I grew up in the restaurant business, on the adage that August, to put it simply, sucked. Like, sucked, sucked.It is a compounding equation of factors that has led, pretty much, every single restaurant employee who’s ever picked up a dupe pad to adopt this mantra: the homestretch of a hot summer, and six-day work weeks, that start to take their toll on patience, knees and hangovers.
Midway through the month, all the college kids and Irish kids up and vanish like a waiter who farted at the computer stand, and suddenly managers are coming to you with “requests” that you cover lunch shifts—“just three or four, it would really help out a lot, you’re the best, thanks”—and maybe skip a day off this week.
And then there are the customers.
You see, in the back halls of all the restaurants you go to, August is seen as the month when the “annoying people” go out to dinner. In our bloodshot and greed-blurred eyes, these pastel-wearing warlocks always want lemon with their tap water, they expect their wine glass to be fuller, they want more bread, they plan on staying at their table for at least two hours—and maybe two and a half—they’re ALL allergic to gluten, and they can’t figure out why the bill is so high.
They tip the minimum 12 percent, to, as they see it, make up for the sticker shock of four apps, four entrées, five glasses of wine—cue accusatory look by wife of guy who had two—and coffee. To put it bluntly: They’re cheap.
Admittedly, it is a wholly unfair stance, conjured by frayed nerves and whittled patience, cemented by the habits of a scattered few. And it fits in just enough cases to be scripture in the South Fork restaurant business for decades.
But this summer, my first back in the white cloth world in three years, I’ve noticed that things don’t seem to be quite right—or, should I say, they seem to be quite right, indeed. I feel like it’s been building for the last several years: August is not the awful month it used to be. Across the board, I mean, but also in my section of tables. The frenzied, irrational, self-consumed crush of ego and conceit seemed to peak at the start of summer, rather than at the end.
First of all, gone are the summers when Memorial Day was a giant anticlimax dampened by cold winds and spring rains. Be it thanks to the mood of Mother Nature or coal mine owners, summer actually does start in late May now, and the stampede hits full tilt early in the race.
I have found, in the last few summers, that the traffic and crowds are heavier and angrier in the first two weeks of July than in August. It seems by the final month everything has settled in. Folks have figured out when to avoid which congestion-prone streets and back roads, when to sneak into Mary’s Marvelous or Goldberg’s without having to fight just to order, when it’s too late to get a parking spot on the quiet little road so you might as well just park in the big lot.
I chalk up all this front-loaded frenzy to social media. Everyone is in a race to post their fun-having, their consumption of the most expensive coffee and croissants, their participation in the coolest fitness fads, and their “relaxing,” even though that is clearly as forced, hurried and scheduled as all the other un-relaxing things they do before they plop down in my section looking for a pinot grigio, or vodka soda, in a stem glass, with a straw.
So then it’s August. They’ve done it. They’ve been to it. They’ve tried it and hashtagged it and tweeted it and Facebooked it and whatever else you do to it. And then—then they’re nice about it.
Seriously, last month, I had a parade of the most pleasant customers I’ve ever served in my 20-plus years in the restaurant business. Sure, some are more needy or high-maintenance than others. But they all seem to have gotten the memo about how to really make your waiter hate you and talk about you to other waiters—or write about you in a local newspaper column. I’m still flabbergasted by some of the things people find important, or worth complaining about, or demanding, but to each their own. If they aren’t outwardly condescending or rude in their projections of these values, it’s no soup on my tablecloth.
So, thank you, August people. You’ve changed.
As a whole, it’s been a good summer in the Hamptons restaurant business. It got off to a fiery start, literally, with World Pie in Bridgehampton burning and then rising in record time to be back on the horse by mid-July. There’s was some gossipy drama of the sort we all love to share lugubriously over double iced cappuccinos with four sugars before service—the break-up of David Loewenberg’s and Kirk Basnight’s Red|Bar Brasserie partnership, and the abrupt closing of Robert’s in Water Mill at the top of that list. The root of those: a partner who wanted to be “the man” and an owner who didn’t want to pay “the man” quite what he owed. C’est la vie, no?
There were a few new hits in the dining out lineup. The restaurant that replaced the Westlake Chowder House in Montauk, when Rob Devlin moved to Bostwick’s Chowder House, has found its footing and has some destination-worthy stuff to offer. Highway Restaurant & Bar in Wainscott has broken the locavore mold with a Euro-styled menu of far-flung ingredients and, somehow, become a celeb-spotting spot, probably on the back of its big-city money owner’s elbow-rubbing (unless it’s the killer chicken pot pie that draws Beyoncé?). And Momi Ramen in East Hampton seems to have finally broken the Asian food barrier—may the food gods bring us Vietnamese next.
The Station in East Quogue, Canal Cafe in Hampton Bays, The Plaza Café in Southampton, Almond in Bridgehampton, Cittanuova in East Hampton, and Westlake in Montauk continue to be my favorite night-off dining destinations, if you’ve been reading all this drivel, looking for a recommendation. The best pizza on Long Island is here, too—but I’m not telling you where, because the place is too damn crowded already.
If not, then I hope you weren’t too offended, and perhaps took away a lesson or some kudos that will make next August in the Hamptons even more pleasant.
I’ll have the salmon.
on Sep 1, 2015