Ray's the Pitchforks

Moral of this story: Don't mess with a girl from Kansas City who knows her steak and has an amateur hobby as a food writer.

I've toyed with outrage on my blog, and I'd like to say I've dropped some serious money as a solo diner at some restaurants. I've ordered my three courses, endured obnoxious waiters, entertained their mildly uninformed conversation hinting at the freakishness of a solo diner, and suffered through painfully executed orders of multiple courses. But I'd like to state that I've never been so affronted as a diner--and a vocal diner expressing a restaurant's shortcomings to its managers--as this evening at a widely respected restaurant, Ray's the Steaks in Arlington.

I will pontificate and then I'll formalize my criticism, for those who might be interested in my self-important tirade. On a more fiscally responsible note, never should a diner spend over $50 on dinner and have a "manager" in an Old Navy sundress lecture a diner (me) on how my table arrived late and ruined two sets of reservations for subsequent tables. Plus I ordered jiggly bone marrow on my steak. May your Old Navy credit card (with its $350 credit limit) spontaneously combust, oh poorly responsive customer service professional.

So, for pontification. Serving steak is a sacrosanct responsibility. Like Mormonism is our country's original religion, steak is our national food pastime. Burgers are its crude derivative. Chicken pot pie can be served in a can. But serving an American steak is something you should have a license for and you should be deported to somewhere like Antarctica (where you can't possibly mess up a steak's preparation) if you foul it up. Furthermore, steak is like tiered cakes: they are served at special occasions and their administration shouldn't be trifled with. This evening was my friend Mike's going-away dinner. I didn't play this card with Ms. Eggplant-colored sack-dress wearer, but I should have, if I could have put a coherent word in edgewise.

So, I say to those who want to fully commodify the selling of steaks: be warned. More formally, you have an audience celebrating something special (tonight, Mike's departure) and you can't rush the degustation of a steak. Even though you, wait service staff, are all under 25 and want to make out with each other as soon as the last table is gone. And I can say this because I worked at a steak restaurant that sold $5 filet mignons. And even at Santa Fe Cattle Company steakhouse in Oklahoma, with diners who had no teeth and left "generous" $1.50 tips and drank sweet tea, our kind management let them enjoy their moment of fame eating beef cuts with no bones in it.

So, (for the third didactical paragraph beginning with so), don't rush my and my friends' steak-eating, because this is America, ok? And far from the friendly folk who raised that cow that became your steak anyway. Go buy a sundress that fits.

So what happened, besides some egregious sporting of sundress? We arrived at Ray's the Steaks, a fine restaurant in Arlington, to the ambivalent looks of three girls who must have had a rough day in wood shop at the local high school. As Mike and I sauntered up (you will note that the noun and pronoun pairing suggests that there were two of us), these devlishly clever girls asked if our entire party was present. After wondering why they would need confirmation (that they weren't) when there was not a soul behind us, we said no, and they let us know that it would be possible to seat us, expressing through their body language and tone how lucky we were to be seated despite it being such an imposition, despite the scores of empty tables.

We should have left the restaurant then. I thought I abandoned interactions with petulant pre-pubescents when I graduated Catholic school in 8th grade. Mike and I ordered wine (I guess I shouldn't have specified we wanted the "$18 dollar bottle of wine" instead of the "Argentinian Malbec") and sat and waited for the rest of our delightful company. Our waitress, despite her likely Old-Navy derived ill-fitting sweater, was tolerable enough. And I mean in that in the meanest of Mr. Darcy-type tones.

We ordered salads and soup. All of us. We didn't pull college-sophomore-night-out-on-the-town and order one appetizer for all. We also entertained our waitress when she looked at Kerry's (dear, loyal reader Kerry's) white table cloth space before her and asked if she had received her soup. Dear Kerry had ordered lobster bisque--a striking color difference to the white of the table cloth--so even daft waitress should have known the color family of reds and pinks based on her sweater color choice.

My salad, at a time when I would have considered re-patronizing Ray's the Steaks.

Even before, however, our waitress led us down an Alice in Wonderland hole of main-dish-explanation confusion. I admit, as a food writer, I should know what steak "al diablo" means. Probably devil, hot, red, spicy, something. Bad-ponytailed pink cardigan (this is war) says: "oh, it's spicy." Oh fabulous, a useful waitress. "What makes it spicy?" I ask. "Is it red pepper flakes or something encrusted on top?" Flaky foundation-wearer says, "It's got garlic and salt on it." Oh, I must have assumed it was spicy and thankfully she's correcting me, I think to myself. After helpful consultations with co-diners, I realize I had the most unmeaningful conversation with a waitress, who effectively led me to believe two different things without me even realizing it. The mind games had already begun.

