A New Start

FT: Not So Dumb Waiter

Obtrusive waiting staff

By Nicholas Lander

Published: September 12 2009 02:47 | Last updated: September 12 2009 02:47

My heart began to sink as I listened to the waitress at Spruce in San Francisco go through a two-minute, slice-by-slice description of the charcuterie plate she had just set before me. My wife and I were there to catch up with an American friend we hadn’t seen for several years. Why, I wondered, couldn’t she just deliver the food and let us get on with our conversation?

The rest of the meal was punctuated by similar intrusions, to such an extent that, as we walked out on to the windy pavement after the meal, our guest felt he had to apologise.

Waiting staff in the US have always believed that they have to put on an act, because they know only too well that their tips depend on their performance. “But I do think that this habit has got worse since the recession,” our friend told us. “They are trying harder, to compensate for the fact that their customers may leave less than they used to.”

The practice may be at its worst in the US but it has, sadly, spread. The most ridiculous, invasive, over the top – and, therefore, unforgettable for all the wrong reasons – service we ever suffered was at an overly ambitious restaurant in a small village in the Lake District, in the north of England.

Yet, when I asked restaurateurs on both sides of the Atlantic to tell me what a waiter should say when delivering a plate of food they all say “as little as possible”. Unobtrusiveness is a positive attribute. As Gavin Rankin at Bellamy’s in Mayfair, says: “A waiter’s job is to answer questions not to pose them. They should never say ‘Bon appétit,’ or ‘Enjoy.’ And they should never ask if everything is alright, as we are going to find out soon enough anyway if it isn’t.”

Chris Corbin of the Wolseley in London and the Monkey Bar in New York elaborates on the principles he teaches his waiting staff. These include saying “Good morning,” or “Good evening,” before the initial greeting; and restricting the description of each main course as it is presented to just a couple of words – “the fillet steak”, for example. The waiter can then return to the table for the vital “check back”, which just requires the phrase: “Is there anything else I can get you?” This is a sensitive approach that minimises the need for further interruptions.

But if such successful restaurateurs have adopted this non-intrusive attitude, why are so many staff still so long-winded?

There are several reasons, the first of which is that few customers appreciate quite how “upfront and personal” waiting staff have to be. Few other professions bring complete strangers into such close physical proximity, and the verbal intimacy can be an extension of this. During a three-course meal, any waiter could come into close contact with a customer on 15 occasions, from the initial greeting to the processing of the bill and the goodbye.

Secondly, as chefs have expanded their culinary horizons, menus have become more intricate, and this increases the potential for waiters to be similarly expansive. In addition, many top restaurants now offer a tasting menu alongside the à la carte. These menus increase the number of times a waiter returns to your table, plus the aim of the multi-course tasting menu is for the kitchen to show what it is capable of, and the chef wants to communicate – via the waiter – the origins of every ingredient and the pleasure each will generate.

Louis Smeby, a highly experienced waiter at the Modern in New York, tells me how he deals with the differences between à la carte and tasting menus: “When I am delivering a dish from our à la carte menu, I usually mention the three main ingredients about 95 per cent of the time. The only reasons I may not are because of a strong language barrier or because I can see from the spreadsheets spread across the table that this is a business lunch and just finding space for the plates is a challenge.

“Multi-course tasting menus are different,” he adds. “Customers come to be dazzled and they present the waiting staff with the opportunity to present a more personalised service.”

In less professional hands, however, the practice of saying too much has spilled over into too many waiters’ automatic and, therefore, insincere vocabulary at every meal. But there are times when we, the customers, need to watch our own behaviour. Waiters respond to cues and when time-pressed diners eat in haste, too many forget to say even the occasional “thank you” when a dish is served.

As well as being rude, failing to say, “Thank you,” denies the waiter the opportunity to respond with the eminently appropriate, “My pleasure,” and to leave the customers to enjoy the meal.

nicholas lander@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/lander

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

FT: Entrepreneurship: The ice cream king of Poland

Entrepreneurship: The ice cream king of Poland

By Jan Cienski

Published: July 21 2009 23:23 | Last updated: July 21 2009 23:23

The biggest clouds hanging over Zbigniew Grycan’s fast-growing ice cream business are not the shadows cast by the world economic crisis, but by Poland’s grey and rainy summer.

The economic crisis has not halted his plans to have 80 ice cream cafés across the country by the end of the year, up from just over 70 currently. The business has been hurt by the recent fall in the value of the zloty, but the overall effects of the crisis have been generally positive by lowering the price of milk and other locally sourced raw materials, which had rocketed last year.

“I have the largest chain of ice cream parlours in the country, and I’m continuing to invest,” says Mr Grycan, a heavyset 68-year-old, sheltering from the sun under an umbrella outside his café on Chmielna Street in central Warsaw and sipping tea.

Mr Grycan, who became Poland’s ice cream king only to sell his kingdom to a private equity firm, and then start a new ice cream business, has bet on his compatriots’ sweet tooth in the past and has usually won.

Cream, egg yolks and sugar are in a sense in his blood – he is the third generation in a sweet-making family, which makes him a rarity in Poland. War, migration, border changes and 45 years of communism destroyed most Polish family-owned businesses and wiped out any inherited entrepreneurial traditions.

