Well, once or twice…

You’re on the mark about looking at the totals. If one out of every 150 people have a negative comment, I wouldn’t worry. If it were one in three, I might start looking into it. You know from this as well as all your restaurant experience that there is no pleasing some people no matter what. A surprisingly high number of people, as a matter of fact.

As to your own reviews, I’ve never found them to be mean, cutting or insulting. If service is slow or inattentive, that’s not an insult. If the food is bland or poorly cooked, that’s an observation I want to hear before I consider eating at that restaurant.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Oh god, I really didn’t want to get into the specifics of the negative critiques, that wasn’t the point, and no matter how I do it, it’s going to come off as being defensive… but hmmm… This is going to be as long as the original post.

First off, yes, I even acknowledged above that I’m guilty too of writing bad reviews – though, I hope that when I do so I make it clear that I’m writing about my personal experience. I try, and think I succeed, to not generalize and claim that everyone agrees with me or that I’ve heard similar criticisms (now and again I have put something of the latter, and probably need to be more careful about that, but I also usually identify those sources as opposed to leaving them anonymous). I’ve also been more and more just simply not writing a review at all if it’s really negative as opposed to picking out one or two negative things in an otherwise decent experience.

Second, yes, I suppose in a way, writing this post is a little pretentious – but then again, so is the simple act of writing a blog – it’s an assumption that what I have to say is important enough to share with the world. That may or may not be true – but unlike, say, a critique column in the local paper that people are confronted with when they buy it for other reasons, no one has to read my blog (I’m always a bit flummoxed when someone sends me an email saying they don’t like they way I write about things and I need to change – no, just go somewhere else and read someone else’s blog).

Okay, hmm… to get into the specifics or not? I debated about this internally before even writing the piece and decided not to, but I’d already done my research – so, I’m going to put it out there and then drop it (hopefully).

“A lot of people”… Who exactly? Again, less than 5% of our reviews are negative (on TripAdvisor), a whole 16 people, plus 18 who gave us average ratings (essentially another 5%). And 331 reviews on TripAdvisor are only a small percentage of the 10,000+ people who have dined at Casa SaltShaker over the last nine years.

Two people said I was pretentious. Two. Two others thought the whole experience was. Pretension, without wanting to get pedantic, implies that I or we are holding ourselves out as more important than we are. I guess that gets back to what I said about blog writing above – perhaps the mere fact that we exist is in that way a pretension. But then, that would be true of every restaurant and chef on the planet. We don’t claim to be a world-class or five-star place to eat, yet a couple of people criticized for not being so. That’s not pretension on our part, it’s unrealistic expectations on theirs – and I really don’t mean that sarcastically, it’s just clear they didn’t know what they were getting into before they came. (I had an emailed conversation with one person about me being pretentious and he said it was because I wore a chef’s jacket, and therefore that created the expectation of being served world class food. Really? The guy in your local diner wears a chef’s jacket too – they’re comfortable for working in the kitchen and are flame retardant. He said mine had my name embroidered on it. Yup, it does. It was a gift from a past customer who thought I should have one. But you see how silly some of this gets?)

More concerning, nine people said either I, Henry, or we, were unwelcoming. About half of those complained that I didn’t spend enough time at the table talking with them and “hosting” the dinner. Again, expectations – we make it clear upfront that I’m going to be in the kitchen cooking – still, I come out and talk about the food and wine as we serve each course, and after dessert is served pretty much stay out at the table chatting. On Henry’s part, he speaks limited English – and at least two people complained that he didn’t engage them in conversation and was only talking with other people, despite the fact that they spoke no Spanish – he was talking with the people who did speak Spanish. A couple of people didn’t like that we leave people to introduce themselves around at the beginning of the evening rather than facilitate introductions. That’s true – I mean, we don’t just point and say, “go over there”, we walk people into the living room. Bluntly, if you’re not sociable enough to introduce yourself at a dinner to the other guests, why are you coming to share a dinner table with other guests? I’m not going to hold your hand and take you around to each other person – first off, I’ve only just met you at the same time, second off, this isn’t kindergarten (yes, that was sarcasm). No wait, that’s not fair. Most kindergarten kids happily introduce themselves around and get right into playtime with each other, with no adult assistance.

Another nine (actually, it may have been the same nine) think we’re overpriced – one person even claimed we’re way more expensive than any of the other closed door restaurants. We’re actually pretty inexpensive by international standards, even at official exchange rates the 550 pesos you’re paying is roughly $65 for a five course home cooked meal and wines, and at the “blue rate” that drops to barely over $40. As to our compadres in the business, we’re more expensive than some, we’re less than others – a couple of places charge in US$, around 70, which is more than us, clearly, and one place that more than one person has cited to us (not directly on TA, but in other forums) charges the same as we do, but gives a six-course menu… except their price doesn’t include the wine, or any other beverages, or tip (which they ask for – we don’t).

Three people felt rushed – two of them at the end of the night, to leave, one of them during the pacing of the dinner. Pretty much all of our dinners take the same amount of time. A half hour for mingling at the beginning (if you’re late, you may feel rushed because everyone else has already spent 20 minutes mingling and are ready to sit and eat), roughly 2 to 2¼ hours for the five course meal, and then 30-45 minutes afterwards for coffee and chatting. People arrive around 8:45 and leave around 12-12:30, its rare that that deviates by more than a few minutes one way or the other. It’s, I suppose, subjective – some people want to linger longer (we don’t ask people to leave, and every now and again have had people stay until as late as 1 the morning).

