SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING

[teatrolimon]

WE wll be haveing an a lacarte menu added to my already well apointed
chefs table menu

just a note i will not let people know what we will be haveing for
chefs tables as far as menu goes ( element of surprise)
i will not cater to vegeterians any further due to a dissapointing
reservation were it took me 6 hours to prepare a special menu for a
group only to come up with some lame excuse as to why they didnt
arive at all LOL!

we will be reopening on or about the 15th of august
we will be featuring lamb pheasant duck beef pork chicken white fish
salmon and other fish products as well as shell fish AND A WHOLE
BUNCH MORE EXOTIC ITEMS TO BE ANNOUNCED

we are adding a second kitchen to our already beautifull facility in
order to function with the alacarte menu and larger groups

please remember we are here to allow every budget to find some good
quality food with a lot of fun for the buck

we will be accepting credit cards with a minimum per person purchase
due to the high cost of haveing a credit card machine

we will be haveing classes and a cooking club which will be meeting
up weeekly
this is mainly for the locals in order to have a good time all while
celebrating great food and wine and increasing there social lives

ill be adding to this in the future


bruce

www.teatrolimon.com

[ronald]

Don't blame you about the vegetarian thing Bruce. I know you put the LOL after that line, but it's really not funny at all. Your new policy not only makes sense, but freshens up the room, since every study out there shows that vegans have a lot more flatulence (gas) than 'normal' humans because of all that fibre they eat. Last thing I want to do is have someone delicate aroma floating across the room at me while I'm eating pheasant (unless I'm under the glass as well).

It's one thing to make a reservation and not show up and quite another to actually order the food and then not show. Now that you have a CC machine, take a cc# on these special orders and bill them for your time and costs, good excuse or not.

[tojol57]

sounds great Bruce and Julia... can't wait to see the new (remodeled) place when we get down in November. I am going to try and see if we can get Lorrie's dad over there in his wheel chair or walker. I would really love to have my in-laws check out your place while we are there in november. We will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and Lorrie and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary....

as we get closer to the dates, i will be in touch with you...

Keep up the good work buddy...

Tom and Lorrie

[Tom1]

Please don't write off all vegetarians (or for that matter special requests) just because you were burned by one group. I've been dreaming of coming to your place if we ever find our way back to PV (it will take some time given other commitments and a lack of time and money), and we are all ovo-lacto vegetarians. Hope you will change your mind, at least make exceptions for some cyberfriends... Tom

[katnsocal]

Being in a "service based business that operates with reservations" means you have to expect a certain percentage of the people to be no shows, it just part of operating a business. If every business stopped offering something everytime someone did not show up there would be slim pickings in every business.

People are people everywhere in this world, some would never dream of making a reservation and not keeping it and others would never think twice about not showing up for a reservation.

[teatrolimon]

i understand what is to be expected but plainly im not a vegetarian friendy place i have made adjusdtments for people in the past but the last one was a bad deal
so if your vegetearian , prepay then ill accomadate and make a specialñ menu for you folks

key word prepay

bruce

[Tom1]

Bruce –

I understand you – you must be real annoyed/angry – spending hours preparing a special feast, spending money on it, and then having no shows (who further kept you from filling your seats with paying customers). In your place I would feel inclined to say the same thing – anyone making special requests should pay up first.

That said, when we ever make it back to PV we are unlikely to try your place out.

Myself, when I go to a splurge place, I really want to enjoy everything – everything perfect, the food, drinks and especially the atmosphere. And if I’m viewed as a potential cheater from the start, it destroys the atmosphere I’m looking for. (Speaking only for ourselves, we eat out pretty often and I have never not shown up at a restaurant where we reserved, without warning them in advance, and even then very rarely.) You also said that your place is really not designed to cater to vegetarians. You have a great fan club out there, but when we go out for great food, we are paying like every one else and we also expect that the same effort, imagination, skill, foresight… is used to prepare our food as is done for others. Far too often that isn't the case, and we leave disappointed never to return. You are doubtlessly a very skilled chef, but from your reaction - again understandable - I doubt that you would be willing to make the same effort for us as you do for others. So we’ll eat elsewhere, and hope to meet you anyway somewhere, maybe at the board meeting of one of the other boards out there…

Live long and prosper…

Tom

[teatrolimon]

tom i think you are over reacting a little bit

i have always put my best foot forward for every customer
im very sorry you wont be visiting me because of my stand on this issue
if youo feel in the future you would like to try our place send me a private message as how i can contact you by phone and ill phone you in advance and talk tou about a special meal
you can then decide if it is worth youor while to give us a try

one time 3 years ago there was a jewish guy asking if there is a place where he can bring his own cooking gear pots and pans into a restaraunt asnd have them used instead of what was being used for other guest
i picked up on this mans question as a religeous gesture and responded to the post

he , to this very day comes by and says hi with his family
once in a while i cook at his home
}
like i said tom
sorry but ive been burned once to many times to cater to special needs like these unles they are thouroughly planned out
by the way the guilty party sent me 21 email regarding his issues

then i dealt weith him

my final email was very short and to the point


" shame on you"


bruce

[Tom1]

Thanks, Bruce –

we may well get back in touch with you whenever we make it back to PV. I wasn’t kidding though that a trip back is not in the cards right now – with full-time work and limited vacation time, a wife from a large family living in Europe who wants to see them as much as possible, and a daughter adopted from Asia who we promised a trip to visit the town where she was born, both money and time for other trips will be very limited over the next couple of years…