His parents operated an ice- cream shop in the western city of Wroclaw (at one point the city’s only ice cream parlour), which was taken over by the government for only a brief period at the height of Stalinist terror in the early 1950s. As a young man, Mr Grycan trained at one of the few decent hotels in the Polish capital, and in 1962 opened his own shop in western Poland. In 1979, he bought Zielona Budka (Green Cabin), a single ice cream shop in Warsaw.

“I’ve been an employer for 47 years,” he says proudly. His company currently has 750 employees.

Poles start to get a taste for cool desserts

Poland’s grey skies and cool weather have not turned the locals into ice cream fanatics.

The average Pole eats about 3.5 litres of ice cream a year, while Swedes eat about 13l and Americans shovel down about 23l annually (a statistic whose effects can be seen when comparing waistlines in America and Poland).

However, the Polish market is steadily growing – a decade ago Poles ate less than 2l each. Euromonitor, a research company, estimates that sales this year will be about 1.2bn zlotys ($400m, €280m, £240m).

The largest share of the market, with 35 per cent, belongs to Unilever, with its Algida brand, followed by 21 per cent for Koral, the largest local ice cream maker. In third place is Switzerland’s Nestlé, which has 8 per cent market share, according to MEMRB, a retail tracking company.

His first businesses were small – limited by the communist distaste for entrepreneurs and by the difficulty in getting raw materials such as sugar, which was often only available on ration cards.

That changed in 1989 when communism collapsed, and those few people with business experience and access to capital could rapidly expand their companies. By the mid-1990s, he had a factory in suburban Warsaw and his ice- cream was available across the country. Zielona Budka remains one of the best-known Polish brands of ice cream.

“I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life and I wasn’t afraid to risk my money,” he says.

But even a family background in commerce did not prepare Mr Grycan for dealing with the challenges of running a modern business in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.

His first problem came from Poland’s notoriously unpredictable tax authorities, who in 1997 alleged he had not paid VAT, and confiscated money from his accounts. Mr Grycan eventually won in court, but development of his business had been delayed.

A year later, he took Zielona Budka public and by 2001, Enterprise Investors, one of central Europe’s largest private-equity funds, had become a majority shareholder. Mr Grycan remained on the management team, but increasingly chafed at being part of a company he did not control.

The biggest friction came over the fund’s focus on the bottom line, a business model that earned profits through volume sales – but which he felt undercut the chain’s tradition of selling high-quality ice cream at low margins.

“I didn’t really agree with the way they were running things. The financial director would try to cut costs as much as possible,” he says. “I’ve always been concerned about having a good product.” Mr Grycan left the business after signing a three-year do-not-compete clause. Zielona Budka is now owned by Britain’s R&R ice cream company.

Instead of retiring quietly, Mr Grycan jumped back into the family business. His wife had retained an ice cream shop in Warsaw, so once the non-compete term was up in 2004, he set up Grycan – Lody od Pokole (Grycan – generations of ice cream).

“People warned me not to start this business because there was a lot of competition,” he says. “They said I was crazy to get back into the same business, but we did manage to find a space for ourselves in the market.”

The company does not reveal revenue and profit figures, although Mr Grycan says his company has just under 10 per cent of the Polish ice cream market worth about 1.2bn zlotys ($400m, €280m, £240m) annually. The business makes about half its income through sales at the Grycan parlours, and half through selling bulk ice cream in supermarkets. So far the company undertakes no advertising, relying instead on having a good presence in the new shopping malls that have sprung up in the country’s largest cities, and on Mr Grycan’s personal reputation as Poland’s ice cream magnate.

This time round, Mr Grycan is determined to retain much closer control with his eponymous company than when he owned Zielona Budka. Although he is conscious of costs, he devotes just as much effort to coming up with new flavours such as spice cake, poppy seed and melon, and keeping an eye on quality. “I have the final say in the company,” he says. “All the fruits we use are real. If the ice cream is mango, then we peel mangos in the factory.”

Asked if he might list the new company, Mr Grycan rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

He has abandoned most franchising, after finding that franchisees did not maintain the standards he wanted. Now his only franchisees are his 24-year-old twin daughters, Magdalena and Malgorzata. He charges them market rates, and hopes the experience of running their own operations will prepare them for taking over the whole business eventually. “I want them to know everything from the ground up. You can only learn by doing,” he says. Malgorzata, who is studying at the country’s leading business school, is his “right hand” in running the business with his wife.

Unlike many other successful Polish companies, he has no immediate plans for foreign expansion. Many other companies, particularly those involved in consumer goods such as food and clothing, undertook rapid foreign growth during the boom years and have had to retreat to their home markets.

Although the downturn has not stopped consumers slurping ice cream, it has affected the bottom line. Most rents in Polish malls are denominated in euros, as are costs for ingredients such as chocolate, coffee and exotic fruits, but earnings come in sharply depreciated zlotys.

“It has been very negative for me because I’m not an exporter,” says Mr Grycan.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

FT: Tokyo restaurants that exude hospitality

because the other restaurants display plastic versions of the dishes they offer, while Robata Honten shows off a tray of fresh vegetables by its door.