A couple of people don’t like our apartment decor. What can I say?

A couple of people didn’t like their co-diners. Again… what can I say? In both those cases, interestingly, their co-diners didn’t like them. Go figure. (Interesting feedback to compare:

From March 17, 2012:

“Great job as always. This was the first time in my many dinners with you that I’ve seen two people truly not get along. I don’t think either of them could have ramped up their distaste for each other any more than they did trying to drown each other out. Not pleasant for the rest of us, but thankfully, I’ve been to enough dinners with you guys to know it was just chance. See you next time for more amusement.” – J.P. [noting the next two commenters]

“It was another great night with you guys and we were glad to get a chance to dine with you again on this short visit and short notice. So different the group this time around, the master of the universe type from New York [who wrote the next comment] who wouldn’t shut up about his fundraising schemes verged on the obnoxious, but you take what you get, at least we learned something about what “crowd funding” is. Now we never have to think about it again. 😉 See you next time we’re in BA.” – J.&D.

“It’s a crapshoot in terms of what you get, both with the meal and the company. There were a few interesting people who were unfortunately overwhelmed by the obnoxious millionaire from Chicago [who wrote the previous comment]. He told us all about his art, houses, redecoration and his jaunts playing polo at the various estancias…to the point I heard nothing else that night. This isn’t a fault of the establishment, but he really did make me not want to do another puerto cerrado. BA is filled with great food, and even good places aren’t always going to knock it out of the ballpark. I applaud the effort, but unfortunately this has attracted a lot of attention and so it’s really become a tourist haven. The meal was OK…I expected something a bit more experimental/different for the price; however, one of the servers [one of the servers? we don’t have servers, there’s me, and Henry] kept filling my wine, which makes me want to add another “dot.” – E.S. via TripAdvisor

And from November 19, 2010:

Two guests wrote up their experience on their blog….

Which seemed to contrast with the other guests’ experience (and ours):

My note: Memory is an interesting thing, this was a write-up 6 months after the dinner. I had to go back and look at, for example, their fellow guests, who were Argentine, Brazilian and Russian – out of twelve people at the dinner there wasn’t a single Australian and only the two of them and two other people from the U.S.; By the time they arrived everyone was deep in conversation, no awkwardness, and in fact the two of them stayed in the dining room, not even introducing themselves to the rest of the group until they sat down – they seemed so nervous we thought they were going to leave. But, so be it. Blogs express a very personal worldview that isn’t always in line with reality. One might also note the comment below from another guest:

“Absolutely delightful dinner. Enjoyed everything from the opening cocktail period right through to the coffee. The tagine, in particular, was a fascinating take on one of my favorite Moroccan dishes. The mix of guests from all over made it a truly special evening, despite the young couple that arrived late and proceeded to spend the evening expounding on how much they knew about food in comparison to the rest of us. Ahh, youth, we were probably all like that once.” – D.B.

Food and wine. The first is by far the biggest complaint – seventeen people who found the food not to their tastes – roughly half of those thought it was just average and the other half actively didn’t like one or more courses. Some of that may be their tastes, some of that may be a poorly cooked portion of something that we served, some of that, like the guy who complained that he got fried chicken “which is nothing special for Americans”, is just silly (he didn’t even get fried chicken, he got parmesan crusted chicken in a tomato, chili and olive sauce). One criticized a fish dish because it tasted fishy and seemed slimy – but failed to mention that she was a vegetarian who hadn’t told us she was a vegetarian until after her food was in front of her, and then nibbled at it and pushed it away – yet, having served her fish earned us a “poor” rating. Still, it’s something I pay close attention to and critiques of the food, whether in a negative overall review or in a positive one often lead to changes in a dish. It’s also one of the reasons we stopped, years ago, doing the “themed menus”, which often involved cooking things I wasn’t familiar enough with to do justice to them.

Wine is the weirdest one for me – yes, it’s all a matter of personal tastes as to what one likes or not. And my tastes in wine pairing are simply that, my tastes. But the claims on the part of a few of the eight people who complained about our wine choices that we serve cheap, low quality table wines are simply nonsense. Anyone can look at the wines we serve – they’re posted on our menus week after week – they’re all good or great quality wines, and they’re certainly not cheap. At the same time, again, looking at the pricing, it’s not like we’re charging an arm and a leg for them – we basically just break even on the wines at wholesale cost, not even retail. And those who complain that we don’t pour big enough pours, two things – first off, for a table of ten, we go through around eight bottles of wine per night, and second off, refills are free – and virtually every night someone will ask for a refill of one or another wine, and receive it, no questions asked.

Finally, there are just random things – the woman I mentioned in the post who complained about our stereo system. A guy who “proved his point” by noting that a) no one asked for seconds of any dish (who would at a restaurant of any sort, and especially in a multiple course tasting menu?), and b) that no one asked to see our cookbook to buy (we don’t have one, so even had someone asked, we couldn’t have shown or sold it to them). Hell, there’s even one negative review that goes on for about six paragraphs (like me, only fewer!) about some guy’s objection to the fact that I respond to negative reviews rather than let them stand by themselves – he says I might be influencing the readers of those negative reviews to make them seem less negative and that’s unacceptable!

Okay – I’m exhausted. Enough. For me anyway, topic closed.