consumer reports type person who wants you
to not have to spend all that money to find
out the hard and then I'll also think about the
you know, the people on the other end of that,
And it's definitely both things in the same moment and
(15:08):
both feelings at the same time.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
That if you see yourself as a consumer advocate, then
obviously you need to think about how to taste for
the public as opposed to for Brian, and I can
absolutely understand. I mean, it must make it pretty much
impossible to be a picky eatier or have any allergies
if you're going to be a food critic, right, yeah,
But so how do you separate what Brian likes what
(15:31):
Brian wants to have for dinner, and this is good
for the public.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Sometimes the answer is to embrace the subjectivity and let
people know and just kind of say, listen, this time,
my heart's on my sleeve, and I'm not going to
try to be objective about this. It just hits the
spot for me. And then to try to indicate to
the reader, well, are you the kind of person who
will feel the same way. Maybe the writing of this
(15:55):
is such that you read it and you understand, oh, well,
this guy loved it, but I'm not going to like it,
or vice versa. Even when I go negative, I try
to include so much description of what's happening that I've
heard from people who've read negative reviews that I've written
and have said, thank you, it sounded great and we
went and we loved it. And then I have to
(16:16):
kind of correct. I have to make sure not to
say something like, really, oh okay, I didn't know that
was That wasn't what I was going for, But it
worked in that sense. The review worked. And I think
the where that question really comes home is just things
basic things like spice level and salt level. I dine
out with some people who are much more averse to
(16:38):
salt because they eat at restaurants much less often than
either of us two. And then also, you know, I
am much more spice tolerant than some people. I know
some people also are good with spices from say American
chili peppers, but not Asian chili peppers or something like that.
And that is always kind of a balancing game, is
(16:59):
I can't just say something is hot, can't just say
something as medium, spicy, something like that, because everybody's frame
of reference is going to be a little bit different.
So I try to talk about what the experience of
the eating the dish is like in a more specific way,
like if the spice comes in at the end of
the bite or the end of you know, you've eaten
four bites and now you're starting to feel it, versus
(17:22):
you put the first bite on your tongue and you
get it immediately. I try to make note of that
because I feel like that's more helpful to people versus
just telling people it's spicy.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Had any angry calls from chefs or restaurant tours, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yes, I remember at the in the very beginning, I
did a thing about two tex mex restaurants from the
same family and one of them, the family had had
like a falling out over recipes and that kind of thing. So,
you know, one of them's sour cream sauce on the
enchiladas was very different from the other ones, more seasoned,
(17:56):
less season and the guy who ended up coming out
on the short end of it called me, Yeah, called
my personal cell number. I don't know how he got it,
but he called it, and he just kind of talked
through his feelings for about fifteen to twenty minutes. He
also talked through the Jack in the Box drive through
while he was on the phone, so he you know,
(18:16):
he was telling me like he was telling me, I
have to feed my kids, and you're, you know, you're
you're interfering with my ability to feed my children and
keep my family in a home. Hang on a second,
and then you started to place his order on the
drive through.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Because this is a relatively new show and podcast, I
do try to take some time to build a little
credibility for Tanner here on his expertise, and so you've
been very kind. You did the top fifty restaurants in
Dallas in d magazines and you made him number seven.
What do you think is right?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
But not allowed to send Brian things. He doesn't make
preservations under his own name, So that is something I
think d Magazine does differently than like the influencer world.
The influencer world runs on cash and freebies, and that's
not how actual food critical food journalism is run. And
I appreciate that you do that.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Eating it Rye is such an adventure and they have
such a good sense of humor about the kind of
dining that they're trying to do, where they're going to
gently coax people to try something new and they're going
to have some kind of wild invention coming out of
the kitchen, but they're going to do it with a smile,
and they're not going to It's not the fancy three
Michelin star. You know, you must pay three hundred and
(19:26):
fifty dollars and you must love everything the chef does
and then you can worship at his knees and kiss
the hem of his apron or whatever. It's just genuinely
a very good time with very clever and fun and
novel food that you can't find anywhere else in Dallas.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Well, thank you, Brian. I appreciate that when your editor
reads your piece and says this is good? How is
that to find?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
With all kinds of reviews. My north star is Roger
Ebert and his approach to movie reviews. And his approach was,
first of all, only judge the piece of art on
what it is trying to do. Its own goal is
not what you wish it was, not what you would
like it to be, but to judge it against itself.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
But what if you become friendly with the people alone it.
Do you think that affects you?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
I do, and I have to watch out for that.
I think now about it's nearly half the restaurants on
our top fifty list that if I walk in, someone
will say hello to me socially, and it may not
be the owner. Another thing that happens is that if
you work, if you build enough contacts with regular working people,
(20:36):
the bartenders, the waiters, because you're reporting on something that
another owner did that was no good and that then
they are becoming sources.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
To tell you about the sleezy chefs of the world.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
So if once you once I start having those connections
with both both the ownership class and the working class
of a restaurant, I do end up just wanting to
root for everybody and I have to kind of press
the brakes on that a little bit because I just
want everybody to be great and do great, and I'm
more likely to be a softy than to kind of
(21:11):
walk in and want to take a place down.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well, we appreciate that, Brian. I think food criticism is great.
So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Thank you guys, great to be here. It's a dream job.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Today on the show, we've been talking all about reviews,
food reviews, reviews that we've gotten. One story I did
want to mention we didn't get to before, was right
when we started ry we got several bad reviews because
we were trying to do something really different, and one
person in particular wrote this terrible review just about how
(21:43):
they hated this and they hated that, and I thought
I was on candid camera. I was looking for the cameras.
This restaurant so hipster it hurts, yeah, which was both
true and hurtful. And what did you do, Dad when
you saw that review?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
I made you a T shirt?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
You did? You made me a T shirt? And it
came it was the Rye logo right on the chest
and then underneath as if the slogan of our brand
so hipster it hurts. I still have that T shirt
hanging in the closet.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Do you wear it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
I've gotten a little larger horizontally since you gave me
that T shirt, So while I own it, I don't
wear it.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And there's a project for you to get back to
that T shirt. But what has happened is we've been
now doing this just long enough with flavor files on
the radio and online that we're starting to get our
own reviews. So we're going to respond to them. All right,
Can I read one that we received regarding well, it
was both of us, actually, but you had mentioned something
(22:41):
about cheap prosecco, and somebody wrote cheap prosecco Jerry, Well,
he accused both of us of hating Italians.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Right, I don't know what that even means. Oh, okay,
cheap prosecco is just a thing. It's just a thing
that you can buy. We didn't say prosecco is cheap
or if you are a cheap person, go buy prosecco.