“I think that I am able to see the scales on the fish that other people cannot see and then just coat each piece in the appropriate amount of batter. After that, the trick is simply to count the seconds the fish should be cooked for.”

Like all artists, he makes it sound rather simple.

===

Tokyo restaurants that exude hospitality

By Nicholas Lander

Published: April 11 2009 01:42 | Last updated: April 11 2009 01:42

Dining at Robata Honten or at Mikawa in Tokyo is an unforgettable experience. Both are presided over by men in their 60s, one a restaurateur, the other a chef. Both exude old-world Japanese hospitality. Both inhabit buildings at least 60 years old. And both, as in so many of Tokyo’s restaurants, only take cash.

Robata Honten is on a narrow road full of restaurants but it stands out because the building is lower than its neighbours (a clue to its age) and because the other restaurants display plastic versions of the dishes they offer, while Robata Honten shows off a tray of fresh vegetables by its door.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Food & Drink - Nov-24

It is the vegetables, plus the bottle of wine in the window, that makes me stop and peer through its sliding door. I am intrigued by what I see. The whole interior seems to be made up of dark, well-worn wood. A man in formal Japanese attire stands in front of a strikingly tall woman in a dark kimono.

Takao Inoue, the well-dressed man, is running a restaurant that had previously been owned by his grandfather and father. He says that all the paintings, as well as the ceramic plates and bowls on which the food is served, were made by friends.

All the food is served from the ground floor, where a chef sits in front of his robata or grill. There are about 25 dishes of food from which you make your selection before sitting at the counter, where your food is brought to you.

When I ask Inoue about the food, he describes it as “Japanese family style but not too traditional”. There are vibrant salads of mizuna, asparagus, sardines and plums; trays of fresh fish such as herring, octopus, wakasagi (similar to smelt) and yellowfish with daikon; finally, there is a string of hot dishes, including pork belly with hard-boiled eggs and star anise and a wonderfully thick stew of oysters stuffed with enoki and shimeji mushrooms. Dinner ends with excellent green tea and, most unusually, some sweetmeats.

There are more delights at Mikawa, where Tetsuya Saotome has cooked for the past 33 years next to his nabe, or tempura pot. “I have cooked for about 50,000 guests in that time,” he explains. “So that means, with about 10 different pieces per person, about half a million pieces of tempura in total.”

Saotome stands in front of a chopping board, with a bowl containing the flour and egg and his nabe. Alongside are pairs of long-handled bamboo and metal chopsticks that, with a strainer, form his batterie de cuisine. Just below are large tins of sesame and salad oils. As cooking techniques go, it could not be more minimalist. Over the next couple of hours, Saotome produces tempura of the head of the shrimp; squid; various local Japanese fish; conger eel; asparagus; and, best of all, a single plump shiitake mushroom. The final two dishes are a bowl of miso soup with clams, and a bowl of rice topped with tiny scallops, the latter cooked in a tempura batter that is so good that I finish it with immense regret.

Like Inoue, Saotome has a continued passion for his particular culinary art. “I’m not frying,” he says, “but baking in oil and my role when the fish is in the pot is to calculate the right combination of air, water and batter.

“I think that I am able to see the scales on the fish that other people cannot see and then just coat each piece in the appropriate amount of batter. After that, the trick is simply to count the seconds the fish should be cooked for.”

Like all artists, he makes it sound rather simple.

nicholas.lander@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/lander

.................................

Details
Robata Honten, 1-3-8 Yuraku-Cho, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, tel: +81 03-3591 1905. Approx Y5,000 (£35/$50) per person
Mikawa, 3-4-7 Nihonbashi-Kayabacho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, tel: +81 03-3664 9843. Approx Y15,000 per person

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

NY Times: Alcohol and Animals and People

==

This wasn’t an unfair supposition to make on her behalf: A large variety of creatures consume alcohol in the wild, ranging from bumble-bees to elephants. Hooch finds its way into their diets via the fermenting fruit, sap and nectar of various plants, and many exhibit signs of inebriation after they’ve enjoyed a good feed. Their weakness for the substance au naturel is understandable: ethanol is a rich food, with 75 percent more calories than refined sugar, and its distinctive aroma makes it easy to locate. This natural thirst has been exploited by man since the dawn of history. Aristotle noted that wild monkeys were caught by setting out jars of palm wine — the creatures would drink, then pass out, leaving them easy prey. The same method of trapping was still in use in the 19th century and commented on by Darwin in the opening chapter of “The Descent of Man,” when drawing similarities between humanity and the rest of creation. Monkeys could get drunk like men. They also got hangovers: “On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons.”

Interestingly, a few species of mammals including the slow loris and the pentailed treeshrew (with which we share a common ancestor) not only have a predilection for alcohol but also a natural tolerance. When the latter species find an especially rich batch of fermented palm nectar in their native Malaysian rainforests, they’ll visit it several times each night and consume the equivalent, in human terms, of nine standard drinks, without any evident deterioration in their behavior. Perhaps we drank deep before we were fully human?

