Okay, this is getting silly.

So, Stark. Why haven't you been blogging?

Well, Internet, I've been kind of busy. In the past few months I've been moving in to an apartment in Baltimore, in a neighborhood called Bolton Hill. If you're a Baltimore person, it's right next to MICA. This past weekend was Artscape, and thusly my neighborhood was flooded with hippies of all stripes and colors. Most memorable was the homeless dude who decided to do some late-night yoga in front of our fence. Better than peeing on it, I suppose.

I've also had the opportunity to go back to Centro Tapas Bar, a narrow place in Federal Hill with astoundingly reasonable prices and absolutely amazing food. The only problem with this place is that whenever I try to get there, I end up lost and in the ghetto. This time my epic travel fail involved screwing up the light rail system and ending up in Sandtown. THAT WAS AWESOME.

Stark, you may well ask, how the hell did you end up in Sandtown trying to get from Bolton Hill to Federal Hill? I HAVE NO IDEA. I AM REALLY BAD AT THIS SORT OF THING. IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

Anyway. By the time we got to the restaurant, it was still totally worth it. The tapas at this place range from 3 dollars to 12 dollars, most of them capping out at about 8 bucks. Whenever I go, I make sure to get a plate of cabrales, a delightfully stinky blue cheese, and some boquerones, pickled and marinated white anchovies. Fabulous. The bread that comes out as an appetizer is wonderfully crusty and flaky, and it comes with a pimento and smoked-paprika olive oil for dipping, which pairs beautifully with a glass of Dibon Brut Reserves sparkling wine.

We also ordered approximately seven buckets full of red sangria. We never got water, an oversight by a frantic waitress, and so I ended up drinking sangria every time I wanted something to cool my mouth off with. I regretted this the next morning, but man, that was some good sangria. With my dinner (mussles and lamb meatball skewers, shared with Mr. India) I ordered a glass of peppery viognier, which paired fabulously with the mussels. At the end of the meal, the Boyfriend ordered a little caramel custard. It was good on its own, but if you took a bite with a mint leaf and washed it down with a spicy ale, it became the Best Desert Ever.

I recommend this place highly, the wait staff is fun, the prices reasonable (dinner and extraordinary amounts of wine for myself and the boyfriend came out to just under 75 bucks), and the food is amazing beyond belief. I recommend the Arepa Mechada, a corn cake topped with oxtail, avocado and fried egg.

In other Drink With Stark adventures, I found a liquor store on North Charles called SPIRITS and I am in love. It is full of wine, cheap wine, cheap and delicious imported wine. I got a bottle of French sparkling rose (still not champagne) and a bottle of cava, both for under 13 dollars. JACKPOT. It's not a difficult walk from the house, either, though the streets may become a little harder to cross when they're not barricaded for Artscape.

Also distracting me from updating this blog is the fact that I am engaged in writing Rising Mind again. This version is significantly darker than the NaNo. I will probably post excerpts, because I can.

Jazz and wine and halloween

So it's intensely weird to eat at a restaurant where you wait tables. You see your boss and coworkers out of the corner of your eye and you're all "oh dammit I forgot to polish the big wine glasses aga... wait... wait..."

Even so, tasty stuff. I had a decent glass of red and a really excellent white burgundy. I don't know if it was really 12.50 a glass excellent... but it was certainly delicious. Very smokey. The jazz band was pretty awesome too.

Tonight I clean more for the party. The fun part will be dragging the table for beer pong into the basement in such nasty weather. Then I must acquire Red Cups and ping pong balls. At some point I am going to carve a pumpkin. I have a scene planned out of the Slender Man sneaking up on an unsuspecting person on his creepy legs. I'm going to need to find the right pumpkin for it.

I am somewhat disappointed in myself that I never made the pumpkin pie liqueur... it would have taken ages and breaking down pumpkins is so time consuming... so of course I'm going to do it in Friday to make my spicy pumpkin and sweet potato soup. Because what *else* would I do?

How To Suck Less

Today's episode of How To Suck Less involves nasty restaurant patrons. I have a lot of names for people who are rude to waiters and waitresses, many of them I will not repeat because my mother reads this blog and will already be vexed with me for saying "suck." I will settle for calling them Nasty People.