Always said was, hey, you're making a cocktail. It's supposed
to be made with champagne, the French seventy five. I
don't make it that way, because champagne's expensive, go buy
(23:10):
some cheap prosecco and you can use that. I could
have said cheap cava out of Spain. I could have
said cheap wine out of France. I could have said
cheap wine. It's just cheap wine. Buy cheap wine. If
you want expensive wine, buy expensive wine.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
If I went on the air and said, you know
you can buy cheap bourbon, don't just mean a hate America.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
No Americans. Great, there's also cheap maple syrup.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
By the way, Well there you go. Uh, okay, what
have you received?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I've gotten one for us News Talk ten ten. It's
one of our radio partners and a producer there, Mark
put a bunch of these together for us. So thank
you Mark. And he found one and said, is news
Talk ten ten actually okay? With Jerry using airtime to
promote a side project with his kid.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Duh. It's on the radio station. It's on News Talk
ten ten at seven o'clock on Saturday nights. It's on
CLW in Windsor at two o'clock on Saturday afternoons. Yes,
they like us to promote the programs that are on
the radio station. I think they're happy we're doing something
where it had nothing to do with radio. They might say,
dial it back a bit, Jerry, But anyway, well but sure.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Also they sell the ads. We don't even get the
ad money. Of course they're happy with it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yes, so we have to find our own sponsors. This
episode of Flavor Files is brought to you by Thrifted
Tea Bags. Fast fashion tea companies would have you believe
that tea bags can only be used once, but that's
a lie perpetrated by big beverage. Thrifted Tea Bags are
literally saving the earth by giving a second life to
these leaves collected from coffee shops who are so hipster
(24:43):
it hurts co working spaces. But the good kind ladies
named Pearl in June and Hot Girl Yoga Studios, so
you're guaranteed to probably not get herpes ship directly to you.
In Mystery flavor packs, they come still wet for faster
brewing and cut customer's love the subtle, nuanced flavors. Yes,
it costs a little more money than first used tea,
(25:06):
but isn't the planet worth it? Thrifted Tea Bags. Every
steep deserves a sequel. It's not weak tea.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's re tea so hipster it hurts.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Here's a person who writes in though this is an
absolutely great show, I would love to have a conversation
with him to learn so much more by this. Him
doesn't mean me, means you because of your experience and
expertise and food and drinks, it I mean you.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I've got one here. I really enjoyed that. Unfortunately I
missed the first fifteen minutes due to the Leaf's game.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Well, hard to compete with that, I think.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Hard to compete with the Toronto Maple Leafs, However, in
my lifetime have exactly as many Stanley Cup wins as
the Maple Leafs.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
In your lifetime. That's right.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I'd like to address something that isn't so much a
review as a question I've received a few times, and
that is why do you spell flavor files with a pH? Well,
it comes from thought, or from the Greek word filos
to love something, to hold it dear. Biblio files are
people who love books. They love to read, they love
(26:09):
the feel of books. Audio files are people who love sound,
mostly listening to music and trying to improve the experience
of listening to music and so we're flavor Files. We
love flavor, we love food, we love drink. It's that simple, right.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Look, we're very new so so we very much appreciate
the reviews, by the way, and there are several ways
that you can do that. You can text. I'll give
you a phone number here. You can text four one
six eight seven, two ten ten and give us a
review wherever you're listening on the radio four one six
eight seven two ten ten or tanner. You can go
(26:49):
to our flavor files dot com website.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, you can go to the website. You can write them.
You know, maybe if you write something nice, we could
make a T shirt out of that. Right, we can
make some new flavor file swag and we'll put it
in the flavor File store and you could see your review.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and we will pay you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I can't wait for the reviews we get on this
that were capitalist pigs or something else. So here was
a review that made me laugh. It was listening to
flavor Files for the first time. Okay, so that isn't
a review. No, but thank you, I mean thank you
for listening. But that's not that isn't a review. There's
no feedback.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, at the point where that was sent in. I
think we had only done four or five episodes. So actually,
anytime you want to listen and you join us, then
we appreciate that very much. Now we do get people
writing in and saying Tanner that they appreciate your food
knowledge and sometimes you know your cocktail knowledge. I would
like to point out that statistically, you know, it's not
(27:45):
just Tanner who says he knows about food and he
knows about cocktails. The Michelin System and we did a
whole show on that has recognized Tanner for outstanding cocktails
for the entire state of Texas are consistently listed. Whenever
people like the reviewer we talked to earlier in this
(28:06):
show will put together lists of top restaurants in the
state or in the city of Dallas. You're consistently there.
And I point that out just a brag about you,
but to also point out if I were doing this,
it would just be me talking about food or drink
because I like it. But you're actually bringing some expertise
to this show.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Well, thank you. That was certainly the hope is that
I could bring semeths fertis. But according to let's see
Arlene here says that she's always been a Jerry fan,
so it sounds like she's only listening for you. It says,
Tanner's hilarious and fun as well as informed and interesting.
Thanks Arlene, but she's always been a Jerry fan.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Here's what I hope on something like that, because I've
been doing the show in Toronto. As we go into
the new year, I'll be seventeen years on the air
with that show, and so people in the environment from
Toronto have have an opportunity to to by now whether
they like me or they don't, and the people who
do are very kind and they stick around. And I
(29:05):
hope then that that extends people toward this show. But
they're not going to listen to it if all that
happened was me talking about food and drink, because they'd
very quickly figure out, well, you know what he's talking about.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We've done some segments called short Order Cooking where we
answer ten questions really quickly. Some of those questions come
from people we know who ask so you can definitely
hit us there. You can ask us those questions. We
want to be able to provide. I don't know does
this qualifies edutainment.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I don't know what it qualifies as as.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Long as they keep us on the radio, they can
qualify us as whatever they want, but we do always
appreciate that feedback. You can also give us a five
star review if you listen on Apple, Spotify, or iHeart
those podcasting apps that can help people find some help
more people find our show. There's also one last review
I wanted to read here because I definitely think it's true,
and you talked about how I provide that expertise, but
(29:54):
this review says Jerry, we love your wit and wicked
sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Well, thank you. Of course, if I was that quick,
i'd have thought of a joke right there, but I didn't.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Man, I should have You know what we should have done.
We should have had Mark give this to us, give
us these reviews sooner, and then we could have written punchlines.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
We could have gone somebody funny to write a punchline
for us.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Okay, it's been fun going through our reviews, but I
want to turn everything around now.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Tanner wants to take the opportunity to do something that
restaurant tours, bars, bartenders, chefs don't normally get to do.
Tanner's going to review some of the guests who come
to the restaurant for better or for worse. Who do
you want to start with, Tanner.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Let's start with people that change their allergies part way
through their meal. Really, absolutely, these are people who say, oh,
I don't eat gluten, I don't eat meat. They love
to say it that way, by the way, and so
these people come kind of precious mean, and then all
of a sudden, somehow a dish comes out that I
guess looks so amazing. You've been cured of Celiac's disease
(30:57):
by the pure appeal of the pasta. The number of
times I have seen people who can't eat something scarfing
down on that thing, it's a shocking amount. And any
of the restaurant people who listen to this show, I'm
sure have had that experience.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Okay, I want to say something here, and that is
that I think there really is. Anti gluten is a thing.
It's kind of like a hips kind of thing. But
people will see the act disease. That's a serious deal.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Whether it's a disease, whether it's a preference. It's my
job to cook something for you that you can like
and you can enjoy. I don't have a complaint. We've
got lots of gluten free options out on my restaurants.
We have lots of vegetarian options, we have vegan options.
