Wine for Regularians

Ah, greedy shopkeeper. From whence came you? Wherefore saddlest thou the regularian with the fetters of falsehood?

Sometimes we folk prefer to let someone else do the cooking. It happens all the time – on Wednesday nights that hit as hard as Fridays after miring about in the trenches, and on holidays as well. It’s fun to whip something up for my wife but the surprise element isn’t there if we’re both at home and I can’t convince her to run some errands. That would not only be suspect but also a bit insensitive for a guy like me who has a wife like mine (re: hopelessly busy and, as a result, often tired). It’s a lot cooler in those circumstances to offer to run the errands for her. Nothing complicated there.

So, as we were both unoccupied yesterday, and feeling the love we work hard at keeping stoked like a bonfire, we decided to hit the city for a dose of art and of couture culinaire. Again, let someone else do the cooking. The first stage of the trip was amazing, comprised of taking in the Shanghai exhibit at the Asian Art Museum on Larkin Street in the city (what we in semi-rural Sonoma County call San Francisco). The Shanghai art pretty well rocked to 6-7 points on a scale of 10. That’s not bad coming from us. See, my wife’s a fantastic artist, not only in the sense of having great technical skill (check – a prerequisite), but because she creates meaningful art dripping with insight. Neither of us cares for repro art – paintings of vineyards, vegetables, decrepit barns…..argh. I am similar to her, only my art is 5% visual and 95% aural. Another guy promoting meaning and imagination through sound. So we get along nicely on the creative front. Therefore, for us, the Shanghai exhibit held many treasures but didn’t flip our wigs. The third floor (India, Persia, Burma) was one of those experiences I can’t quite describe except to say that the sculptures up there seemed to have been created by extraterrestrials. How else can I tell it? There is barely the technology available in today’s world to accomplish what certain artists rendered with their hands a century or more ago. As for insight, forget arguing. It was on. Of course, we closed the place down and will be back soon to stand rapt and weep a little bit. Then what happened next was….

Wait – interlude – we had a Champagne picnic in the car, parked at the curb with the windows down, right on McAllister. It rocked, and it happened, and there’s nothing that can be done about it now. One passerby looked in on us and quipped to his companion some trash about our status as tourists. Yeah, right. So we live an hour north, but we think we’re local enough to think we’re locals. It was fun being pegged, especially with the cheese, bubbly and berries. I grumbled at this dude past a mouthful of truffle and we had a laugh. Okay, now here goes the Regularian woe…
We went to a restaurant in the Presidio where we had a wicked-decadent time two years ago, making an anniversary memory. I don’t want to say which one, just that it’s Moroccan.

I want to say something about toy food. I don’t go out with a wad of bills or a credit card expecting to giggle at my dinner and bitch about the hunger afterwards. I go to eat and to be satisfied. And I expect my wife to be satiated as well. Toy food is cute, it looks pretty, it’s embellished with little sprigs of whatnot, and it often comes on a plate that prevents the kind of stackage I employ to save trips at parties. In other words, the plate often has a flat spot in the center, measuring about four inches across, and sort of cascades downward from the edges so that any food that might find its way outside of the center circle wouldn’t stick. So therefore the food stays within the cute circle. Therefore, with the garnishes necessary to make this entree something to brag about, there’s even less food within the circle that even fulfills a snack-level hunger. Toy food is ridiculous and I avoid it. When it makes its mark on my checkbook register, I have been had.

So yesterday, I was had. To make the matter worse, the bomb-ass bottle I brought (Pax syrah, by name) created a little bit of hassle. Not a lot, but a little nonetheless. First of all, when a server pulls the cork, that cork should stay with me. It’s unfair to assume that a couple of people are going to kill a bottle of wine at dinner. I’d like the choice, thank you.
Second of all, our glasses were topped off at every turn with a fervor that was nearly impossible to quell. My wife and I would be talking, see a shadow, hear a splash, turn our heads toward the activity, and see the rapidly-draining bottle hit the cloth before either of us could say, “You know, we’re good for now.”
Third of all, I was happy to have brought this wine. It paired well. The wine list blew chunks. Sorry, but it did. Just because I’m a Regularian doesn’t mean I don’t know good vino – I just don’t brag about drinking d’Yquem for lunch (see the Manifesto to refresh yourself on the Regularian philosophy).
Fourthly, the lastly, the proverbial straw that broke the regularian camel’s back, was that the corkage fee was $25. That’s fine at the top tier. This, however, was not a top-tier restaurant. Not by a stretch. So I had a little chat with the server, who happened to have an interesting, intellectual way about her that made me feel as though I could be candid with, honest with, “fellow industry” with. She told me her hands were tied on the issue of corkage cost but that she’d send the sommelier over for a bit of a tete-a-tete. After ten minutes, the somm comes over – the selfsame gnat who’d been assaulting our wine glasses prior to getting the nod! – and looks waaaaaaay down her nose at me. I show her three of my business cards. She ignores them. I ask for some kind a break on the corkage if not simply because I work 16 hours a day producing and promoting wine. She tells me that the costs of storing the wine and the glasses – and the glasses?!?! – is the reason the corkage is what it is. And she adds that the fee is also due to competition. Um, (fast forward to when I ask my pillow certain questions I should have thought to ask a person earlier in the day)…competition would almost naturally create an impetus to lower the corkage fee, no? Exorbitance in a climate of corkage fee rebellion would naturally foment a sort of gentle breeze of reform, would it not? Diner loyalty would be earned by throwing a guy a bone, wouldn’t it? I’m not Clive Cussler, but I do have some things to say in this industry that actually reach sentient people on a daily basis. But it was a stonewall. A wash. A futile, one-way conversation with a person whose head had been replaced by a pumpkin wearing an arrogant sneer.

What the heck is going on in the world when I’m being charged like a celebrity in a restaurant entirely devoid of celebrities? Gouging, is what. I won’t go back, and I’m sad about it. What’s the point here? If you can see a corkage fee listed on a menu before you visit the restaurant, all the better, but maybe it’s alright to have out about it if the fee’s a surprise and the overall experience doesn’t justify it. If you think I’m whining, so be it, but the last time I looked, California was engaged in a corkage reform movement that would create more traffic in restaurants that so greatly desire – and often deserve – our patronage. The more real we are with ourselves, the more real we can be with one another, setting us further along the path of promoting positivity.