Pigs, however, don’t come across much alcohol in the wild. But what about the tame variety? The propensity of a variety of domesticated animals to drink is well documented. Clearly, it’s cruel to force alcohol on them — tantamount to poisoning them: Mad Jack Mytton killed one of his horses when he made it bumper a bottle of port after it had won a race. However, some, including dogs, goats, cows, and pigs, develop a taste for it on their own. Aristotle noted that Greek swine became inebriated “when they were filled with the husks of pressed grapes.” A similar phenomena was common in colonial-era New England, where cider production and consumption, in per capita terms, were colossal, and where hogs were fed on windfalls and pomace (the pulp from the bottom of the cider press) both of which ferment. Their subsequent inebriation was often a matter of comment, and may have been the inspiration for the term “hog-whimpering drunk.”

= = =

FT: Prescription for pleasure

Prescription for pleasure

By Clive Cookson

Published: January 3 2009 02:00 | Last updated: January 3 2009 02:00

Biomedical scientists tend to have a rather puritanical, self-righteous feeling that they should study diseases and problems rather than pleasure and happiness. But the mood is beginning to change as more scientists investigate the good things in life. In Sex, Drugs & Chocolate , Paul Martin distils this recent research with some ancient philosophy into a very readable form.

The book explores the tangled relationships between desire, pleasure and happiness - and addiction, pain and boredom. Pleasure is supposed to entice us to behave in ways that are biologically beneficial, such as having sex and eating healthy food, while pain is supposed to discourage us from doing ourselves harm.

Martin, a Cambridge behavioural biologist turned science writer, likes the theory developed over the past 20 years by Michel Cabanac of Laval University, Quebec: that pleasure is a measuring stick for the brain to assess alternative activities. When choosing, say, between eating, staying warm or avoiding danger, we unconsciously weigh the options in terms of how much pleasure or displeasure each would produce. Pleasure must be inherently transient and self-limiting; survival depends on stopping any activity when our current needs have been satisfied and then switching to something else. Unfortunately pain and displeasure are not self-limiting in the same way; they persist for as long as the problem or threat that gives rise to them.

The ephemeral nature of pleasure means that people who rely on it to seek happiness are doomed eventually to fail. Because present pleasures will inevitably fade, the determined hedonist is forced to keep increasing the dosage or switch to new ones.

To illustrate the perils of the "hedonic treadmill", Sex, Drugs & Chocolate tells the sad stories of seven determined sensation-seekers, from Restoration libertine Lord Rochester to rock star Janis Joplin. All consumed prodigious amounts of drink and drugs, and had hundreds of sexual partners. Most died young, though Aleister Crowley, reviled by the early 20th-century press as The Beast and "the wickedest man in the world", lived to the age of 72 - "not bad for someone who had been shovelling drugs into his body for half a century," as Martin observes. Their main motivation, he says, was to escape boredom, for which they had an exceptionally low tolerance.

These cautionary tales also underline the distinction between pleasure, which is about liking and enjoying things, and desire, which is about wanting them. Pleasure and desire often go hand-in-hand, but they can also pull us in different directions. While nicotine, junk food, gambling and pornography may provide fleeting moments of pleasure, their biggest effect is to leave us wanting more. Addiction is desire that goes too far.

The experience of the seven sensation-seekers shows that you can bathe yourself in pleasurable sensations and yet still be deeply unhappy. For Martin, happiness has three strands that complement each other. One is feeling positive emotions such as joy, excitement and affection. The second strand is the absence of pain or unpleasant emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger, guilt or shame. The third strand he calls "satisfaction" - a judgment that you are content with your life in general and with specific aspects such as relationships and career.

Evolutionary biology has not predisposed us to live our lives in ways that automatically maximise our happiness. So Martin recommends a strategy of "little but often": seeking out and enjoying a regular succession of moderately pleasurable experiences, rather than chasing after the ecstatic but infrequent big bang.

The book concludes with his eclectic personal menu of "Modest Pleasures" for a happy life. These include sex and chocolate, of course, as well as leisurely lunches, gardening, sitting in silence, fishing, walking, music, trusting others, napping and dreaming. Strangely, though, he does not list the pleasure of reading a good book - such as Sex, Drugs & Chocolate .

Clive Cookson is the FT's science editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

ST: Sweet Pairing of Wine and Manga

Sweet pairing of wine and manga

Just how did a Japanese comic hero become the most influential voice in Asia's wine markets?

		Wine-lover Yuko Kibayashi created The Drops Of The Gods with her brother Shin.

Tokyo - Sipping a 2001 Bordeaux from Chateau Mont Perat, a bead of sweat trickling down his left cheek, Shizuku Kanzaki is suddenly overwhelmed with images of a turntable, guitars and Freddie Mercury.

'It is powerful,' he says of the wine, 'but it also has a meltingly sweet taste, with an acidic aftertaste that catches you by surprise. It is like the voice of Queen's lead vocalist, sweet and husky, enveloped in thick guitar riffs and heavy drums.'

Since coming out of nowhere four years ago, this 20-something Japanese would-be sommelier has quickly become the most influential voice in Asia's wine markets.