It doesn't bother me. There are chefs who are very
anti vegan. I'm not that way. I'm just happy you're here.
But when you make me make allowances for you and
(31:48):
then I watch you lick the plate of someone else,
that's when you get a one star review out of me.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
All right, you have nowhere to put those reviews, but
at least in your mind you know what they are.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well. Actually, we have on our reservation software if you
do stuff like this, we write it so the next
time you make a reservation we can be like, hmmm,
fake vegan.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
You must also have notes of people you just love them?
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, of course, right, we have lots of notes, right,
if you're a person who loves these types of red wines,
or you love these whiskies. We of course have had
people who we would give five stars too. Those are
the regulars. Those are the people we love, but those
aren't as funny for a podcast. I will tell you
about one five star famous person. Obviously, we're both big
(32:32):
Lord of the Rings fans. I guess not obvious to
the listeners, but we're big time Lord of the Rings fans.
I used to live in New Zealand. Also, while I
was there, I was bartending and the guy who pays Pippin,
one of the Hobbits, Billy Boyd, came in to the bar.
Five star review from him, now partly because he's Pippin,
but also because he sat down at the bar like
(32:52):
a normal person, and he just asked me, I want
to drink some local wines. What do you recommend? And
so I talked him through, We did a wine tasting,
we just had a whole chat. At no point I
think he knows he knew who I knew who he was, right,
Because of course I was surprised, but I was professional.
I didn't address it, but I couldn't give in the
fact that I had just watched Pippin sit down at
(33:14):
my bar. He's so much taller in person. Also I
thought he was like four feet tall. Yeah, But so
he sits down, he's drinking wine, We're having a really
good time. And finally at the end, I was like, Hey,
I do want to let you know I love the
Lord of the Rings movies. They're fantastic. I've seen them
so many times. Actually, we've briefly mentioned it before, but
at one point Original Rye, my original restaurant, it did
(33:35):
burn down, and when I came home covered in tears
and got myself drunk. It was while I was watching
Lord of the Rings. So it's like my number one
comfort movie. And he told me a couple of really
funny stories about being on the set, and he was
just super nice. And then he said, you know, I'm
actually at Comic Con tomorrow. Do you want free tickets?
(33:56):
They give me these tickets, I have no one to
give them to. You're my only friend. Wow, But that's right,
I am your friend. Five star review love Billy Boyd.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
All right, But then at your restaurant you had somebody
pee on the manager. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Saint Patrick's Day is a really big holiday on Greenville Avenue.
Greenville Avenue is the street where my restaurants are. Every year,
the parade is on Greenville Avenue, and it's a bit
of a debaucherous situation. This can be frustrating if you
run a high end restaurant where people do eleven course
tasting menus. The juxtaposition of outside Saint Patrick's Day, College
(34:32):
student land and inside tasting menu restaurant is difficult and
our general manager, Amanda, she hates Saint Patrick's Day. She
complains about it every year. One hundred percent truy story.
She's taking trash out, which is no one's favorite thing. Anyway,
she pushes open the back door to go to the
little alley to take out trash, and there had been
(34:53):
a man. Man is generous. There's a legally man, Yeah,
peeing on our back door, not on the fence, not
into like the sewer grat, just peeing on the back door. Well,
what do you think happens when Amanda opens the front
door quickly because she's in a hurry. Yeah, Amanda trash
in one hand, pee on her legs because she generally
(35:15):
wears a dress or a skirt, so she just has
open legs, and he peed across her shins. Wow, I've
seen her mad. I've seen her mad at me before,
but I've never seen her that mad.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Did that guy survive the alley?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I've never seen him again.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Speaking of that, what do you do when you decide
you know, sir, you've had enough to drink?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
There are two types of people that get cut off.
If you ever get cut off at a bar, the
only thing you should do is to say, I understand,
and you should pay your tab and you should leave.
Maybe the next day you can think about maybe I
wasn't that drunk, or I wasn't this. But if you're drunk,
isn't up to you. You told me one time, you said,
if you have an alcohol problem, that's not up to you.
(35:55):
If anyone in your life tells you you have an
alcohol problem, you have an alcohol problem. And being overserved
is the same way if a bartender who makes money
based on serving you says, hey, man, I can't even
do this anymore. If they're telling you it's time to
go home, it's time to go home, you pay your tab,
you'd be respectful. But sometimes those people get really upset
(36:16):
and they don't want to go home, and those are
the people where really the best thing you can do
is try to appeal to the people that they're with
and hope that the people there with recognize the situation
and remove them from it. The worst, and this has
happened to me more than one time, is a drunk,
rude dad who's had to have his kids close out
the tab and usher him out of the bar while
(36:38):
they're apologizing the whole time. That is not a good look.
Also one star, one star.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
All right, Well, and speaking of that, didn't you have
a guy get disgusted with his own wife for her drinking.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
It was one year at New Year's Eve and she
clearly had too much to drink, and you know we
were It's New Year's Eve, but I think they had
shown up going a little hard, okay, and she got
so drunk that she went to the bathroom and threw up, which,
by the way, if you threw up at a restaurant,
it's not that big a deal, but do it in
(37:13):
the toilet. The number of people who have thrown up
in our trash can, on our floor or in the sink.
If you throw up in the toilet, it's not that
big a deal. You can flush the toilet, you know,
you take the toilet wand you scrub it. But when
you threw up in a sink, you understand someone has
to put gloves on and get the chunks out. There's
no edifying way to clean a sink of throw up.
(37:35):
But anyway, he gets so drunk that part way through
the meal, they haven't even finished dinner and the guy
literally looks at us and goes, I gotta take my
wife home. I gotta leave. And I think maybe he's
gonna be mad because he hasn't finished dinner, or he
thinks we overserved her, and he just looks at us
and goes. But this is one of the best New
Year's Eve's ever. I can't wait to come back here. Nice, fantastic, sir,
Thank you so much. Can't wait to see someone else
(37:57):
on your table. He gets five stars from me.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
But what about the people who come in and say
they know the owner.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, people love to say this, I know the owner
right because they think that's going to get them some
kind of hookup. I have been standing at the door
telling people we're full, you can't get in, we're sold
out tonight, and I have had people say to my face,
I know Tanner. Oh you know Tanner. Huh you know
the owner Tanner. Well, let me tell you I know
(38:22):
you know Tanner. So if you can do me a favorite.
Tanner takes the waitlist, he takes the reservations really seriously.
If you can call Tanner and he'll tell me to
make an exception, you let me know, Well, I will
call him. Okay, great, I'm gonna go do that right now.
All right, see in a few minutes. Look forward to that.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
You'd be shocked if your phone rang. And we have
to close this out with the lady on her boob job.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
There was a woman. She was a regular of our restaurant.
