"Oh, just about every kind, sir"

<< 2005-10-02 21:10 >>

One thing I've always found shocking as a beer drinker is the level of knowledge about, and, even worse, interest in, beer among the people who make a living serving it. That is, waiters and bartenders. A general rule is that only in (let's say) 1 out of 10 cases will you actually get the full list if you ask what beers are available, and very often the menu won't have the full list, either, if they even bother to list beers on the menu. In most cases some persistence is required in order to actually find out what's on offer, and in some cases a lot.

Today we had another of those episodes, which is what inspired this entry. My girlfriend and I went to Lorry, a well-known restaurant in Oslo, which is very proud of serving 130 beers. Their beer menu is the most extensive in Norway, if not necessarily the best. I like the place a lot, both for the beer selection and for the athmosphere; it's a very old place, and a favourite among local artists and actors. It's also very popular, which may help explain what follows.

We sit down, have a coffee, etc, and when the time comes to order beer I ask what beers they've got from Haandbryggeriet, a new Norwegian micro. The waitress says they don't have any. I tell her the brewery's home pages claims Lorry does have, as do many other web sites. She then asks me if it's in the menu, and I say no, but that that doesn't matter. The discussion goes on for a long time, with her disclaiming all knowledge of this brewery, saying the guy tending the bar doesn't arrive before 1700, etc etc, and me persistently refusing to be satisfied by this. I mean, how hard can it be? You look in the fridge, and you see if it's there. It seems to me the minimum of service one can expect, especially as if they stock the beer it seems fair to assume they want to sell it. Eventually I give up and go back to working on my paper in disgust, and she disappears.

The good thing is that 10 minutes later she returns, saying the guy tending the bar arrived early, and he told her they have the IPA and the weissbier. I order the weissbier, and everything is fine. Or almost. Most places in Oslo which have beers from this brewery have two weizens: the Bavarian Weizen and the Dunkelweizen. So when going to the bathroom I pass by the bar, thinking I'll see if they have the Dunkelweizen as well. And, sure enough, in the fridge I see three kinds of bottles from Haandbryggeriet with yellow, orange, and red labels. I can read the first two, but the red one is turned away so I can only see the colour.

I wait for the bartender to tend to me, and when he does I ask him what's in the red bottle. He first offers me the orange one (the IPA), and I have to keep at it for a while before he can bring himself to turn the third one. At one point he even tells me he doesn't have time for this as he has other guests. Hello!?!? Three bottles are standing next to each other and it's too hard to turn the third one slightly so an interested customer can find out what beer it is? He eventually does, and I go back to my table, ask my girlfriend to order it, and go off on necessary business. (No, not what you think. I had to park a bike.)

When I come back my girlfriend tells me she tried to order the beer, and that after four attempts she thinks the waitress got it. However, the waitress then comes over and checks if it's really Erdinger Dunkel I want. Well, no, it's not. I stay calm and tell her they have three beers from this brewery, one orange, one yellow, and one red, and that I want the red one. That works, and a while later I have it. The waitress is quite nice about it, though, and when we get our bill she smiles and says she learned a bit about beer from our visit. That made me feel better, though not enough to not write this.

I have a long list of stories like this one, with waiters betraying various degrees of ignorance and disinterest. Going through all of it would make for a book rather than a blog entry, though, so I'll keep it short.

A real champion in the category "clueless waiters" was a guy at T.G.I Friday's at Dulles International in Washington D.C. In response to my usual question of "what beers do you have" he offered "oh, just about every kind, sir", which struck me as very funny. I knew there was just no way this could be true, but when I said "oh, come on" he stuck to it. After admitting that they had no Belgian beers, and no German ones either, he changed his story to "just about every American beer". When I told him the Brickeller stocked 400 US brews he gave up and actually gave me the list, which turned out to be 7-8 mainstream beers.

Frydenlund Bayer

Even this is only enough to earn him second place, however, as a bartender at Explorer Bar at Oslo airport, Gardermoen, emerges as the absolute winner. On being asked the stock question he told me they only had Ringnes. Just behind him, however, were Guinness and Kilkenny taps. I pointed this out, and he added "oh, yes, we have those, too". I then spot the beer menu behind him, which says they have Frydenlund Bayer. So I tell him I want that, only to be told they don't have it. So I point again, and he goes "oh". This guy at least has the sense to look in the fridge by himself, but he emerges from it kind of baffled, holding a bottle and asking me if it's the one I want. He's too far away from me for me to read the label, so I ask him, "well, is it Frydenlund Bayer?". He looks at the label for a moment, then says "I don't know". It turned out to be.

You can see the label on the right, and, well, it's not difficult to tell what beer it is, but for this bartender it turned out to be too hard. If that shouldn't be enough to get him fired, I don't know what would be.

I guess the interesting question is why this happens, and the answer, I think, is quite obvious. For more than 99% of the people who own, work in, and drink in pubs and bars the idea that someone might genuinely care about trying different beers has just never occurred to them. So when someone asks "what beers do you have?" they don't really take it seriously. The result is they only list a couple of beers in response and, as often as not, get annoyed when people are not satisfied with this, or even turn out to know more than themselves about what beers are sold in the place.

Another important reason is probably that waiters and bartenders generally know nothing about beer. Usually they don't know about the concept of beer type, but can (for the most part) read what's on the label. In many cases they have their private names for the more obscure beers. At Internasjonalen in Oslo the staff will consistently refer to Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout as just "Imperial Stout", blithely unaware that this is not the name of a product, but a beer type consisting of more than a hundred products. This is just one example among many. So when someone asks them for "Sam Smith's Imperial Stout" chances are the unfamiliar words will be lost in the noise of your typical bar, and confusion ensues.

Probably the only thing that can be done about all of this is to stay calm and polite and, if given the chance, explain that you really care about beer, so that what they can offer in this regard actually makes a big difference to you. With time, and more people doing the same, maybe bar owners will start to realize that they lose customers by offering poor selections and poor service. Maybe.

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