GatewayRedbirds.com

Freed Roger wrote:the Wood Shack in Soulard makes some good sandwiches

Thanks for posting this. I had been meaning to try them and this prompted me to order from there today. I forget what it is called but the BBQ shrimp po' boy is now one of my favorite sandwiches in town.

Fozzies is falling completely out of the rotation after the lousy sandwich i had today.

lukethedrifter wrote:Fozzies is falling completely out of the rotation after the lousy sandwich i had today.

I went once when it first opened. I should've given it another chance especially cause I lived right around the corner at the time, but I don't think I ever went back after that.

Edit - apparently I went twice according to the Legend Club thread.

Writer names a dive bar best burger in the country, kills it.

Interesting story of the time we live in.

https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/life-an ... burge.html

BottenFieldofDreams wrote:Writer names a dive bar best burger in the country, kills it.

Interesting story of the time we live in.

https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/life-an ... burge.html

What a horrible story. To hell with the listmakers of the internet, including the ones who rationalize their list-making through a bunch of piousness. They'r the scourge of the restaurant industry. Especially that awful Eater that has no local paid reviewers who go out to eat and is nothing more than some people sitting in an office, aggregating press releases to create lists of what's "hot" or "essential" or a place you need to go "right now" for clickbait.

Foodies--both the writers of clickbait BS and the overenthusiastic Instagram crowd--just don't understand that these restaurants are people's livelihood. You screw with a place on the internet and you ruin this guy's livelihood. I'm sure haltz and anyone else here who's worked in this world has seen stuff like this a bunch of times as well as stuff like...

Guests show up 30 minutes late for a 6-top at 7:30 on a Saturday night. That's 6 seats X 30 minutes = 3 hours of empty seats in the restaurant at peak time. Give away the table and the 6-top gets upset. So the restaurant eats 3 hours of empty seats and loses $50-75 depending on their RevPASH. Those people screw with the restaurant owner's livelihood and have no qualms about feeling entitled over something like losing their table, a far bigger loss than they cause.

Two guests come into the bar, there are 4 consecutive chairs open. They sit at the two in the middle on a Friday night, leaving one empty on either side. Bartender asks "May I ask that you take these two (indicates two on the left) or these two (indicates two on the right) so that the next couple like you who comes in has space?" The guests say something like "Oh, we will move if someone needs us to." So then people come into the bar, look and don't see two consecutive open seats, and go elsewhere. Or it's a restaurant bar, and two people who walk in who could eat at the bar stand around waiting for a table. Or leave. These folks also are screwing with the livelihood of the restaurant owner, someone with a six-figures plus investment of her or his own money, because they don't want to have to actually, heaven forbid, sit next to someone in a public setting.

This guy is no different. He didn't set out to travel the country and write about, say, the hamburger culture of different cities. Or to write stories about people who have made a livelihood out of selling hamburgers. Or to try to define what makes a great hamburger restaurant so universal. He set out to make a list. And say, in a matter of taste, that something was objectively "best." His need is to pronounce something best, something else second-best, some other things in the top 10, whatever else. By his own admission, from his Thrillist piece, he was blind to the fact that his experience in that place was elevated by the environment, by the surly old locals, by the casual family atmosphere. There's not much journalistic integrity there, when you're so goddamn blind to everything that makes a restaurant great because all you care about is your stupid list that gets clicks and makes your bosses happy at the place you work that specializes in lists.

33anda3rd wrote:Or it's a restaurant bar, and two people who walk in who could eat at the bar stand around waiting for a table. Or leave. These folks also are screwing with the livelihood of the restaurant owner, someone with a six-figures plus investment of her or his own money, because they don't want to have to actually, heaven forbid, sit next to someone in a public setting.

I get your point about people waiting for a table instead of eating at the bar but I HATE eating at the bar itself if that's the only option. If the place isn't busy, I'm getting a table. Tables in the bar area are fine, but I'm not eating at the bar proper unless I absolutely have to. I'll go somewhere else if I can before eating at the bar. To be clear, I don't get a table if the place is clearly busy though, then I'll suck it up and eat at the bar.

Normally when I dine out I'm on my way home from work, I'm by myself and I have a backpack with my laptop and such in it. It is a pain to deal with at the actual bar. At least at a small table (and I don't mind being tucked in a corner at the least desirable table) I can easily put my bag under my feet to keep it out of everybody's way or put it in the other chair still pushed under the table (not hanging off of the back and getting in people's way while they're trying to work). At a bar stool, it isn't as easy since my feet don't touch the ground and many times there is a foot rail that just makes it difficult to keep everything under control and once again, I don't want to put it on the back of the chair where it gets in people's way.

Then there is the raised lip on the bar most of the time. A small one is OK but some are just really annoying when I'm trying to eat something like pasta or a soup. I pass through The Hill every evening on my way home from work. I eat a LOT of pasta. If the lip is large then I find myself leaning way over it to try and keep any dripping or splattering to a minimum. It is just a pain and not always comfortable. Heck, I don't mind being next to people. I'd sit at a community table. I just can't stand eating at the actual bar.