We see her a lot, and she got a boob job,
and good for her. But she shows up this one
day in this dress design to show it off. And
you know the adage, if you got it, flamm it. Well,
I think what that means metaphorically, like wear a dress
that sort of shows off your assets. But she was
(39:04):
talking all about it. She's sitting at the bar and
she said, you guys are gonna love it, and she
unzipped the front of her dress, bare chested everybody. And
by everybody, I don't mean a couple of us closing
the bar. I mean she's in a swivel chair and
she spun it around and she showed them to everyone.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And what did you do?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well? I wasn't there, but I did call her the
next day and say, hey, we got to talk about
this situation. Left her a voicemail and I said, I
think it's best if you don't come to the restaurant
until we have a chat. And I've never heard from
her ever again, except I heard that one day she
came to our brand new restaurant, asked if I was
there to the host, and the host said no, came
(39:45):
to the restaurant ate her tab bounced and said, tell
Tanner it was me.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Well, it's always an adventure and we appreciate you taking
this ride with us. This is Flavor Files. Hope to
talk to you next week.
Thanks for joining us on another edition of Flavor Files.
Often we have a theme we're working off of, and
today's Everybody's a Critic. We're going to talk about restaurant
reviews and how restaurants react to them. We'll talk to
a restaurant reviewer. We've been on long enough now with
Flavor Files that we're starting to get criticism against us
or sometimes thumbs up and that sort of thing, so
(00:20):
we'll respond to that, and then Tanner's could do something
I've never seen a restaurant do or before do. Before.
Tanner's going to review some of his customers and what
he thought of them at the restaurants and bars. But
as always, you're starting off with a drink with an
amuse booze.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Our ammuz boos. Today it's something that's a little sweet
but is definitely bitter. It's than a grony. It's a
superclassic cocktail, and like reviews, it's a little bitter to
read them sometimes. So this cocktail really easy, superclassic, and
really great for winter. I find you take equal parts,
so it's three things all equal parts. You can use
(00:55):
a jigger to measure, but I measure with my heart.
So I'm going to take a little bit of This
is gonna be a modern gin still Austin, down in Austin,
but any general work camp pari. Campari is in more
bars than any other spirit in the entire world. It's bitter.
It kind of tastes like the outside of an orange,
or that white part of an orange.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Really bitter.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Quite a stringent. The red color that it has that
makes them the grony bright red. The bright red of
campari actually used to come from an insect called the
coach and eal insect. It grows on cactus in Mexico
and Peru. But that's a different story for a different time.
Then you always want to top this final component is
(01:37):
sweet vermouth. If you don't have sweet vermouth or I
mean definitely wanted to use something else. What I've got
right here is port is also a fortified wine product
with spices, so you can use port if you don't
have vermouth. But great cocktail really love it for the winter,
So cheers to that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Is comparing something that you wouldn't drink on.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Its own, drink campari on your own can, But yeah,
I guess you always can. I don't know of anyone
who drinks campari on their own that isn't a really
tenured bartender. The longer you bartend, the more into weird
stuff that maybe isn't that good that you start to
get into. And campari is definitely one of those things.
(02:21):
I like to just have a campari and soda. Actually
it's kind of intense on its own, but with just
a little soda, it's kind of fresh. It's nice. But
that's more of a summer drink than the Agrony's a better
winter drink.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All right, let's get into reviews here. Everyone's a critic
is our theme on today's episode of Flavor Files, and
your industry might be more subject to public criticism whether
the people criticizing know anything other than their own opinion
because they liked the food or they didn't, than almost
any other industry.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
This is one of the things I don't like about
my job about being a restaurant tour Obviously, anybody who
creates something for the public is welcoming criticism. Musicians get this.
You get this being on the radio. Writers get this
all the time. Athletes, athletes get this right, Athletes talk
about that. Musicians talk about this. I think the difference
(03:09):
is when I google an athlete. The first thing that
doesn't come up isn't a YELP page where anybody who
thinks they know anything can just right mean vicious stuff
or in some cases make up stuff. Google doesn't apply
themselves to validate that you even went to the restaurant,
(03:30):
or that you know what you're talking about. We've gotten
bad reviews for other restaurants before.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Wow, I remember a person who gave you a bad
review on the first night you opened your bar apothecary.
You did a little research and found out that the
place was so instantly popular there was a lineup down
the sidewalk. It turns out he never got in.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, he couldn't get in. He couldn't get a reservation.
When he showed up and tried to bribe the people
at the door, they said no, And so he wrote
us a review for how he couldn't get in, even
though reservations are online and they're free, so you can't
get in. But it's frustrating because everyone can write one
and you don't have to know what you're talking about.
You don't have to have visited. I mean, I worked
(04:09):
at a place one time where one of the bartenders
there slept with this girl. The girl's boyfriend found out,
and then he and all his buddies wrote one star
reviews for the restaurant. And you can just do this
right because look, if you just go on Twitter and
write this athlete's terrible whatever. When you google my restaurants,
it says like website address reviews, the reviews come right up.
(04:32):
And so it's actually very important to restaurants what those
reviews are. And of course it's our goal to make
the reviews good. We want people to have a good experience.
But it's really difficult because most people. If you think
about yourself, if you're a listener, do you write a
good review when you have a great time? You know
somebody who owns a restaurant, or owns a hardware business,
(04:53):
or owns a plumbing service. Have you gone onto your
friend's business profile and written them a five star review?
Have you written a good review even if you don't
know them. Did you write one?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Now?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Have you written one when you were mad at somebody?
And that's a case, of course, of course it is.
And that's one of the things that's also really frustrating
for us. I can have people tell me, oh my god,
it's amazing, Thank you so much. And I almost feel
weird being like, Okay, could you please write that on
Google because because I'm tired of the people who can't
(05:24):
get in writing us one star reviews. Or when we
started providing health insurance for our employees, we had an
optional three percent charge you didn't have to pay, you
option to pay it to help support health insurance for
our restaurants, which almost no restaurants provide health insurance in America.
And we got so many one star reviews about how
we were applying mystery fees and it tanked our Google rating.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Okay, but you also had people come in and say
I came to your restaurant because you're doing this.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes, And the nature of being a public business, that's
part of it, right, And.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I'll I'll give you a quote from Mark Twain. Okay.
Mark Twain said a lie can get all around the
world before the truth can get its pants on in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
It's easier, right, It's easier to tell that story. It's
easier to make people look bad. But and regular everyday people.
If you work inside sales, right, you sell ads for
one of the radio stations. There's not a website. I
can log in and see if you do a good
job or not.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
But everyone I know can everyone I know socially can
see if I'm doing a good job on the internet.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think that most people would be above this. But
do you think there's a possibility that sometimes when you
see a bad review for a restaurant, it's a jealous
owner of another restaurant.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
That absolutely happens. Huh, Yes, that happens. People write bad reviews.
They try to take other people down. I don't really
see the purpose of it. You would need a lot
of people to pull something like that off. And I
would rather just focus on making my restaurant good than
trying to tear down other people.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Okay, but let's talk about how you handle the reviews.
There has to be value to it. Sometimes sometimes a
negative the review is making a good point.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's true that reviews can be good. And I would
say there's sort of three types of reviews that I get.
The first are the ones I was complaining about before. Right,
you don't know what you're talking about. I had a
woman complain because her eggs were running on her Benedict,
I said running how she said? I cut them open
and the egg yolk wasn't cooked. Well, it's an ex
(07:22):
Benedict lady, you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, she clearly likes some hard boiled.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Okay, then just ask for it. I can overcook eggs.