In Tokyo, wine sellers monitor his weekly pronouncements before adjusting their stocks accordingly.

In newer markets such as Taiwan and urban China, his recommendations are turning the newly affluent into wine converts. And in Seoul, South Koreans now talk about 'terroir' and how a bottle 'marries' with a particular dish without blinking.

Never mind that Kanzaki is a comic- book figure, the hero of a manga series, The Drops Of The Gods, created and written by a Japanese sister-and-brother team. Asian readers who have never heard of Mr Robert M. Parker Jr. (leading American wine critic) scrutinise the comic hero's every sip, learning about wine in words and images that may seem strange to traditionalists.

View all thumbnail	Photo 2 of 3	« Prev   Next »
The cover (pictured) of a Chinese edition of The Drops Of The Gods and a page from a Japanese edition. « Prev   Next »

The series has evoked images as disparate as the painting The Angelus by Jean- Francois Millet (to explain a wine's richness) and a marsh north of Tokyo (to describe a difficult yet rewarding vintage).

'These are images that emerged from wines that we actually drank,' said Yuko Kibayashi, 49, who created the series with her brother, Shin, 46. 'It is like a game.'

The Kibayashis, who write under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi, came up with the series while collaborating on another comic more than four years ago. During their work sessions, their spirits ran high as the wine flowed.

'We found ourselves looking for the drama behind the wines we were drinking,' Shin said. 'It started with one wine, 'This wine is definitely a woman.' '

His sister said: 'Right, with black hair.'

At Shin's Tokyo home, the siblings said they have long been wine lovers - so much so that they rent an apartment just to stock their 3,000-bottle collection and pay for an earthquake-warning system to protect it.

Neither has any professional wine-tasting credentials, they say they are interested not in using the sommelier's jargon but in describing wine from the average drinker's perspective.

Indeed, their manga series follows Kanzaki as he learns about wine, allowing the reader to do the same. At the start of the series, he rebelled against his father, a famous wine critic, by refusing to drink wine and working instead for a brewery.

Suddenly, though, his father dies and leaves in his will a description of 12 wines he considers the world's best, comparing them to the disciples of Jesus.

Pitted against his adopted brother, who happens to be a sommelier, he must catch up in his knowledge so he can find the 12 wines mentioned in the will and inherit his father's vast cellar.

The comic - which appears every Thursday in Japan in a magazine titled Weekly Morning and has been compiled into 17 books so far - rapidly became a hit in East Asia, where people are still learning to drink wine.

The manga will also be adapted into a television drama likely to star Korean star Bae Yong Joon.

The wines featured are selected by the Kibayashis, who say they have no sponsor. They do, however, accept free bottles from wine importers, though 'our stance is that we will not necessarily feature them'.

In general, French wines have received the most attention in the series. The Kibayashis are unabashed Francophiles who say they do not feel American wines have the depth of those from the Old World.

'I do not feel the terroir,' Shin said.

His sister said: 'They are too simple. Wines are like human beings. The first time you meet, instead of being all smiles and wanting to become friends right away, there has to be some formality, some conversation, before gradually becoming close. When you open an American bottle, it is all big smiles.'

It may be fortunate for Americans that there are no plans for an English translation of The Drops Of The Gods.

For France, though, whose share of the Japanese wine market had been falling in recent years, the series has been an unexpected blessing.

A French translation of the first book was published in France in April and, thanks to strong sales, was followed rapidly by the next four titles in the series.

There is no word yet, though, on whether French readers think 2001 Chateau Mont Perat tastes like Freddie Mercury.

NYT

Chinese editions of The Drops Of The Gods are available at Books Kinokuniya. Prices vary from issue to issue.

Martin observes that being Miss Manners requires constant vigilance because people keep finding new ways to be rude. Our constant use of mobile phones leaves her "astonished that so many people appear to be on parole and how strict their parole is," a reference to the banality and frequency of calls home to say "I'm on the train."

Mobile phone excesses aside, however, Martin believes that if you take a broad historical perspective, people are more courteous today. "People are always encouraging me to say, 'Manners have just gone to pieces,' which of course is ridiculous. They forget that the idea of respect only applied to certain people in certain situations.

"There were huge numbers of people - women, blacks, gays - who were treated with disrespect. Even in courtrooms [blacks and women] were addressed by their first name when everybody else was addressed by their last name. [Today] in Washington, where we follow politics because it's the local sport, politicians self-destruct when they fail to realise they can no longer make an ethnic joke or a slur about women."

It worries her that our business and social lives increasingly overlap. "Everything becomes a matter of business; you go to cocktail parties, you go out to (business) dinners - you have no private life because you have a 'fake' private life. It's extremely sad because then you are completely at the mercy of where you are in business."

When Martin was covering embassies for the Post, she was "bombarded and flattered" by invitations. She complained to her husband that if she lost her job the next day, few of these people would invite her.

Martin's husband replied, "If he [the ambassador] lost his job tomorrow, you wouldn't go." The conversation prompted an epiphany: "We decided that the only people who would cross our threshold in our private life would be people we liked or thought we might like."

