By their very nature, favourites are personal. Some of the flavours I adore are known to be polarising, such as liquorice, coriander, mayonnaise, strong cheeses, white chocolate, anchovies, okra and Brussels sprouts. Among the most divisive of foods is liver, sensual and ominous by reputation; the vital filter that tastes not of muscle but of the quality of an animal’s rich or impoverished life: what its diet was like, whether it was healthy and active, or if it had been medicated or stressed. I’ll be savouring some liver later in the form of Julia Child’s buttery, cream-laden chicken liver mousse, churned from the silky pink numbles of a good bird and accompanied by toasted bread, a crackling fireplace, a jar of pickles and a friend with very low cholesterol.
The only sit-down restaurant at which I’m a regular is a casual New Mexican place in Santa Fe where I’ve been eating at least once a week for four years and where I’ve booked large parties, brought visiting friends and family, and helped create new regulars who make it even harder for me to get a table on a weekday night. The owner, a man of few words, expresses nothing at my continued patronage: he doesn’t know my name and doesn’t seem to care, and he isn’t the type to offer free chips and salsa just because it’s someone’s birthday. That’s fine.
But last week while visiting Abu Dhabi, I dropped off a sweater at Jeeves dry cleaner in Spinneys and I noticed that the tag had come partly undone, so made a mental note to repair it later. When I picked up the sweater, I saw that someone at Jeeves had resewn it for me. Now I can’t stop talking about this unexpected gesture of customer service. Not everyone will notice when someone cares deeply about running a business, but I know that these are the things that can turn me into a customer for life.
I’m currently reading two books by two very different New York City restaurant owners: Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business and Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. Both books are part autobiography and part business philosophy, but that’s where the similarities end. Setting the Table, written by the eminently likeable chief executive and restaurateur Danny Meyer (whom Emiratis might know as the guy behind Shake Shack), is a collection of insights that can be applied to any industry, but Meyer’s views on providing exceptional customer service are a big part of his recipe for success.
Shopsin’s book, on the other hand, is a hilarious and irreverent cookbook/manifesto on a my-way-or-the-highway approach to business ownership. Shopsin, who has been cooking everything on his restaurant’s more than 900-item menu himself for more than 40 years, is known for cursing customers out of his tiny Greenwich Village cafe just because he doesn’t like the way they look. He makes no apologies for being cantankerous and, judging from the queues to get into his place, it hasn’t hurt his business. In Shopsin’s world, the customer is not right. In Meyer’s world, while the customer isn’t always right, they should always “feel heard”.
What’s the best way to do anything? Highly polarising figures such as Shopsin and Meyer don’t acquire mutually exclusive followings; I’m getting a lot out of both books. And It wouldn’t be my style to pick a favourite: I only do that with things I can eat.
Nouf Al-Qasimi is an Emirati food analyst who cooks and writes in New Mexico