It's actually so much easier to overcook eggs than to
cook them properly. But so there's the reviews that don't
know what they're talking about that's frustrating. There are, obviously
the reviews that are glowing and love us, and I
love those. And then there's the reviews where I read
it and I say, okay, it sounds like we made
(07:48):
the mistake. And while I don't like those reviews, it's
not that I don't like them because of you, the reviewer.
I don't like them because I can see the reflection
of it. Sounds like we didn't get our job done.
Sounds like we didn't cook the food properly, or your
server didn't provide the expertise that you were expecting and
deserved as one of our guests. And so while I
(08:09):
don't love reading those reviews, those are not the ones
that make me upset, because then I sit down with
the staff and I say, how come this didn't happen.
How can we make this right? Can we reach out
to this guest and try to make something better, Because
at the end of the day, the only thing I've
ever wanted is to be the best. I want to
be the best restaurant possible. I want to be the
best cocktail bar possible. I want to be as good
(08:30):
as possible. And so when we get those criticisms, it's
my job to be aware of them. I try not
to read the reviews late at night when I'm really tired,
and I definitely don't review them or read them after
I've been drinking, because one thing that happens is I
get a ping notification, Hey, new review, and it's one star.
(08:51):
And if I've been drinking and this person's an idiot,
it is very hard not to just say you're an idiot,
and you know, yell at them on the internet. But
that is not the way I think you should operate
as a restaurant tour.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Well, you can tell us a story in a moment
about a restaurant tour who did that, and it's an
amusing story, but I'm gonna tell you one really quickly.
It happened to my friends. They went to a resort
operation and they went largely because they had tickets to
a special show that was part of the resort. And
then dinner was just completely screwed up and it got
to the point where they had to go to the
show and there was no time to fix it. And
(09:23):
the manager came over and said, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, folks.
If you have an opportunity to come back dinners on
me will make it right. And they said, how about tomorrow.
He said, okay, because these people are from out of town.
But here's what happened. They were very unhappy. They enjoyed
the show. They came back the next day and they
(09:46):
got to the table and the waiter said, and I
understand that we're fixing you up for last night, And
they said, yeah, what's included? Whatever you want? No, but
whatever you want. They could order all the drinks, all
the food. I thought that was brilliant.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, they must have really messed up the night before
for them to be willing to spend that much. But
it's funny. We want you to be happy. We're not
in this business because we want people to be upset
with us, right, But it does happen. That story you
alluded to. I'll tell quickly. There's a famous Dallas chef here,
John Tazar. He's well known in Dallas. He proudly wears
(10:21):
the moniker Dallas most Hated chef. He calls himself this
and he opened this new place. This is several years ago. Now,
he opens this new place, and a food critic at
the time she goes. She writes in a three star review,
which you think would be okay, but she says things
like the bacon tasting is like gouty or just really stupid.
(10:44):
It's something like that, the steaks are uneven, the salt
levels aren't good. She writes this whole thing, and so
this review comes out and he tweets at her, Leslie Bresner,
f you you miserable, self serving per You're banned from
my restaurant. And then he made t shirts mocking her.
(11:05):
And this was a whole This was a whole story.
I mean, this was a big story at the time
because there were all the restaurant people going, I mean,
I don't think you should do that, but also I've
definitely wanted to do that before.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And then when she resigned her post, he went after
her again.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Right, So this story. It's like twenty fourteen. This story
happens in seventeen. She leaves the Dallas Morning News and
he makes a post of a catering event he's doing
and says, you're hiring for the newest restaurant employee who
has no job, or something like that. Three years later,
he still wasn't over it, bitter. We have been talking
(11:43):
all about reviews from my perspective, but now I want
to talk about the other side. This is a side
I never get to see, which is from the critic.
So we have reached out to Brian Reinhardt. He is
the food critic of d magazine here in Dallas. I
think you do more food writing than anybody in the
city of Dallas, and we're really excited to have you.
So welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Brian, Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
How do you pick a restaurant? How do you know
where to go?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's such an inexact science, and it's such a good question.
I think that's more than half the job almost. I'm
always trying to think of what is a good balance.
If I covered Mexican food this issue, I want to
cover something Asian next month, or I want to. You know,
I don't want it to be three really expensive restaurants
in a row or three little hole in the walls
(12:29):
in a row either. So much of it is so
motivated by whim or where my errands take me on
a day, or all sorts of just unpredictable stuff like that.
You know, we in the press get probably a dozen
plus press releases every day from restaurants that are fortunate
to have that kind of media representation and have somebody
(12:50):
whose job is to try to get our attention. But
then we also have to take the work upon ourselves
to look out for the restaurants that don't have that
kind of privilege and that don't have somebody employed to
try to catch our attention, that to make sure that
we're still giving it to them.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, I've noticed something that there's a difference between some
people who will write about food and write about restaurants
because they enjoy doing that, and they're writing about the
places they think the public will be happy with. You,
on the other hand, or a reviewer, you will give
a bad review if you think necessary.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I think I only go negative two or three times
a year, which maybe is enough to remind everybody that
it's possible, but otherwise it's not very likely. But yes,
I visit anonymously to the extent possible. I e. Even
if Tanner recognizes me, he won't know him there until
I'm actually sitting down, which has happened several times.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I think, I walk into the dining room, I think, Man,
I wish I had known Brian was here two hours ago.
That would have been nice.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Do you think that you've hurt a restaurant at some point?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You know, there are two really good examples of where
the public thought that I had done so. One of
them was a restaurant that people still three years later
tell me, oh, you reviewed the Mexican and that's the
meanest review we've ever seen. Well, there are sales numbers
in Texas. Liquor sales alcohol sales numbers are publicly available.
Their sales numbers never dropped one bit. In the second case,
(14:14):
we actually had a restaurant shut down two days after
the article came out, and I panicked. I thought, oh
my gosh, what if what if they tell the world, well,
we shut down because of this article. It turns out
that they had made the decision to close about two
hours before our article got published in a meeting, and
they didn't. Neither of us knew the timing of the
other one.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well, I was thinking as soon as you said that
if a restaurant closed hours after your review, they were
going to close anyway. Do you ever feel bad though
when you hit send, Jeez, this seems a little mean,
or do you think, hey, they deserve them.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I definitely feel both at the same time, because I'll
think about the public and my role as kind of
a consumer advocate, consumer reports type person who wants you
to not have to spend all that money to find
out the hard and then I'll also think about the
you know, the people on the other end of that,
And it's definitely both things in the same moment and
(15:08):
both feelings at the same time.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
That if you see yourself as a consumer advocate, then
obviously you need to think about how to taste for
the public as opposed to for Brian, and I can
absolutely understand. I mean, it must make it pretty much
impossible to be a picky eatier or have any allergies
if you're going to be a food critic, right, yeah,
But so how do you separate what Brian likes what
(15:31):
Brian wants to have for dinner, and this is good
for the public.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Sometimes the answer is to embrace the subjectivity and let
people know and just kind of say, listen, this time,
my heart's on my sleeve, and I'm not going to
try to be objective about this. It just hits the
spot for me. And then to try to indicate to
the reader, well, are you the kind of person who
will feel the same way. Maybe the writing of this
(15:55):
is such that you read it and you understand, oh, well,
this guy loved it, but I'm not going to like it,
or vice versa. Even when I go negative, I try
to include so much description of what's happening that I've
heard from people who've read negative reviews that I've written
and have said, thank you, it sounded great and we
went and we loved it. And then I have to
(16:16):
kind of correct. I have to make sure not to
say something like, really, oh okay, I didn't know that
was That wasn't what I was going for, But it
worked in that sense. The review worked. And I think
the where that question really comes home is just things
basic things like spice level and salt level. I dine
out with some people who are much more averse to
(16:38):
salt because they eat at restaurants much less often than
either of us two. And then also, you know, I
am much more spice tolerant than some people. I know
some people also are good with spices from say American
chili peppers, but not Asian chili peppers or something like that.
