The Crows Nest

THE CROWS NEST

I know nothing about the food service business.  Nonetheless, or perhaps for that very reason, I opened a restaurant, The Crows Nest, a while back right across the street from our motel.  I had a maitre d’ and my own bartender and everything.  I had a lot of live music and as a result the place was quite a draw some nights.  Still, I tapped the locals as waitresses and waiters and these folks, capable enough in familiar surroundings, were hard pressed to conduct themselves in ways that fit the notion of service to which some of our elite visitors were accustomed.  Now you take the matter of wine selection and related details.  I'd put together a reasonable wine list with the help of the distributor’s customer service people but I lacked follow through.  One day, when the place was absolutely packed, one of our home grown young (“you go girl”) women, particularly harried, just done with a long day stuffing bait bags, found herself waitressing the dinner shift on open mike night. At table eleven was seated a cosmopolitan young couple who’d come over from the motel and had already determined that the only way to ensure solicitous service was to make a fairly big and demanding noise and sustain it at a good shrill pace.  Circumstances on this night were clearly going to require an elevated level of such demands since it was so crowded and was staffed by so many indigenous people of such limited capabilities.  Shirley asked them if they had made a drink selection and they responded with an interrogation sufficient to establish her everlasting inadequacy.  The stage set, they asked to speak to the wine steward in person.  Shirley reported back to the bartender. 
 
Scooter had The Bartender’s Guide attached to the wall with duct tape above the opening in the little bar through which he could view the completely packed dining room.  In way over his head and not in an agreeable frame of mind, he stormed across the dining room after Shirley relayed their request, gathering his wits about him only as he neared his destination. 
 
“Can I help you folks?” he inquired.
 
“Only if you’ve experienced, like, civilization at some point in your - uh, like, life”  the young diner snickered as if to emphasize the wild abandon he employed in painting ‘life’ with such a broad stroke.
 
“Let me try” replied Scooter.  “Our house wine this evening is a lovely Chilean Chablis, deep but not too demanding” he began, “kind of the opposite of you.” 
 
Over the cries of, “Hey Scooter how about another pitcher of Bud and some more wings” the sparring continued, eventually subsiding as the ruffled young man selected a Sauvignon to go with their lobster.  By this time the room had quieted as more and more diners, a lot of them islanders, tuned in to the entertaining exchange. 
 
For years Scooter had admired the technique employed by wine stewards in nice restaurants as they casually made a classy little corkscrew appear from nowhere, effortlessly opened a bottle of wine tableside and poured a little for the lead diner to sample.  But Scooter only had one of those big corkscrews they sell at the IGA with the two handles that come up like wings.  The restaurant had only been open a few days and he’d been carrying the gizmo around in his jeans pocket in anticipation of the opportunity to employ it at his own first tableside ceremony.  Scooter liked to think he still cut a pretty classy figure and the first thing he poured in his new bartending job was himself into his old 505 Straight Cut Levi’s instead of the 550 Comfort Fit jeans Ruthie had recently begun buying for him.  The dining room was always full of admiring women.  How was he to know that they were looking at the impression of the corkscrew in his pocket?  
 
The first occasion he’d had to open a bottle tableside was for six elementary teachers, notorious for going out once a month or so without their husbands, blowing off a little steam and engaging a few crude indulgences.  In Scooter, as he struggled to pull the enormous corkscrew from his Levi’s, they found their mark.  He got it out but not before he’d occasioned a wince or two as a few pushes were required to disentangle the point from the fabric deep in his pocket.  Maneuvering himself into a position whereby he could open the bottle he scooched down a little, stuck the bottle between his legs, inserted the corkscrew, wound it in and then employed both hands to bring down the handles.  When he pulled out the cork the bottle sought the most natural escape from the grip of his thighs, slipped between his legs and fell to the floor.  As it happens it landed upright but so grateful were the ladies for the ribald amusement they’d extracted from him that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d spilled it all over them.
 
Scooter had since taken to practicing at home and wasn’t about to attempt any more tableside service until he’d perfected his technique so he opened the New York Cabernet Sauvignon for number eleven back at the bar and gave it to Shirley to take to the table.  When she arrived with it, the young gentleman gave her a withering look of disdain and said “This wine is supposed to be opened at the table.  Having been opened at the bar, it has breathed far too long and has now lost much of the subtle nuance we might have expected from it.”
 
“No shit” said Shirley as she put the bottle to her lips, inverted it completely and took a big healthy swig.  Wiping a little dribble from the corner of her mouth and modestly dispensing with a tiny pocket of gas she pronounced “Hell, this is finest kind, hasn’t lost any of its nuisance at all.  Now you folks drink up and enjoy your lobster ‘cause the ferry don’t leave till mornin’.”