Swirl and Sniff
By RAYMOND SOKOLOV
Whatever you think about labor unions, you have to scratch your head over the 11th-hour spat between Local 100 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union and La Caravelle. The high-end Manhattan French restaurant had all but settled with its workers after a protracted wage-benefit negotiation when a most improbable dealbreaker ruined the party -- the sommelier.
Workers of the world, unite. Instead of the proverbial chains, you have nothing to lose but your tastevins. They are those metal necklaces that hold the wine-tasting cups that old-fashioned sommeliers in old-fashioned restaurants with old-fashioned union contracts use to taste wines they have recommended to well-heeled guest who like to select a Bordeaux or a Burgundy with the help of a fawning pro. But who would have thought that squads of ill-paid dishwashers and busboys in five-star kitchens would risk their painfully negotiated new health-and-pay deal over a sommelier's share of the tip pool?
But that's the way it was in Gotham's truffle-scented gourmetville last week. It transpires that a well-paid oeno-babbler named Andrew Brisker gets a percentage of the tip at each of La Caravelle's tony tables, and the rank-and-file grease-skimmers and dish-fetchers resent it. By tradition, the staff decides each fellow worker's cut of the gratuity pool, and the Caravellers had been knocking Mr. Brisker's share down to the level normally taken home by busboys. Management tried to grab this arcane power, but Local
100 refused, at a cost of a whole night's tips. Both sides settled on Friday, but didn't disclose terms. For everyone else, a basic problem remained.Speaking for an increasingly beleaguered group not represented at the bargaining table (namely the folks who sit at restaurant tables and pay the outrageous tabs), I say "Down with sommeliers!" They are part of an insufferable tradition of pretentious overstaffing in luxury restaurants, which only adds to the expense, not the enjoyment of a meal. Oh yes, there are exceptions, serious experts who really do help you through the pages of a wine list filled with unfamiliar labels and lead you to a few sleepers of value amid the $500 bottles of old treasures. But for most people hoping to find a bottle, any bottle not shamelessly pegged at triple the retail price, the sommelier is just another marketing hurdle in the way of sensible dining out.
According to the union, these stegosauruses of the cellar are already paid handsome wages and don't deserve a tip for their mostly unnecessary services. I say, why keep them on at all? Sommeliers belong in culinary museums, along with silver duck presses and boxes for captains' tips on credit-card chits. Send the sommeliers back to school to earn an honest trade. But let them keep their taster's spittoons as souvenirs of the bad old days.
Mr. Sokolov is the author, most recently, of "The Cook's Canon: 101 Classic Recipes Everyone Should Know," just out from HarperCollins.