And that is always kind of a balancing game, is
(16:59):
I can't just say something is hot, can't just say
something as medium, spicy, something like that, because everybody's frame
of reference is going to be a little bit different.
So I try to talk about what the experience of
the eating the dish is like in a more specific way,
like if the spice comes in at the end of
the bite or the end of you know, you've eaten
four bites and now you're starting to feel it, versus
(17:22):
you put the first bite on your tongue and you
get it immediately. I try to make note of that
because I feel like that's more helpful to people versus
just telling people it's spicy.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Had any angry calls from chefs or restaurant tours, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yes, I remember at the in the very beginning, I
did a thing about two tex mex restaurants from the
same family and one of them, the family had had
like a falling out over recipes and that kind of thing. So,
you know, one of them's sour cream sauce on the
enchiladas was very different from the other ones, more seasoned,
(17:56):
less season and the guy who ended up coming out
on the short end of it called me, Yeah, called
my personal cell number. I don't know how he got it,
but he called it, and he just kind of talked
through his feelings for about fifteen to twenty minutes. He
also talked through the Jack in the Box drive through
while he was on the phone, so he you know,
(18:16):
he was telling me like he was telling me, I
have to feed my kids, and you're, you know, you're
you're interfering with my ability to feed my children and
keep my family in a home. Hang on a second,
and then you started to place his order on the
drive through.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Because this is a relatively new show and podcast, I
do try to take some time to build a little
credibility for Tanner here on his expertise, and so you've
been very kind. You did the top fifty restaurants in
Dallas in d magazines and you made him number seven.
What do you think is right?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
But not allowed to send Brian things. He doesn't make
preservations under his own name, So that is something I
think d Magazine does differently than like the influencer world.
The influencer world runs on cash and freebies, and that's
not how actual food critical food journalism is run. And
I appreciate that you do that.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Eating it Rye is such an adventure and they have
such a good sense of humor about the kind of
dining that they're trying to do, where they're going to
gently coax people to try something new and they're going
to have some kind of wild invention coming out of
the kitchen, but they're going to do it with a smile,
and they're not going to It's not the fancy three
Michelin star. You know, you must pay three hundred and
(19:26):
fifty dollars and you must love everything the chef does
and then you can worship at his knees and kiss
the hem of his apron or whatever. It's just genuinely
a very good time with very clever and fun and
novel food that you can't find anywhere else in Dallas.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Well, thank you, Brian. I appreciate that when your editor
reads your piece and says this is good? How is
that to find?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
With all kinds of reviews. My north star is Roger
Ebert and his approach to movie reviews. And his approach was,
first of all, only judge the piece of art on
what it is trying to do. Its own goal is
not what you wish it was, not what you would
like it to be, but to judge it against itself.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
But what if you become friendly with the people alone it.
Do you think that affects you?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
I do, and I have to watch out for that.
I think now about it's nearly half the restaurants on
our top fifty list that if I walk in, someone
will say hello to me socially, and it may not
be the owner. Another thing that happens is that if
you work, if you build enough contacts with regular working people,
(20:36):
the bartenders, the waiters, because you're reporting on something that
another owner did that was no good and that then
they are becoming sources.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
To tell you about the sleezy chefs of the world.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
So if once you once I start having those connections
with both both the ownership class and the working class
of a restaurant, I do end up just wanting to
root for everybody and I have to kind of press
the brakes on that a little bit because I just
want everybody to be great and do great, and I'm
more likely to be a softy than to kind of
(21:11):
walk in and want to take a place down.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well, we appreciate that, Brian. I think food criticism is great.
So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Thank you guys, great to be here. It's a dream job.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Today on the show, we've been talking all about reviews,
food reviews, reviews that we've gotten. One story I did
want to mention we didn't get to before, was right
when we started ry we got several bad reviews because
we were trying to do something really different, and one
person in particular wrote this terrible review just about how
(21:43):
they hated this and they hated that, and I thought
I was on candid camera. I was looking for the cameras.
This restaurant so hipster it hurts, yeah, which was both
true and hurtful. And what did you do, Dad when
you saw that review?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
I made you a T shirt?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
You did? You made me a T shirt? And it
came it was the Rye logo right on the chest
and then underneath as if the slogan of our brand
so hipster it hurts. I still have that T shirt
hanging in the closet.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Do you wear it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
I've gotten a little larger horizontally since you gave me
that T shirt, So while I own it, I don't
wear it.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And there's a project for you to get back to
that T shirt. But what has happened is we've been
now doing this just long enough with flavor files on
the radio and online that we're starting to get our
own reviews. So we're going to respond to them. All right,
Can I read one that we received regarding well, it
was both of us, actually, but you had mentioned something
(22:41):
about cheap prosecco, and somebody wrote cheap prosecco Jerry, Well,
he accused both of us of hating Italians.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Right, I don't know what that even means. Oh, okay,
cheap prosecco is just a thing. It's just a thing
that you can buy. We didn't say prosecco is cheap
or if you are a cheap person, go buy prosecco.
Always said was, hey, you're making a cocktail. It's supposed
to be made with champagne, the French seventy five. I
don't make it that way, because champagne's expensive, go buy
(23:10):
some cheap prosecco and you can use that. I could
have said cheap cava out of Spain. I could have
said cheap wine out of France. I could have said
cheap wine. It's just cheap wine. Buy cheap wine. If
you want expensive wine, buy expensive wine.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
If I went on the air and said, you know
you can buy cheap bourbon, don't just mean a hate America.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
No Americans. Great, there's also cheap maple syrup.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
By the way, Well there you go. Uh, okay, what
have you received?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I've gotten one for us News Talk ten ten. It's
one of our radio partners and a producer there, Mark
put a bunch of these together for us. So thank
you Mark. And he found one and said, is news
Talk ten ten actually okay? With Jerry using airtime to
promote a side project with his kid.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Duh. It's on the radio station. It's on News Talk
ten ten at seven o'clock on Saturday nights. It's on
CLW in Windsor at two o'clock on Saturday afternoons. Yes,
they like us to promote the programs that are on
the radio station. I think they're happy we're doing something
where it had nothing to do with radio. They might say,
dial it back a bit, Jerry, But anyway, well but sure.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Also they sell the ads. We don't even get the
ad money. Of course they're happy with it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yes, so we have to find our own sponsors. This
episode of Flavor Files is brought to you by Thrifted
Tea Bags. Fast fashion tea companies would have you believe
that tea bags can only be used once, but that's
a lie perpetrated by big beverage. Thrifted Tea Bags are
literally saving the earth by giving a second life to
these leaves collected from coffee shops who are so hipster
(24:43):
it hurts co working spaces. But the good kind ladies
named Pearl in June and Hot Girl Yoga Studios, so
you're guaranteed to probably not get herpes ship directly to you.
