‘Insulting An Entire Profession’
Rage and praise over one man’s restaurant blog
(11/26/2009) When Bruce Buschel published a “Guestwords” essay bashing bicyclists in the Oct. 1 issue of The East Hampton Star, he expected an explosive response. The tongue-in-cheek piece that humorously exposed the
 Kate Maier |
non-biking set’s annoyance with neon-clad “bike people,” a scourge on Bridgehampton’s scenic byways, was sure to bring some letter of complaint. But, much to his chagrin, none came.
Mr. Buschel, a writer, documentary filmmaker, and sometime Broadway producer who has owned a house in Bridgehampton for three decades, has had a new gig for the past few months — maintaining a blog on the Web site of The New York Times. The subject, his plan to open a restaurant at the site of the former Wild Rose in Bridgehampton, has drawn varying degrees of interest.
A piece griping about Southampton Town’s planning and zoning process drew seven comments. Another, “My So-Called Business Plan,” got 28.
It wasn’t until Mr. Buschel published his now-infamous list of “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do” that the victuals hit the fan. An explosion of responses alternatively extolled and vilified the writer. The piece was broken into two installments, and the second, posted the same day as the massacre in Fort Hood, Tex., so overwhelmed the Times’s Web staff that the comment page was closed after less than 24 hours, with 678 responses. The previous post was eventually closed with 1,158.
The blog has been reproduced, and it spread like wildfire on social networking sites. On Facebook, a group has been formed inviting members to boycott Mr. Buschel’s restaurant — although it is based in Binghamton, N.Y., and had only three members as of Monday. The people at Hamptons.Curbed.com have followed the blog with great interest.
What was it that had so inspired the masses to add their two cents to Mr. Buschel’s assertions, which ranged from the obvious suggestion that soups should be served with spoons to the more controversial “Never announce your name”?
“I didn’t know what quicksand it actually was,” Mr. Buschel said over the phone shortly after the “100 Things” piece came out. “It surprised everybody. I think it is, again, a general dissatisfaction with service, the power of The New York Times, and the quirkiness of the Internet, when something goes viral.”
Kieran Brew, a veteran restaurateur who lives in Amagansett, took Mr. Buschel’s suggestions with a healthy helping of outrage and a side of indignation.
“As the response to the 100 things proves, everyone’s an expert when it comes to restaurants, and they’re always willing to share their expertise,” Mr. Brew said in a colorful blog that he was inspired to write after reading Mr. Buschel’s list.
“There’s just no pleasing some people. And it seems that This Guy — oops, almost called him Bruce — is one of those people,” he went on.
For the masses of minions who responded to Mr. Buschel’s suggestions with the likes of “congratulations, you have just insulted an entire profession,” Mr. Brew’s comments hit the crux of the issue. Anyone who has ever waited on tables knows that no matter how hard one tries, it is impossible to please everyone all of the time, and some perceived Mr. Buschel’s musings on the industry as condescending.
“Waiters and patrons have a very personal interaction, and people take it very personally,” Mr. Buschel said in defense of his blog. “There are more patrons than there are servers, and I think everybody is unhappy with service in general.”
As Mr. Buschel has admitted, even flaunted, that he has no experience whatsoever in the restaurant business, people who have had a taste of what he’s in for have looked on with amused interest. Even in the best of times, running a restaurant in a seasonal market on the East End is a massive challenge.
Just ask the owners of the now-shuttered Mezzaluna in Amagansett — reports on the Hamptons Curbed site and in the hamlet’s surviving barrooms suggest that despite being backed by a reputable and financially sound chain, the restaurant is done, and the doors will not reopen in the spring. At the very least, Mezzaluna Amagansett has closed for the season, after being open for a brief few months.
Colin Ambrose, a proprietor, chef, and former bartender with 17 years as a restaurant owner under his belt, runs Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor, down the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike from where Mr. Buschel’s restaurant is to be. He said he was disconcerted that Mr. Buschel had compared himself in his blog to the likes of successful East End restaurateurs including Robert Durkin, David Lowenberg, and the owners of Nick and Toni’s.
“You don’t get into a fraternity without getting hazed. This man has made himself a member of our fraternity on his own, and it was an unfortunate move,” Mr. Ambrose said. “These are men that are very serious about what they do. It’s taken me 17 years to be a guy that can see these other guys on the street, and walk into the restaurant, and get the handshake. It isn’t going to happen to this guy. He wants to be one of us, he can be one of us, but he has to take his time.”
As his costly renovation is in full swing, Mr. Buschel’s musings have lately been focused on less daunting tasks than staffing. His quest for perfection has most recently been embodied in an agonizing hunt for the perfect bar booth. According to his interior design team, black cushions on reclaimed railroad ties are the answer.
But those who have followed his blog still wait with great anticipation to see how Mr. Buschel pulls off hiring his staff. “I think my biggest concern for you will be finding staff that you find suitable and that you can afford,” wrote Liza Tremblay, an owner of Bay Burger, which is also on the turnpike. “This has by far been our biggest headache in our three years in business, and the whole process of hiring and managing a staff is so different than my husband and I thought it would be.”
Mr. Brew was more pointed in his response. “There’s one other thing about the Hamptons that anyone who’s spent any time in restaurants around here knows in the summer — the service sucks . . . the numbers just don’t work. There are too many customers, in too few restaurants, with too few qualified people to take care of them,” he said, going on to discuss the age-old conundrum of seasonal help bailing out in August.
Year-round staffers do exist, but if they’re living on the East End, Mr. Ambrose speculated that they are living near the poverty line. “There is no place for that worker that’s going to make $35,000 a year working in his restaurant to live. Our home is surrounded by water [in a way that] Manhattan is not. People that work in a restaurant on Madison Avenue do not live on Madison Avenue, they live in Astoria, Queens. On the East End of Long Island, Astoria, Queens, is Gardiner’s Bay.”
Out of the career servers and bartenders who do live here, Mr. Buschel might be hard pressed to find an applicant. Maura Donahue, a waitress at the Dock restaurant in Montauk, said reading Mr. Buschel’s list of 100 things made her “appreciate that I work in a joint where some of our T-shirts actually say, ‘You make me sick!’ It is obvious . . . that Buschel has never actually waited on tables in his life, or ever worked in a restaurant for that matter,” and for those reasons, she added, she could never work for him.
Mr. Buschel has demonstrated his success as a writer and, according to the rule that any press is good press, as a promoter of his soon-to-be-opened restaurant. Whether he is a success as a food man is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, Mr. Ambrose was only mildly consoled by the fact that the readership at the Times’s Web site is far greater than that of his own, Eatshampton.com. He has maintained his own blog there for a year, and so far hasn’t elicited a single response to any of his posts.