As the dining critic for the Rocky Mountain News from 2000 to 2008, I reviewed more than 400 restaurants, bakeries, sandwich shops and dumpling houses. Many of those eateries had good food, some great. Some had gorgeous interiors and spectacular locations. Looking back, the ones I gave A’s to made me and everyone else at the table feel good about being there. I can still remember little things about the service. One of those restaurants I commended was Frasca Food and Wine when it was opened 13 years ago by Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey and chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson.
According to Stuckey, it is not the black cod with mushrooms, veal sweetbreads, fennel and dill or the complementary Burja 2014 pinot noir that have made Frasca one of the most highly regarded restaurants in America. It’s a fundamentalist belief in hospitality.
“Hospitality is looking outside yourself to see how you can make someone else feel better. Everyone thinks it is this switch you turn on,” Stuckey says. “My ethos is that you treat everyone well from the driver dropping off your vegetables to the dishwasher. That goes from the owners down and back up. Too often you find restaurant people being hospitable to the guest, but not to anyone else. It’s inauthentic.”
We sat down to talk around midday as the kitchen staff was meeting nearby. It would be hours until he donned the suit and opened the doors. He offered me chilled still or sparkling water.
Because of the buildup that Frasca gets and the cost of dining (food, wine, 20-plus percent tip), the expectations are nerve-rackingly sky high when guests sit down at Frasca for the first time… and every time.
Stuckey freely admits he did not emerge from the womb ready to be of service.
“I have worked in restaurants all my life but I didn’t understand hospitality until I worked for Eric Calderon at the Little Nell in Aspen. It made me who I am. The staff there cared about going above and beyond what was expected from guests,” Stuckey says. “I learned that you can’t expect praise. You can’t keep score. It’s never ‘What about me?’”
What about customers that behave poorly, make unreasonable demands and generally show humanity in a less than holy light?
“There are never guests that are a problem. They could be having a tough time. You always give them the benefit of the doubt,” Stuckey says. “That’s where you have to be great. You have a two-hour window to positively affect someone.”
It doesn’t always work out, even at Frasca. “Hospitality is easy when everything goes well. Sometimes you have a really tough night where things don’t go well despite everything you did,” he says.
There are no general rules of hospitality, Stuckey says.
“Every night is different and you have to respond to each guest. Some might be nervous and on a first date. At the next table they might be celebrating a corporate success,” he says. “You have to feel them out and see what they need. We had a longtime customer come in for the first time since her husband passed away.”
Stuckey suggests that diner complaints about service at “good” restaurants date back more than a decade ago.
“The trend was chef-driven restaurants where we thought it was OK to give up on hospitality. It was all about the food, and we lost a lot in terms of diner experience,” Stuckey says, relating a story about a meal he ate at a famous restaurant where he didn’t feel entirely welcomed.
“The menu stated that there would be no substitutions even for dietary issues. The food would come out whenever it was ready without regard to where the guest was in the meal or which wine they were having. It’s not hospitable when you train the staff to say, ‘No,’” he says.
At Frasca, servers are hired who enjoy saying, “Yes,” not those who have the best resume. “For the front of house, our hiring process tends to filter out people with a lot of experience. Everybody here starts out as a glass polisher. It takes about a year to become a waiter and that’s a hard pill to swallow for some people,” Stuckey says.
“We hire people according to their spirit. What’s important are essential characteristics and qualities: to be positive, to be kind, empathetic and intelligent. The other stuff you can learn,” he says.
If it all sounds a little Mr. Rogers-meets-fine dining, consider how successful the various Frasca enterprises have been. They’ve earned a parade of national nominations and awards, and foodies visit Boulder specifically to eat at Frasca and discover the burgeoning chef and artisan food community here. The duo has branched out with the Pizzeria Locale pizza chain and their Scarpetta Wines imported from Italy.
Beyond the servers, sommeliers, managers and chefs, there is Danette Stuckey, an integral part of the service at Frasca and often among the first people diners meet. “I’m her husband and I think she’s awesome but it makes people feel good to be around her,” he says. “People don’t know this but Danette is really an introvert but she cares so much about their experience.”
There is one thing Bobby Stuckey wishes restaurant-goers always did. “I don’t think people realize what they are doing when they don’t show up for a reservation. It hurts economically but it also means fish and poultry are being killed for you and may go to waste. Please just call and let us know.”
Will it be Lidl?
In the end, Boulder beat Wal-Mart by ignoring it, not by protesting it. The 4-year-old Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, 2972 Iris Ave., is closing June 16. Wal-Mart couldn’t compete in a city blanketed with 17 or more supermarkets. Whole Foods closed its Baseline store in February, but still has its flagship Pearl Street Store as well as one at Ideal Market. What will fill these empty food stores? Will it be Costco? Probably not. Maybe Wegman’s? Or perhaps the buzz-worthy German discount supermarket Lidl (pronounced lee-dil)?
Reader mail: ‘Child-free or non-?’
A reader commented on a recent Nibbles column headlined “Ban the brats:”
“Now that we’re no longer asked ‘smoking or non-,’ we wish restaurants would ask ‘child-free or non-.’ Shrieking and misbehavior — especially at non-family-friendly, adult-atmosphere restaurants — is annoying and distracting. We wonder why some parents of babies insist on bringing them everywhere whether appropriate or not.”
(Comments: [email protected].)
Words to Chew On
“If New York is the Jewish grandma of great American food cities, and San Francisco is the grandpa who came out late in life, then Denver-Boulder is their grandson — a precocious adolescent going through a major growth spurt and smoking a lot of weed. But in all seriousness, Denver is a millennial town poised to make a major impact as it rapidly matures and owns its potential.” — Sean Kenniff, Starchefs.com
John Lehndorff is a former pantry boy at the Greenbriar Inn. He hosts Radio Nibbles on KGNU. Podcasts: news.kgnu.org/category/radio-nibbles.