But, our waitress didn't realize who she was messing with: an amateur food writer; to her left, a sophisticated food palate with excellent taste in her choice of food-blog reading; to her right, another avid food-blog reader and an excellent judge of character and service; and across from her, a Greek (what better judge of food) who hails from a family of restaurant owners. We're well-dressed, well-empoloyed, have job security, and aren't to be trifled with.

We got our steaks; they were good. But really? I've had steaks all over this fine country. For a while, I wouldn't eat anything but filet mignon at fine restaurants. While a filet could come from the ankle of a cow for all I know, I do know that it's served with a certain panache, respect, and deference to both the diners being served and more abstractly, to commemorate the event for which the diner enters into the restaurant in the first place. It could be to celebrate a promotion, a departure, or the stellar platinum-blonde dye-job of your mistress, but it's an event that deserves attention, by exemplary service and patient wait staff.

I ordered bone marrow on my steak. Again, don't rush me, 80s mini-sweater wearer with accompanying minions of four-foot tall wait staff. My bone marrow jiggled and I wear boots on Fridays. I didn't order marinated portabello mushrooms and my pansy-assed former steakhouse manager could probably beat up your inattentive, overly-solicitous front of house manager. And I'm fairly certain that the ex-con looking bald steak-griller at my former employer would have grilled managers who wore cotton body concealers in their role as the face of the restaurant. Concluding my second tirade, I note that my local steakhouse in the Midwest could out arm-wrestle Ray's the Steaks, if Ray's the Steaks un-snootied itself and left its comfortable DC suburb.

Bone Marrow looks like animal fat without the chewiness of fat. How convenient.

Then the Cold War began. I ate slow in the run-up, and didn't feel pressured to eat fast. I had seconds of creamed spinach, had another piece of bread, ate a bit more steak, whose ribbons of fat had started to congeal. I can say these things out of reverence for steak.

We got our dessert, fine enough, then the assault began. Our helpful waitress, with her unbecoming scowl (developing in intensity but devolving in sophistication) brought us "tiger butter." First, when did fancy restaurants start adopting food name titles more appropriate for Applebee's kids' menus? I digress. She placed down a plate of sophisticated-enough post-dinner amuse-bouches and said (like she were setting down a plate of run-of-the-mill flapjacks with I Can't Believe Its Not Butter packets), "This it tiger butter. We give it to everyone."


We were flattered to know that our waitress deigned to pass on what usually is standard and to acquiesce to its provision to our table. Then she put the check down. And three subsequent employees asked if we were ready to pay. And the extra place setting that had sat there during dinner was removed, after an employee asked if that person had come yet (yes, we ate him already). Then waiters hovered, refilling glasses and listening to conversations, and repeatedly trying to take our dessert plates. I tried to order espresso after all this (deliberately provocative), got a dismissive "We don't have that. Only coffee and de-caf" without a glimmer of eye-contact, and never received any coffee-bean derivative.

It was egregious: hassling service, unresponsive wait staff, explicit pressure to abandon our table, despite not yet having finished the dregs of our second bottle of wine. In my Malbec-inspired boldness, I asked sundress if I could speak to the manager. She smugly said she was it. This I doubt. She may have gotten an A in Home Ec her sophomore year, but I also thought clothing choice was part of this curriculum as well.

Anyway, I boldly asserted we felt pressure during our dinner to quit our table, felt the wait staff was hovering, were unimpressed with the service from the moment we stepped in, and I said I wouldn't come back because of it. Nicely and cordially, I think, for all of that.

My snippy interlocutor noted that we were late in arriving, bumped back two tables for their reservations, and that their wait staff was indeed pressuring us to leave. I noted that we were pressured by multiple employees who only appeared at the end of our meal to provide us "service," and she noted that she was sorry I didn't appreciate Ray's the Steak's regimen of employing "team service." That was the end of it. I laughed out loud when she left (within her earshot), probably deriding the seriousness I tried to imply in my frustration while attempting to deliver a serious indictment of the restaurant's service, but her lack of customer service skills, provision of an ear to attempt to understand my concerns as a diner, and aggressive dimissiveness were appalling.

What's more frustrating is that I fear droves of "enlightened" diners will continue to patronize the restaurant, reveling in its "innovative menu," enjoying the poor treatment they receive at the hands of the waitstaff sacrificially for such an "excellent steak," and recommending it as a hip alternative if going into DC doesn't suit. I say flying to the Midwest, ordering a steak from a woman who wears a toolbelt for a notepad holder, and ordering a toothpick instead of an espresso at the end of your dinner is more worth your time. I've posted my review to washingtonpost.com and hope my budding signs of restaurant activism contribute to the downfall of what could have been a recommendable dining experience (sorry for self-righteousness). But, we had a fabulous time, enjoyed our tiger butter and good company and conversation, and saw Mike off as sincerely as good friends can.