Weird Tips and Missing Fries

What miffs or mystifies Washington's diners? Just ask Tom.

A periodic peek at the Post food critic's e-mail, voice mail and inbox.

"Recently, I took my wife, son and [his] significant other to Il Mulino for dinner," writes Michael Rosnik. "The food was quite good, a bit pricey, but that was expected." He was surprised, however, to see one line for a tip and a second line for a "captain's tip" on his credit card slip. "I had never seen this before. What's up with it?" the Potomac reader asks.

Il Mulino employs five (soon to be six) captains, who "control the show" at the formal Italian restaurant downtown, says its general manager, David Shan. Captains oversee servers and busboys in defined stations in the dining room. They also take food orders, make wine recommendations, orchestrate the pacing of a meal and learn the likes and dislikes of regular patrons. Although Shan says leaving a tip for the captain is "by no means necessary," some customers like to leave a bit extra for the service, perhaps $5 on a $100 tab on which a 15 percent gratuity was also left for the server.

Very few area restaurants print checks with two tip lines, a practice even Shan refers to as "old school." Whenever I've encountered such a check, I tend to put the entire tip on the generic line and leave it up to the restaurant to decide who gets what percentage. Shan estimates that 40 percent of Il Mulino's customers leave extra for their captains.

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Alan Berg and his family nodded when their server at Old Ebbitt Grill asked how their appetizers and entrees tasted at dinner earlier this summer. But when the waiter sought their approval for a slice of blackberry pie, Berg's wife, Elinor, responded that the filling was fine but the crust was so rubbery it couldn't be cut with a fork. "The waiter apologetically said he would strike it from the bill," Alan Berg wrote in a letter to me.

But on the check Berg received, the offending dessert was recorded as "2/3 blackberry pie" and priced at $5.30, a deduction of $1.65 from the cost of a whole slice. Scribbled on the check was this explanation: "Crust not included." Berg, who had not asked for a refund in the first place, says he and his party "laughed so hard we cried. Literally."

David Moran, managing director at Old Ebbitt Grill, was not amused when he heard about Berg's experience. "It's appalling," he said, and "not the way we do business." I told Moran that Berg had spent more than $200 for four after tip, including almost $44 for oysters alone. "Those are the customers you want to have!" Moran responded, vowing to investigate the matter promptly. In a follow-up discussion with the Bergs' waiter, Moran says, the employee said he had written the comment "tongue in cheek" and had only meant to be playful with a group of people he'd enjoyed serving.

In the end, everyone won. The waiter was not fired. Berg received a gift certificate to return to Old Ebbitt Grill for dessert and coffee, plus admission for two ($125 each) to the restaurant's white-hot annual Oyster Riot (held in late November; the tickets sold out in less than 40 minutes last year). The lesson for his staff, concludes Moran: "Don't be funny; be generous."

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"My fiancee is a San Francisco girl, and I've given up on trying to impress her with D.C.'s restaurant scene, since wherever we go, she swears there's someplace as good or better in the Bay Area," e-mails Jonathan Koltz of Arlington. "I'm certain, though, that our bay area can beat her bay area for crab cakes. So I implore you: If you had one chance to rock someone's world with crab cakes, where would it be?"

Ah, the pressure! The pressure! There's no way I could single out one crab cake in the area as being the best, in part because I haven't tasted every example and also because crab cakes come in so many variations. So I'll offer a few suggestions and let Koltz decide where he should take his discerning squeeze. Among my picks for traditional crab cakes, which I define as mostly seafood, lightly bound, are the role models at Artie's in Fairfax, Hank's Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle and Alexandria, Jerry's Seafood in Lanham, Johnny's Half Shell on Capitol Hill, O'Learys in Annapolis and Stoney's Seafood House in Broomes Island.

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After reading about a customer at Et Voila! (Ask Tom, Aug. 10) who wasn't allowed to take home her leftover mussels because the chef thought there might be liability issues -- there aren't -- Marianna Bodenburg e-mailed from London about another incident.

"I had the exact same experience in Dubai when I wanted to take some leftover sushi home," she wrote. A waiter told her the restaurant wouldn't let her do it, out of concern that customers wouldn't store the leftovers correctly. "They didn't want [diners] to associate the experience of getting sick with the restaurant. I actually found it to be an entirely reasonable explanation." I do, too, although I think it's only fair to let customers know ahead of time what they can't take home with them.

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Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't complain to me about being addressed incorrectly in a restaurant. The most recent e-mail comes from Coleen Hanna of Edgewater, who, like a lot of women, says she and her dining companions are "routinely referred to as 'guys,'" which she detests. In one establishment alone, she says, she endured: "Hi, guys." "Are you guys ready to order?" "How are you guys doing?" "Can I get you guys anything else?" And, "Thanks, guys."

"I am a 53-year-old woman and I feel strangely diminished by this reference," Hanna writes, "especially coming from someone who I think would like to be in my good graces (tip, anyone?)" She says she tried every response she could think of, including "This guy would not like an appetizer," to no avail. Hanna says the only time she escapes the misnomer is when she dines alone: "For some reason, the servers are not into, 'Would you guy like to order?' "

The restaurant-goer says the unfortunate name-calling is saving her money, because "I have definitely eaten at home more often since this phenomenon has become worse." Note to servers: Sweat the small stuff.

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Bethesda reader Barbara Stutz writes that she and five friends were sharing three $46 steaks "with french fries, very few fries" at Buck's Fishing & Camping in Washington last month. When the diners asked for more fries, "the waitress said 'no,' the chef was not making more fries tonight. We said we'd be happy to pay for the extra fries and the waitress again said 'no.' Needless to say, we were shocked."

Buck's co-owner James Alefantis says the kitchen prepares only enough potatoes to go with the steaks the restaurant expects to sell, and he figures the cooks were "out or low" on the side starch the night of Stutz's visit. Had he been informed of the request, he told me, he would have offered the party some "beautiful other things" -- Buck's grits or corn salad -- as a substitute.

"If they had said anything like that to us, we would have understood," Stutz told me after I shared Alefantis's response with her. "We're reasonable people." But Stutz and company received no explanation for why they couldn't get more fries. At least Stutz has a sense of humor about the matter. Buck's "maybe did us a favor by giving us five fries. None of us needed" more, she said.

The regular Dining column will return next week. Got a dining question? Send your thoughts, wishes and, yes, even gripes to asktom@washpost.com or to Ask Tom, The Washington Post Magazine, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Please include a daytime telephone number.