On the spur of the moment, I had considered asking Martin to dinner but then balked because I thought she might regard it as overly familiar. Propriety had won out over spontaneity. When I tell her, she says, "Oh, I would've loved that!" Is this evidence that etiquette is often a straitjacket?

Martin laughs. "Well, you could have given me the choice and I could have perfectly politely said 'I'm so exhausted' but it sounds like fun."

 "Expressing anger doesn't usually change people's behaviour. It just makes them rude back. You double the amount of rudeness in the world." Her advice is more practical than prissy. "I have no magic formula (but) if you start screaming and yelling they write you off as someone who would never be pleased anyway."

As we wait, I say that I find the courtesy that Americans routinely extend to foreigners, junior employees and staff in restaurants makes the US seem one of the politest places in the world. 

"The English think we're failed English people - that we don't quite get it right, but that's not the case," she says. "The founding fathers of America very deliberately felt that manners in European court society with strict demarcations were not for us. De Toqueville points out that the chief thing about the servant-master relationship in America is that both know that their positions could be reversed tomorrow."

Indeed, I tell Martin that when I was paying for newspapers at a hotel in New Mexico a few weeks earlier, the bellboy saw me looking for change and flipped me a quarter.

"The bellboy tipped you! I love it," she says, laughing out loud.

==

Polite society

By Rahul Jacob

Published: August 30 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 30 2008 03:00

In No Vulgar Hotel, her celebration of Venice published last year, Judith Martin tells a story about an impatient Venetian matron who, during carnival time, finds a policewoman stopping people from crossing one of the city's bridges. The matron is angry; she is not a tourist, she lives in the neighbourhood, she must be allowed through. The policewoman responds good-naturedly but still the matron keeps up her tirade. When the crowds are allowed to cross, the policewoman hands her a ticket. "What for?" the matron explodes. "Mal educato (being badly brought up)," the policewoman replies.

It is tempting to see the policewoman as an alter ego of Martin, who is better known in the US by her pseudonym Miss Manners. Her column on etiquette is published in about 250 newspapers across America and on MSN.com and her books, such as Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, make her a somewhat intimidating companion to invite for tea.

We get off to a rather unsettling start. I had picked the restaurant at the top of the National Portrait Gallery in London, primarily because it is close to her hotel on the Strand and has pretty views of the roof-tops of Trafalgar Square. Later that afternoon Martin is giving a talk on Venice so we arrange to meet at 2.30pm. But when we arrive, the waitress tells us the restaurant cannot serve tea till 3pm. Happily, she means no sandwiches or scones till then, but we can order something to drink.

As we sit down, I can't help noticing that there are paper napkins on the table. A discomfiting recollection of Miss Manners' disapproval of paper napkins flashes through my mind. ("Dear Miss Manners, why can't I use paper napkins at a dinner party? They look alright. They do the job. It's more practical to throw them away instead of cleaning them." Her reply? "Gentle Reader: identical claims were made for paper undergarments. How come you don't wear them?")

Now 69, Martin has a bouffant of white hair and her eyebrows are almost always arched in amusement. Not only does she have a Wildean gift for biting humour, she looks rather like a character in a revival of an Oscar Wilde play. She appears to me a - more egalitarian - Lady Bracknell for our times. We talk about Venice, where Martin, a native of Washington DC, has lived on and off in recent years. She sees the city as ravishingly beautiful, of course, but also as a comedy of manners in which the residents make sporadic efforts to limit the tourist invasion. Martin tells me of suggestions to fence off St Mark's Square and to charge tourists for entering the square and describes another recently enacted regulation that prohibits the feeding of pigeons. "They really don't see the difference between tourists and pigeons. There are too many about."

When they are in Venice, Martin and her husband, Robert, a molecular biologist, rent a place, rather than a hotel room, for the very Miss Manners reason that they feel they cannot really get to know Venetians unless they are able to entertain them at home. "We go every time of the year except summer because they don't share our belief in air-conditioning," says Martin. "I love going in winter."

As Martin prefers a light tea, I suggest Darjeeling. When it arrives and we have waited for it to steep a while longer, I pour her a cup. "That's what I call tea," she enthuses, "and not what they gave me at breakfast at the hotel." The restaurant has put tea bags in the pot, and I grumble peevishly about how rare it is in London to be served leaf tea. I sound like a tedious coffee snob, but Martin is amused. The waitress takes an order for a selection of sandwiches.

It is three decades since Martin became the arbiter of American manners in columns that first appeared in The Washington Post. Her interest in the subject began as a child. Her father, an economist for the US government, worked on and off for the UN, which meant that her family lived overseas frequently. She recalls how, as a 12-year-old girl, she and her brother were taken around the Egyptian Museum in Cairo by their parents. They chanced upon the translation of a 4,000-year-old letter from a father to his son. "It was a Polonius-type letter. We started to laugh because . . . we could see he knew he had a young scamp on his hands and had to tell him how to behave."