For your enjoyment, I’ll try to remember to post here on Monday a link to an article on a top French chef that purposely abandoned his 2 or 3-star Michelin-rated restaurant to specialize on food based mostly on local vegetables – he still gets rated as among the best chefs in Paris. Unfortunately, that link is on my office computer…

Cheers. Tom

[teatrolimon]

tom im very familiar with the european scene
i worked at comchez soir 2 aprils ago and ended up cooking for the kindg and queen of belgium

bruce

[Tom1]

I can’t find the article I was looking for, but found the name of the chef and his restaurant (Alain Passard at the “L'Arpège” - apparently still rated 3-stars by Michelin, the highest they give and rarely). An article that treats the same topic, with the bottom half about Alain Passard, is below. Bruce - if you can cook us a vegetarian meal up to Passard's standards, we might find a way to come to PV earlier and more often! Tom

At Last, France Embraces the Vegetable
By KIM SEVERSON
Published: June 15, 2005, New York Times

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... wanted=all

I LANDED in Paris in the spring, anticipating deep communion with pork fat, duck liver and Normandy butter. I needed a break from the dietary guidelines, to eat in a city where cruciferous vegetables are a charming afterthought and croissants aren't whole-wheat. The only pyramid I wanted to see was at the Louvre.

The joke was on moi. France is in the middle of its own obesity crisis, and with it has come a decidedly French solution. The government has paired up with fruit and vegetable growers, organizing civic events like public vegetable tastings. Posters promoting fruit juice hang in Métro stops. One social marketing campaign seemed particularly familiar: 5 à 10 par jour -- that is, eat 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

And because France is France, chefs have taken to the vegetable bins with renewed vigor.

''France is in the grip of a fruit and vegetable kick,'' said Paule Caillat, a Parisian who makes a living teaching foreigners how to shop and cook from French markets. Raised in Paris and educated in San Francisco, Mrs. Caillat is loyal to Paris but understands Americans.

Despite the popularity of the book ''French Women Don't Get Fat'' by Mireille Guiliano, the chief executive officer of the Champagne-maker Clicquot, French women are getting fat. ''You know French women smoke, and when they quit they get fat,'' Mrs. Caillat said.

But it's not just the cigarettes. The French are eating more convenience food and walking less. In a decade, the number of obese children has doubled. Just over 40 percent of French citizens are overweight or obese, compared with about 64 percent in the United States. The French rate has grown by about 6 percent among adults and 17 percent among children each year.

Such figures, presented earlier this year to French lawmakers, have prompted proposals that sound strikingly similar to some being floated in the United States: regulating junk food advertising, banning vending machines in schools and requiring more exercise for children.
''Now that we've noticed our population getting heavier, our government immediately takes charge and tells us we all have to eat vegetables, so it is very trendy to cook with them,'' Mrs. Caillat said.

All of which helped explain why Mrs. Caillat, a reliable source for restaurant tips, said the best meal in town was at a mostly-vegetable restaurant temporarily installed in a French department store. I agreed to give up rillettes for a night and meet her.

That Alain Passard was behind the temporary restaurant offered some relief. In 2001, Mr. Passard declared he was devoting himself to the vegetable, and reworked the dishes at his Michelin three-star restaurant, L'Arpège. He still cooks with animal flesh -- ''You can't have three Michelin stars without the meats,'' Mrs. Caillat said -- but his menu centers on the vegetables grown on his Loire Valley farm.

Starting in May and ending earlier this month, many of his dishes could be had at a slice of the Arpège price. The catch was, you had to eat inside Le Printemps, one of Paris's biggest department stores.

The restaurant, playfully called Végétable, anchored a store promotion called ''Parenthèse Végétale.'' The cosmetics department featured natural face cleansers, and posters of grass brightened up swimwear displays. A little produce stand with bunches of tiny carrots and lettuces was set up in the housewares department.

The designer Matali Crasset, a Philippe Starck protégé whose furniture and other work has received several notable commissions, created a dining room in housewares. She bent rough-hewn willow branches into chair backs and table canopies, and put the waiters in SoHo-tight white T-shirts with lime accents.

While we waited for the parade of plates, we drank vegetable cocktails made from sweet mixes of beet and orange juices, and pineapple cut with rosemary. First was a warm soft egg yolk in the shell dressed in cold cream spiked with maple syrup.

Next was a big puff of creamy soufflé pricked with tiny mustard seeds, floated on a bowl of parsnips and celeriac. Croque-monsieur lost the ham and gained a filling that tasted like the peppery inside of a Vietnamese spring roll. Big pieces of basil dressed up a bowl of barely steamed peas and cold grapefruit chunks. Wispy onion strings, which had been marinated in salt and spread thin into a gratin dish, were subtle, crisp on top with just a tiny layer of creaminess underneath.

At the end, we drank sweet vanilla-scented hibiscus broth poured over quartered strawberries. We ate a galette of Fourme d'Ambert and pear, and a dish that married lemongrass crème anglaise and warm, nearly wet chocolate cake.

The cost? About $50 a person, a bargain compared with what Mr. Passard's food usually commands.

The restaurant may have been temporary, but my dinner guest assured me that France's latest dance with vegetables is not.

''We are not back to spa cuisine,'' Mrs. Caillat said. ''In general, this is about well-being. The French are exercising and taking massage, too.''

Alain Passard's temporary restaurant at Le Printemps has closed, but many of the dishes can be tasted at his Paris restaurant, L'Arpège, 84, rue de Varenne (011-33-1-47-05-09-06; alain-passard.com). For other events relating to France's promotion of fruit and vegetable consumption, there is aprifel.com/, a Web site in French.