In the service industry you learn to pick up on which tables are going to be friendly and which are going to be nasty almost as soon as people walk through the door. Often you are pleasantly wrong: the woman had a sour face on because they had hit a squirrel on the way there; the man was looking grumpy because he bruised his shin on the car door. Or maybe they are just not chatty. These people will be brusque but not impolite. They just want their food and their drinks, please. No problem. These people Do Not Suck.

Nasty People are rude to wait staff, impatient with bussers, intensely particular about their food, and usually above the age of 50. OR they are creepy old men who want to touch the waitresses. Ew.

Everyone deserves a standard of service in a restaurant. Everyone who walks through the door will be treated professionally. This means a smiling waiter, getting the right food at the right temperature, and reasonably prompt service.

So here are the steps you can take to Suck Less and get better service in a restaurant.


1. Be patient with your server.
Look around you. Is the restaurant packed? If yes, then your waiter is probably slammed and will get to you as soon as you can. The phrase "When you get a chance... could you _____" will get you what you want MUCH faster than "I need _______." If you want it right away, show patience. If the restaurant is not packed but the waiter is still not showing up, it is acceptable to say "what was the hold up?" In the right tone of voice this is not a mean thing, and if the waiter knows that he or she was at fault, it could get you a discount.


2. The waiter has nothing to do with the food.
If you ordered a strip steak but got lamb? That is a waiter screw up, send it back. If you do not like the taste of what you ordered? Whatever, send it back, but don't blame the wait staff. We do not cook your food. We do not have anything to do with your food. We take the order and then translate it for a bunch of Hondurans and Frenchmen. It is not easy.


3. Don't lie about knowing the manager.
Personally I love it when this happens, because my boss will actually show up at the table and cheerfully embarrass you. Don't lie to us, we know when you're doing it.


4. Don't skeeve out on the waitresses.
Yes. Your waitress is flirting with you. It comes with the territory. Casually flirting with dads is how we make good tips. This is a business strategy, not a sign of actual interest. There is an old gentleman at my restaurant who we will call Phil, because that is his name, and he is a Class A Skeeveball. The last time I spoke with Phil he invited me to his timeshare in the Carribean, invited me for drinks, asked me to walk with him around the lake, and tried to convince me that my boyfriend lived too far away. When our 17-year-old bussgirl mentioned that she was Jewish to him, he immediately invited her out for drinks, and then said if she needed extra cash, she could come clean his house. If Phil is in the bar she will avoid it like the plague. None of the waitresses will make eye contact with him willingly. He also harrasses the jazz singer.

4a. If you are going to skeeve out on the waitresses, tip well.
Phil tips 15% max. If you're going to try to put your hands on the waitress, tip her at least 20%. It might make her reevaluate her previous desire to poison you.

LUCKILY the people who do not understand these four points make up the minority of restaurant patrons. In fact, the only person who breaks rule 4 on a regular basis is Phil. There are awesome people, and eventually I will post about How To Rock as a restaurant patron. This will probably not be right after work.

In better news, that languedoc BossMan gave me only got more delicious over a couple days. I'm drinking the last of it now, and the basil is really coming through. Also Boyfriend is coming over this weekend, along with Texas, who is my sisters boyfriend. This will be interesting since they are both conservative and my sister and I are very liberal. I imagine they will begin by comparing guns, which seems to be the butt-sniffing ritual of the modern conservative.

NASTY

On the list of Things That Are Nasty, I am adding Soda Fountains.

I had the fun task of cleaning the soda fountains at work today. Oh sweet science... the amount of black nasty-nast turned the stomach.  I think it's the first time that thing had been cleaned in a month. Holy shit.

That right there? THAT is why I prefer alcohol. It sterilizes what it is contained in! Of course, one of these days I'm going to have to clean out a beer tap, and that entire theory is going to go up in smoke... but beer is made of friendly delicious bacteria, right? So it's okay!

Also, crap. I left the bottle I was going to put my pumpkin pie infusion in at the restaurant. CURSE YOU CRUEL FATE! Oh well, I needed to buy the liquor for that anyway. Here is my current recipe plan.

750 ml vodka (kutskova again if I can find it. Smirnoff if I can't)
500 mg roasted pumpkin
Steep 3 weeks.
Add 1 vanilla bean
Half stick cinnamon
1 sealed teabag with pumpkin pie spice.
Steep  1 week

Open, taste, sweeten, and age until my halloween party. Give to plebian friends who will not appreciate my genius. Bastards. I'll remember to take pictures of this one, though, as well as the strawberry stuff I plan on opening and sweetening tomorrow. Hooray booze!