Martin worked at The Washington Post for about three decades, starting in 1958 initially doing clerical jobs. Later, her reporting duties included covering embassy parties and social events at the White House. Well before Watergate brought the Post and the Nixon White House to loggerheads, Martin's coverage of Julie Nixon's wedding to David Eisenhower in 1968 irritated that excessively controlling administration. The Nixon White House gave journalists credentials to attend the reception but then cordoned them off in a room far from the party, asking them to make do with briefings from a staff member and write the story as if they had been at the party. Instead, Martin slipped by the security with the bridesmaids. A few years later, the Post was asked by the White House not to assign Martin to cover Tricia Nixon's wedding. The Post's executive editor at the time, Ben Bradlee, refused and the paper declined to cover the event.

Her column on etiquette started as a sideline in 1978 while she was covering theatre and film for the paper. Soon the letters were flowing in and today Martin continues to answer readers' queries on subjects that extend far beyond table settings and the use of fish forks to how manners in America's South were influenced by African customs, to dealing with "extortionate" gift registries.

Martin observes that being Miss Manners requires constant vigilance because people keep finding new ways to be rude. Our constant use of mobile phones leaves her "astonished that so many people appear to be on parole and how strict their parole is," a reference to the banality and frequency of calls home to say "I'm on the train."

Mobile phone excesses aside, however, Martin believes that if you take a broad historical perspective, people are more courteous today. "People are always encouraging me to say, 'Manners have just gone to pieces,' which of course is ridiculous. They forget that the idea of respect only applied to certain people in certain situations.

"There were huge numbers of people - women, blacks, gays - who were treated with disrespect. Even in courtrooms [blacks and women] were addressed by their first name when everybody else was addressed by their last name. [Today] in Washington, where we follow politics because it's the local sport, politicians self-destruct when they fail to realise they can no longer make an ethnic joke or a slur about women."

It worries her that our business and social lives increasingly overlap. "Everything becomes a matter of business; you go to cocktail parties, you go out to (business) dinners - you have no private life because you have a 'fake' private life. It's extremely sad because then you are completely at the mercy of where you are in business."

When Martin was covering embassies for the Post, she was "bombarded and flattered" by invitations. She complained to her husband that if she lost her job the next day, few of these people would invite her.

Martin's husband replied, "If he [the ambassador] lost his job tomorrow, you wouldn't go." The conversation prompted an epiphany: "We decided that the only people who would cross our threshold in our private life would be people we liked or thought we might like."

This allows me to ask her about a similar dilemma. We had intended to meet the previous evening for a drink but Martin was delayed at the airport and in traffic and we were forced to cancel the plan. As it happened, I had two friends coming to dinner who had worked in Washington DC and enjoyed her writing almost as much as I did. On the spur of the moment, I had considered asking Martin to dinner but then balked because I thought she might regard it as overly familiar. Propriety had won out over spontaneity. When I tell her, she says, "Oh, I would've loved that!" Is this evidence that etiquette is often a straitjacket?

Martin laughs. "Well, you could have given me the choice and I could have perfectly politely said 'I'm so exhausted' but it sounds like fun."

Given Martin's experience at the airport the evening before, I am hoping for a papal dispensation on the subject of complaining forcefully at least at Heathrow. She will have none of it: "Expressing anger doesn't usually change people's behaviour. It just makes them rude back. You double the amount of rudeness in the world." Her advice is more practical than prissy. "I have no magic formula (but) if you start screaming and yelling they write you off as someone who would never be pleased anyway."

Martin's next engagement is across town so I ask her if she needs to leave. She suggests we get the bill and talk more as we walk back towards her hotel. As we wait, I say that I find the courtesy that Americans routinely extend to foreigners, junior employees and staff in restaurants makes the US seem one of the politest places in the world. This strikes a chord with Martin who has written a book, Star-Spangled Manners, on the subject. Like Wilde, who remarked that the English are more interested in American barbarism than in American civilisation, she feels her countrymen are wronged on this score.

"The English think we're failed English people - that we don't quite get it right, but that's not the case," she says. "The founding fathers of America very deliberately felt that manners in European court society with strict demarcations were not for us. De Toqueville points out that the chief thing about the servant-master relationship in America is that both know that their positions could be reversed tomorrow."

Indeed, I tell Martin that when I was paying for newspapers at a hotel in New Mexico a few weeks earlier, the bellboy saw me looking for change and flipped me a quarter.

"The bellboy tipped you! I love it," she says, laughing out loud. Not for the first time that afternoon, I regret not having asked her to dinner. She would have been the life of the party.

'No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice' by Judith Martin (with Eric Denker) is published by WW Norton and out in paperback, available through the FT Bookshop at £7.99 (RRP £9.99) not including p&p, tel: 0870 429 5884; www.ft.com/bookshop

Rahul Jacob is the FT's travel, food and drink editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Anton Ego

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/quotes

Anton Ego:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy.

We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.

Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.

In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France.

I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

FT: Starbucks goes skinny as froth withers

Starbucks goes skinny as froth withers

By Jonathan Birchall in New York

Published: July 2 2008 20:05 | Last updated: July 2 2008 20:05

As US consumer demand started to falter last summer, Starbucks was opening new company-owned stores in the US at the rate of three a day.

