Picture this: You’re with a group of friends at a Michelin-starred temple of cuisine scrutinizing the oversized leather-bound wine list for the perfect pour to start off dinner. Remaining conscious of your dining companions’ cost expectations on a shared check, you find a trio of appellation village white Burgundies in the $110 to $150 range and ask the tight-suited sommelier which bottle he thinks would go best with the oysters you’re about to order. You already have an idea which one you are getting, but he’s standing there, so why not let him do his job? Sliding his finger down the page to just about $500 (while practically obscuring the name of the wine he is suggesting) he intones, “Those are very good choices, sir, but I would recommend this one.”
We don’t have to just picture it; it happened to us, and we know we are not alone. Friends of ours celebrating their 25th anniversary at one of the city’s top restaurants a few years back put themselves in the hands of the sommelier when choosing a special bottle of wine and when the check arrived, they were shocked that, “Don’t worry, I have the perfect bottle,” translated to almost $400 before tax and gratuity. Rather than sharing the joy of a wonderful celebratory dinner, the only sentiment one of them could conjure was, “It was horrible. I’m never going back there again, and I will tell everyone I know.” Discussing this article with our editor, he relayed the experience of a friend who visited a hot new downtown chef-driven restaurant with two bottles of his own and paid $200 corkage on each. Despite that fee and the $800 he dropped on another bottle, the somm continually pressured him to buy more wine, and when he did offer to buy another, the somm tried multiple times to upsell him to another $800 to $1,000 bottle. Also, during the course of the meal, the somm told him multiple times to “take care of the staff” and even checked the bill to see what he had tipped.
This flies in the face of great hospitality. Having both worked on restaurant floors earlier in our careers, we have a great deal of respect for the hardworking individuals who bring their knowledge, experience, and caring to their patrons and who may earn a good deal of their income in tips. But we draw the line when bullying tactics may intimidate diners into spending far more than they had planned on a bottle of wine while being made to feel powerless in the process. Sommeliers, like doctors, have an unfair advantage when dealing with the public: They possess a specialized body of knowledge that may render even the most confident person mute when presented with an unfamiliar series of options.
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