Menu Thieves, Corkage Cheats

Tom takes your gripes, suggestions and questions

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

Diners who filch menus, please cease and desist!

That's the plea from Kera Carpenter, the owner of Domku Bar & Cafe in Petworth, who writes that the problem has become "ridiculous." The restaurateur is down to 10 brunch-lunch menus after having started with 35 in October. "Last year, after one Sunday brunch, we were left with five menus. Yes, five!" she writes. "While it is flattering that people want a copy of the menu, the full and most current menu is always available on our Web site. Customers make reservations online, Google their way here online, read reviews online, and yet they can't seem to go to the menu online." Carpenter says she has no idea why so many menus are going AWOL. "I'm flummoxed. I am sure I am not the only business that has this problem, but losing two-thirds of my menus within two months is just too much. We've lost one-third of our dinner menus and half of our drink menus, too.

"I'd love to say that I'm the type of restaurant that has the budget to keep replacing menus at this rate, but I'm not." She ends her complaint with one last request: "If customers absolutely must take a paper copy, perhaps they might have the decency to not steal the covers as well?"

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When I invited participants of my food discussion group, Sietsema's Table, to tell me what they most wanted from a restaurant's Web site, I got an eyeful.

At the top of diners' wish lists: descriptions of dress codes, driving instructions, the ability to make reservations online, current menus with up-to-date prices, Metro accessibility information, hours of operation, photos of the restaurant's entrance and interior, and information regarding special needs. Is the site wheelchair-accessible? Are large-type menus available? Are substitutions allowed for those with allergies? As one poster pointed out, "With the right information, those who cannot be handled well will avoid the restaurant" instead of showing up and having a difficult meal, "then giving bad reviews to everyone they know. It's in your interest to present your establishment honestly."

What a lot of diners say they don't want from a Web site: flash, animation and, as another poster put it, "music that makes my co-workers think I'm on a porn site when I'm just trying to find a menu."

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If you think some Washington restaurants are charging too much to let you bring your own wine to a meal, you might be right.

Thanks to online sleuthing by one of his friends, Simon Chin of Rockville learned that "the holder of an on-premises retailer's license shall be permitted to charge a corking fee not to exceed twenty five dollars ($25)." That's the word from Title 23, Chapter 7 of the District of Columbia's municipal regulations regarding alcohol.

When I called Martha Jenkins, an assistant attorney in the District's office of the attorney general, she confirmed Chin's report. "That's the rule," she told me.

I've encountered corkage fees in the District as low as $10 and as high as $45. Jenkins says diners who find restaurants charging fees in excess of $25 can submit complaints to the chief investigator of enforcement, Johnnie Jackson, at johnnie.jackson@dc.gov.

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After he read my one-star review of Darlington House in Dupont Circle (Magazine, Sept. 28), David Landau asked why the dining column's ratings guide labels a single star as "satisfactory."

"Clearly, you were not pleased with the experience and found the restaurant lacking in many ways," e-mailed the Washington reader. "Webster's dictionary describes 'satisfactory' as 'satisfying or adequate.' If you were to re-read your review of Darlington House, I think you would agree that you found the establishment neither satisfying nor adequate." Landau wonders whether a five-star rating system might be in order, to include a category of restaurants I don't recommend.

Fair point. But there already is a way for me to signal a less-than-satisfactory restaurant, and that's by offering no stars, which amounts to a "poor" rating. Darlington House avoided that designation thanks to its inviting ambiance and generally smooth service. Although the quality of the food is my primary consideration, accounting for at least half of my score, it is not the only factor I consider.

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Pete Hyland and his wife prefer to dine at the bar when they eat out, but what they've seen going on behind the counter at a few places puzzles them.

Some restaurants "now have a wineglass filled with colored liquid measured at 'serving level.' When one orders a glass of wine, the bartender places a wineglass next to the glass with the colored liquid to make sure he does not pour more than the measured amount," Hyland writes.

The Fairfax City reader encountered that scenario most recently at brunch at Artie's, part of the Great American Restaurants group. Hyland says he ordered a bloody mary "and the bartender free-poured the vodka until the glass was almost three-quarters full," topping it off with bloody mary mix. "My wife asked for a glass of white wine, and the bartender placed her glass next to the colored liquid and carefully poured to the measured level. What's with that? At $9 or more for a glass of wine, these restaurants should have their bartenders engaged in more hospitable, customer-friendly practices than worrying about a half-ounce of wine."

Randy Norton, chief executive of Great American Restaurants, says the wine measuring system has been in place at Artie's and two of his other restaurants, Carlyle in Shirlington and Jackson's Mighty Fine Food & Lucky Lounge in Reston, since the three establishments acquired large, balloon-style stemware to replace the company's V-shaped wine glasses. A standard pour is six ounces; in the new glasses, that amount falls near the broad center of their bowls and is a bit trickier to gauge. "I appreciate bartenders being so precise," says the boss, "but we definitely need to soften" the approach. At the same time, he thinks the use of the colored measure "protects [diners] from under-pours" as well as over-pours.

As for those seemingly liberal liquor pours, Norton says they are based on math: Bartenders at his restaurants are taught to count to six for a standard 1 1/2 -ounce pour and to eight for a two-ounce request.

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.