But on Tuesday the world’s largest coffee retailer decisively put its foot on the brake, with Peter Bocian, chief financial officer, bidding farewell to the era of growth that has made Starbucks’ green and white sign a symbol of urban America.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Starbucks to close 600 US stores - Jul-02

Kuwait business takes Starbucks to Russia - Jun-11

Starbucks curtails its musical ambitions - Apr-25

Starbucks blames slowing economy for fall in sales - Apr-24

Starbucks in drive to improve ‘experience’ - Mar-19

Starbucks plans revamp amid falling US sales - Jan-30

“We believe with the stores we have today, and incrementally [adding] a couple of hundred more per year, we will have the right answer for Starbucks in the United States,” he said.

In its coming 2009 fiscal year, which starts in October, it plans to open fewer than 200 new US company-operated locations, down from this year’s reduced target of 650, and the more than 1,000 US company-operated stores that opened in both 2006 and 2007.

Starbucks also plans to close 600 stores, many of them less than two years old, leaving a network of more than 6,600 company-run stores in the US, as well as more than 4,000 licensed outlets in locations such as airports, bookstores and supermarkets.

Mr Bocian argued the decision to close stores and slow growth reflected more than the current economic climate, following a detailed review of local market factors by the company’s real estate team.

“We believe absolutely that we’re seeing a major impact from the economy,” he told investors and analysts. But, he added, the decision to close the 600 stores had been taken because of other factors too. “We didn’t believe it was all economy”.

Those factors include proximity to other stores – reflecting Starbucks original readiness to allow new openings to cannibalise about 30 per cent of the traffic at existing stores as a way of reducing lines and improving customer service.

This aspect of the cutbacks in planned growth mirrors similar decisions by two very different but equally ubiquitous US retailers – Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, the home improvement chain.

Over the past year the two largest US retailers have slowed new store expansion plans and capital investment, with Home Depot saying in May it would close 15 of its underperforming superstores. Like Starbucks, both Wal-Mart and Home Depot are approaching saturation coverage of the available markets, with new stores taking some customer traffic away from existing outlets.

But at the same time, the slowdown in demand is manifesting itself in a string of store closures and trimmed expansion plans from retailers that are more clearly linked to economic conditions.

JC Penney, the mainstream department store, said last week, for instance, that it was planning to open 20, rather than 50 stores in 2009, and was halving capital spending plans.

Other retailers have also announced the closure of underperforming stores, including Ann Taylor, Liz Claiborne and Talbots, the women’s fashion retailers and Zales, the jewellers.

Richard Hastings, consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities, noted that the current inflationary environment, combined with slowing demand, was making capital expenditure reductions increasingly attractive to retailers. Cutting store costs and expenditure on new stores were “the most logical next steps in this story once you saw demand begin to decline in the summer of 2007”.

Starbucks says it is not actively expecting any further closures, but will be closely monitoring the performance of its remaining US store portfolio. Its international expansion plans also remain unchanged, with a further 950 new licensed and company-owned stores opening this year, including its first store in Argentina.

It also argues that its store development team will be more effective, under a new president of global development, Arthur Rubenfeld, a veteran of its 1990s expansion, who recently rejoined the company.

Mr Bocian also said Starbucks would be looking at further cost-cutting measures under Howard Schultz, its chief executive, that are aimed at restoring the reputation of the brand battered by its expansion.

“We understand we are in a tough economic environment and have to innovate and invest but also work on things we can control.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT; Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola

Published: July 1 2008 09:33 | Last updated: July 1 2008 19:31

Muhtar Kent should not take it personally. On his first day behind the desk as Coca-Cola’s new chief executive, shares in the drinks group sank to their lowest point in just over a year. Much like a new president inheriting a disastrous legacy, however, that trough ought to play to Mr Kent’s advantage. Not because he can blame his predecessor – he enjoys a good relationship with Neville Isdell, who remains as chairman. And the transition has been smooth, exceptionally so by Coke’s standards.

Rather, Mr Kent inherits a group that has recovered well but now faces headwinds largely beyond his control. In the US, structural decline in sales of carbonated soft drinks has been reinforced by an economic slowdown forcing Americans to trade down to cheaper brands and eat out less often. Meanwhile, investors are nervous about the impact of rising prices on consumers in faster-growing emerging markets, their concerns heightened by gloomy outlooks from some of Coke’s bottling partners.

Such pessimism, with Coke’s stock now trading at a lower multiple of earnings than during its meltdown of 2004, ignores Coke’s defensive qualities – and the role Mr Kent can play. Only a fifth of Coke’s operating profit is derived from North America, considerably less than for arch-rival PepsiCo. While Coke does not enjoy Pepsi’s exposure to snacks, the flip side is less pain from rising crop costs. Similarly, the warnings from Coke’s bottlers have more to do with their exposure to plastic and aluminium costs than slumping sales.

Mr Kent’s background in bottling provides the first chance to make his mark. Low-margin bottlers are in the business of picking up pennies. Applying that mindset more rigorously to Coke’s marketing-led model should yield efficiencies.

Longer-term, Mr Kent’s strategic challenge is like that faced by Microsoft – what to do when you sell the soft drink equivalent of Windows in a mature market? Fortunately, Coke’s strong balance sheet and free cash flow provide the necessary tools. In the meantime, streamlining the existing operation should give investors a short-term rush.