In Mystery flavor packs, they come still wet for faster
brewing and cut customer's love the subtle, nuanced flavors. Yes,
it costs a little more money than first used tea,
(25:06):
but isn't the planet worth it? Thrifted Tea Bags. Every
steep deserves a sequel. It's not weak tea.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's re tea so hipster it hurts.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Here's a person who writes in though this is an
absolutely great show, I would love to have a conversation
with him to learn so much more by this. Him
doesn't mean me, means you because of your experience and
expertise and food and drinks, it I mean you.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I've got one here. I really enjoyed that. Unfortunately I
missed the first fifteen minutes due to the Leaf's game.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Well, hard to compete with that, I think.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Hard to compete with the Toronto Maple Leafs, However, in
my lifetime have exactly as many Stanley Cup wins as
the Maple Leafs.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
In your lifetime. That's right.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I'd like to address something that isn't so much a
review as a question I've received a few times, and
that is why do you spell flavor files with a pH? Well,
it comes from thought, or from the Greek word filos
to love something, to hold it dear. Biblio files are
people who love books. They love to read, they love
(26:09):
the feel of books. Audio files are people who love sound,
mostly listening to music and trying to improve the experience
of listening to music and so we're flavor Files. We
love flavor, we love food, we love drink. It's that simple, right.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Look, we're very new so so we very much appreciate
the reviews, by the way, and there are several ways
that you can do that. You can text. I'll give
you a phone number here. You can text four one
six eight seven, two ten ten and give us a
review wherever you're listening on the radio four one six
eight seven two ten ten or tanner. You can go
(26:49):
to our flavor files dot com website.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, you can go to the website. You can write them.
You know, maybe if you write something nice, we could
make a T shirt out of that. Right, we can
make some new flavor file swag and we'll put it
in the flavor File store and you could see your review.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and we will pay you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I can't wait for the reviews we get on this
that were capitalist pigs or something else. So here was
a review that made me laugh. It was listening to
flavor Files for the first time. Okay, so that isn't
a review. No, but thank you, I mean thank you
for listening. But that's not that isn't a review. There's
no feedback.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, at the point where that was sent in. I
think we had only done four or five episodes. So actually,
anytime you want to listen and you join us, then
we appreciate that very much. Now we do get people
writing in and saying Tanner that they appreciate your food
knowledge and sometimes you know your cocktail knowledge. I would
like to point out that statistically, you know, it's not
(27:45):
just Tanner who says he knows about food and he
knows about cocktails. The Michelin System and we did a
whole show on that has recognized Tanner for outstanding cocktails
for the entire state of Texas are consistently listed. Whenever
people like the reviewer we talked to earlier in this
(28:06):
show will put together lists of top restaurants in the
state or in the city of Dallas. You're consistently there.
And I point that out just a brag about you,
but to also point out if I were doing this,
it would just be me talking about food or drink
because I like it. But you're actually bringing some expertise
to this show.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Well, thank you. That was certainly the hope is that
I could bring semeths fertis. But according to let's see
Arlene here says that she's always been a Jerry fan,
so it sounds like she's only listening for you. It says,
Tanner's hilarious and fun as well as informed and interesting.
Thanks Arlene, but she's always been a Jerry fan.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Here's what I hope on something like that, because I've
been doing the show in Toronto. As we go into
the new year, I'll be seventeen years on the air
with that show, and so people in the environment from
Toronto have have an opportunity to to by now whether
they like me or they don't, and the people who
do are very kind and they stick around. And I
(29:05):
hope then that that extends people toward this show. But
they're not going to listen to it if all that
happened was me talking about food and drink, because they'd
very quickly figure out, well, you know what he's talking about.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We've done some segments called short Order Cooking where we
answer ten questions really quickly. Some of those questions come
from people we know who ask so you can definitely
hit us there. You can ask us those questions. We
want to be able to provide. I don't know does
this qualifies edutainment.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I don't know what it qualifies as as.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Long as they keep us on the radio, they can
qualify us as whatever they want, but we do always
appreciate that feedback. You can also give us a five
star review if you listen on Apple, Spotify, or iHeart
those podcasting apps that can help people find some help
more people find our show. There's also one last review
I wanted to read here because I definitely think it's true,
and you talked about how I provide that expertise, but
(29:54):
this review says Jerry, we love your wit and wicked
sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Well, thank you. Of course, if I was that quick,
i'd have thought of a joke right there, but I didn't.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Man, I should have You know what we should have done.
We should have had Mark give this to us, give
us these reviews sooner, and then we could have written punchlines.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
We could have gone somebody funny to write a punchline
for us.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Okay, it's been fun going through our reviews, but I
want to turn everything around now.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Tanner wants to take the opportunity to do something that
restaurant tours, bars, bartenders, chefs don't normally get to do.
Tanner's going to review some of the guests who come
to the restaurant for better or for worse. Who do
you want to start with, Tanner.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Let's start with people that change their allergies part way
through their meal. Really, absolutely, these are people who say, oh,
I don't eat gluten, I don't eat meat. They love
to say it that way, by the way, and so
these people come kind of precious mean, and then all
of a sudden, somehow a dish comes out that I
guess looks so amazing. You've been cured of Celiac's disease
(30:57):
by the pure appeal of the pasta. The number of
times I have seen people who can't eat something scarfing
down on that thing, it's a shocking amount. And any
of the restaurant people who listen to this show, I'm
sure have had that experience.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Okay, I want to say something here, and that is
that I think there really is. Anti gluten is a thing.
It's kind of like a hips kind of thing. But
people will see the act disease. That's a serious deal.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Whether it's a disease, whether it's a preference. It's my
job to cook something for you that you can like
and you can enjoy. I don't have a complaint. We've
got lots of gluten free options out on my restaurants.
We have lots of vegetarian options, we have vegan options.
It doesn't bother me. There are chefs who are very
anti vegan. I'm not that way. I'm just happy you're here.
But when you make me make allowances for you and
(31:48):
then I watch you lick the plate of someone else,
that's when you get a one star review out of me.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
All right, you have nowhere to put those reviews, but
at least in your mind you know what they are.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well. Actually, we have on our reservation software if you
do stuff like this, we write it so the next
time you make a reservation we can be like, hmmm,
fake vegan.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
You must also have notes of people you just love them?
