Meredith Brody's Similes Are Puzzling, Entertaining
If there was ever a local reviewer that merits her own blog feature, it certainly has to be SF Weekly's Meredith Brody, and the always-excellent Le Blog de San Francisco pulls no punches in celebrating the, ahem, entertaining prose of Ms. Brody on a weekly basis. This week, Brody's review fires on all cylinders—e.g., "I crave lumbar support while I dine"—and LBdSF pulled up this line: "The brightly lit Caltrain station across the street looked like a piece of modern art, as sleek as a Calatrava, as I walked toward South on a damp, cold end-of-2007 night." Now, the Caltrain station has been called many a (four-letter) word, but to compare it to Calatrava, let alone art? Maybe she got mixed up because a lot of the letters are the same.
· Mercredi, c'est ravioli. [Le Blog de San Francisco]
· South Food & Wine Bar's Australian Food Overthought, Overwrought [SFW]
Kitchen Staff Crisis Blamed on Television, Hope
One of the more oft-discussed issues in the San Francisco restaurant industry is the skyrocketing costs associated with operating a restaurant. Rents will continue to soar, but an article by Tara Duggan in today's Chronicle argues that the real culprit killing "chef-owned high-quality neighborhood restaurants" is the shortage of quality employees willing to work for low pay:
Across the country, restaurant owners complain of staffing shortages. Many partly blame the newly glamorous role of chefs in the media, which has created a legion of chef-wannabes. But San Francisco's high cost of living, minimum wage laws and new sick leave and health insurance mandates mean that restaurants are being hit harder here than in other cities.
Because owners must pay servers the city-mandated minimum wage of $9.14 per hour, even though the wait staff also earns tips, line cooks' wages are effectively frozen at $10 to $15 an hour. Owners say there's simply not enough payroll to go around.
In other words, because servers need to get paid a (preposterous) nine bucks an hour, the kitchen staff's pay cannot go up. Unfortunately, since these young line cooks watch television (?), they have aspirations to achieve kitchen glory and since they live in the city, they can't afford to make chump change. The result? They move away, robbing the town and restaurant industry of young, talented chefs. Somehow, not everyone is agreeing with the line of reasoning here.
A scathing response to the article, after the jump! >>