I love eating at the bar as does my wife and I’m aware of the spacing issue but it feels a bit like the urinal paradox.

tlombard wrote:

33anda3rd wrote:Or it's a restaurant bar, and two people who walk in who could eat at the bar stand around waiting for a table. Or leave. These folks also are screwing with the livelihood of the restaurant owner, someone with a six-figures plus investment of her or his own money, because they don't want to have to actually, heaven forbid, sit next to someone in a public setting.

I get your point about people waiting for a table instead of eating at the bar but I HATE eating at the bar itself if that's the only option. If the place isn't busy, I'm getting a table. Tables in the bar area are fine, but I'm not eating at the bar proper unless I absolutely have to. I'll go somewhere else if I can before eating at the bar. To be clear, I don't get a table if the place is clearly busy though, then I'll suck it up and eat at the bar.

Totally get what you're saying. I'm talking about the people who want to eat at the bar, or as a walk-in are happy to grab a seat there and eat when a table is not available. They're the ones who check in at the host stand, host says sorry there's a 1.5 hour wait for tables, but you're welcome to eat at the bar if there are seats open, then the guests eye the bar and only see a couple solo seats available and are not comfortable asking people to slide over, so they leave. The seats end up making no money while they're empty, and that really hurts a business when those are seats that could be full.

From a restaurant perspective we look at something called RevPASH--revenue per available seat hour. If we have, just for round numbers, 100 seats and we are open 6 hours (5:30-11:30) on a Friday night, then we have 600 seat hours in which to make our livelihood.
If we do $12,000 in sales we did $20 per seat hour. A seat is worth $20/hour.
If we do $9,000 in sales we did $15 per seat hour. A seat is worth $15/hour.
If two seats at the bar sit empty for 45 minutes each, in the former scenario we lost $60, in the latter it's $45. A six-top in which two of the party is a half-hour late on a Friday night, in which the restaurant holds the table for them to run that late, in the first scenario loses $60. That doesn't sound like a lot, but in a business where margins are razor-thin (a good neighborhood restaurant hopes to operate on a 3-5% profit margin) those things add up significantly.

I'm an eat-at-the-bar guy. I often get better service because the bartender is somewhat captive behind the bar and in front of me during my meal. Especially if I'm sitting in front of one of the stations where the bartender is making drinks. We also generally end up chatting with people next to us, which is nice. It's great also if I'm solo and want to grab a bite to eat and just stare at my phone or the television.

But what about the urinal paradox?



With 4 seats open the deuce sitting at the bar is gonna think I’m a weirdo if i sit next to them and it feels a bit odd to take the seat right up against the wall or facing a column or in the server’s way. Guess i need to overcome that thing.

lukethedrifter wrote:But what about the urinal paradox?

I guess the big diff is that when you're sitting on a barstool your manhood is fully contained by your pants, and you're not in the act of doing a fairly private deed. Unless you are at some weird sex bar thing.

If the bar has ten seats, and the occupied ones are Xs, and it's ----XX---- when you come in and you sit down making it ----XXXX--, that's weird. If it's XXXX----XX and you make it XXXXXX--XX it's not weird, IMO. You're doing the bartender and the owner a solid. If the person at seat 6 is like "hey, buddy, why you gotta sit next to me?" I suppose you could tell him "So I leave two seats open so things are not awkward for the next couple who come in." I don't think that guest has any right to feel entitled to a buffer zone, personally.

I'd add to the scenario of entering a bar that's ----XX----, there are a few moves not to make:
-XX-XX---- (they now have two solo holes)
----XX-XX- (same, just go XX--XX---- or ----XX--XX)

The bar is kind of a different animal from table seating. If we go into a restaurant and there's a host and the host seats us at a table, how often do we say "No, I don't like this table."? Not very often. I will in one very specific instance. It's winter, and the table is near the door, and there are a lot of other tables free. Though usually I'll tell the host, since I have a wife prone to being cold and I anticipate her being uncomfortable near the door, that we'd appreciate something away from the door when we walk in, if they have it available. How often do we get seated at a table that's close to another occupied table, and the person at that table says "move somewhere else, I don't want you so close"? Never, but a guest at the bar might feel a sense of entitlement or prudence in asking you not to sit close to them at the bar. It's weird, because it's public space. Going out and sitting at a bar means, unless you're in a really crappy bar/restaurant, that you're likely to have people sitting next to you. If someone wants to drink with a big buffer zone of space and be miserable, they can drink at home it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

By sitting next to people at the bar, too, there's that thing of talking to people. You're often going to interact. Last weekend my wife and I sat at the bar in a neighborhood gastropub near our home, next to another couple. We know the bartender, they know the bartender, they live 3 blocks from us, but we've never met and we end up chatting and having a nice time. That, to me, is a big function of sitting at the bar. It's communal, neighborly, a little more lively than table dining, a chance to engage more with the bartender and the people around you.