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, of course, right, we have lots of notes, right,
if you're a person who loves these types of red wines,
or you love these whiskies. We of course have had
people who we would give five stars too. Those are
the regulars. Those are the people we love, but those
aren't as funny for a podcast. I will tell you
about one five star famous person. Obviously, we're both big
(32:32):
Lord of the Rings fans. I guess not obvious to
the listeners, but we're big time Lord of the Rings fans.
I used to live in New Zealand. Also, while I
was there, I was bartending and the guy who pays Pippin,
one of the Hobbits, Billy Boyd, came in to the bar.
Five star review from him, now partly because he's Pippin,
but also because he sat down at the bar like
(32:52):
a normal person, and he just asked me, I want
to drink some local wines. What do you recommend? And
so I talked him through, We did a wine tasting,
we just had a whole chat. At no point I
think he knows he knew who I knew who he was, right,
Because of course I was surprised, but I was professional.
I didn't address it, but I couldn't give in the
fact that I had just watched Pippin sit down at
(33:14):
my bar. He's so much taller in person. Also I
thought he was like four feet tall. Yeah, But so
he sits down, he's drinking wine, We're having a really
good time. And finally at the end, I was like, Hey,
I do want to let you know I love the
Lord of the Rings movies. They're fantastic. I've seen them
so many times. Actually, we've briefly mentioned it before, but
at one point Original Rye, my original restaurant, it did
(33:35):
burn down, and when I came home covered in tears
and got myself drunk. It was while I was watching
Lord of the Rings. So it's like my number one
comfort movie. And he told me a couple of really
funny stories about being on the set, and he was
just super nice. And then he said, you know, I'm
actually at Comic Con tomorrow. Do you want free tickets?
(33:56):
They give me these tickets, I have no one to
give them to. You're my only friend. Wow, But that's right,
I am your friend. Five star review love Billy Boyd.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
All right, But then at your restaurant you had somebody
pee on the manager. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Saint Patrick's Day is a really big holiday on Greenville Avenue.
Greenville Avenue is the street where my restaurants are. Every year,
the parade is on Greenville Avenue, and it's a bit
of a debaucherous situation. This can be frustrating if you
run a high end restaurant where people do eleven course
tasting menus. The juxtaposition of outside Saint Patrick's Day, College
(34:32):
student land and inside tasting menu restaurant is difficult and
our general manager, Amanda, she hates Saint Patrick's Day. She
complains about it every year. One hundred percent truy story.
She's taking trash out, which is no one's favorite thing. Anyway,
she pushes open the back door to go to the
little alley to take out trash, and there had been
(34:53):
a man. Man is generous. There's a legally man, Yeah,
peeing on our back door, not on the fence, not
into like the sewer grat, just peeing on the back door. Well,
what do you think happens when Amanda opens the front
door quickly because she's in a hurry. Yeah, Amanda trash
in one hand, pee on her legs because she generally
(35:15):
wears a dress or a skirt, so she just has
open legs, and he peed across her shins. Wow, I've
seen her mad. I've seen her mad at me before,
but I've never seen her that mad.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Did that guy survive the alley?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I've never seen him again.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Speaking of that, what do you do when you decide
you know, sir, you've had enough to drink?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
There are two types of people that get cut off.
If you ever get cut off at a bar, the
only thing you should do is to say, I understand,
and you should pay your tab and you should leave.
Maybe the next day you can think about maybe I
wasn't that drunk, or I wasn't this. But if you're drunk,
isn't up to you. You told me one time, you said,
if you have an alcohol problem, that's not up to you.
(35:55):
If anyone in your life tells you you have an
alcohol problem, you have an alcohol problem. And being overserved
is the same way if a bartender who makes money
based on serving you says, hey, man, I can't even
do this anymore. If they're telling you it's time to
go home, it's time to go home, you pay your tab,
you'd be respectful. But sometimes those people get really upset
(36:16):
and they don't want to go home, and those are
the people where really the best thing you can do
is try to appeal to the people that they're with
and hope that the people there with recognize the situation
and remove them from it. The worst, and this has
happened to me more than one time, is a drunk,
rude dad who's had to have his kids close out
the tab and usher him out of the bar while
(36:38):
they're apologizing the whole time. That is not a good look.
Also one star, one star.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
All right, Well, and speaking of that, didn't you have
a guy get disgusted with his own wife for her drinking.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
It was one year at New Year's Eve and she
clearly had too much to drink, and you know we
were It's New Year's Eve, but I think they had
shown up going a little hard, okay, and she got
so drunk that she went to the bathroom and threw up, which,
by the way, if you threw up at a restaurant,
it's not that big a deal, but do it in
(37:13):
the toilet. The number of people who have thrown up
in our trash can, on our floor or in the sink.
If you throw up in the toilet, it's not that
big a deal. You can flush the toilet, you know,
you take the toilet wand you scrub it. But when
you threw up in a sink, you understand someone has
to put gloves on and get the chunks out. There's
no edifying way to clean a sink of throw up.
(37:35):
But anyway, he gets so drunk that part way through
the meal, they haven't even finished dinner and the guy
literally looks at us and goes, I gotta take my
wife home. I gotta leave. And I think maybe he's
gonna be mad because he hasn't finished dinner, or he
thinks we overserved her, and he just looks at us
and goes. But this is one of the best New
Year's Eve's ever. I can't wait to come back here. Nice, fantastic, sir,
Thank you so much. Can't wait to see someone else
(37:57):
on your table. He gets five stars from me.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
But what about the people who come in and say
they know the owner.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, people love to say this, I know the owner
right because they think that's going to get them some
kind of hookup. I have been standing at the door
telling people we're full, you can't get in, we're sold
out tonight, and I have had people say to my face,
I know Tanner. Oh you know Tanner. Huh you know
the owner Tanner. Well, let me tell you I know
(38:22):
you know Tanner. So if you can do me a favorite.
Tanner takes the waitlist, he takes the reservations really seriously.
If you can call Tanner and he'll tell me to
make an exception, you let me know, Well, I will
call him. Okay, great, I'm gonna go do that right now.
All right, see in a few minutes. Look forward to that.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
You'd be shocked if your phone rang. And we have
to close this out with the lady on her boob job.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
There was a woman. She was a regular of our restaurant.
We see her a lot, and she got a boob job,
and good for her. But she shows up this one
day in this dress design to show it off. And
you know the adage, if you got it, flamm it. Well,
I think what that means metaphorically, like wear a dress
that sort of shows off your assets. But she was
(39:04):
talking all about it. She's sitting at the bar and
she said, you guys are gonna love it, and she
unzipped the front of her dress, bare chested everybody. And
by everybody, I don't mean a couple of us closing
the bar. I mean she's in a swivel chair and
she spun it around and she showed them to everyone.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And what did you do?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well? I wasn't there, but I did call her the
next day and say, hey, we got to talk about
this situation. Left her a voicemail and I said, I
think it's best if you don't come to the restaurant
until we have a chat. And I've never heard from
her ever again, except I heard that one day she
came to our brand new restaurant, asked if I was
there to the host, and the host said no, came
(39:45):
to the restaurant ate her tab bounced and said, tell
Tanner it was me.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Well, it's always an adventure and we appreciate you taking
this ride with us. This is Flavor Files. Hope to
talk to you next week.
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