Swirl and Sniff

By RAYMOND SOKOLOV

Whatever you think about labor unions, you have to scratch your head over
the 11th-hour spat between Local 100 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees
Union and La Caravelle. The high-end Manhattan French restaurant had all but
settled with its workers after a protracted wage-benefit negotiation when a
most improbable dealbreaker ruined the party -- the sommelier.

Workers of the world, unite. Instead of the proverbial chains, you have
nothing to lose but your tastevins. They are those metal necklaces that hold
the wine-tasting cups that old-fashioned sommeliers in old-fashioned
restaurants with old-fashioned union contracts use to taste wines they have
recommended to well-heeled guest who like to select a Bordeaux or a Burgundy
with the help of a fawning pro. But who would have thought that squads of
ill-paid dishwashers and busboys in five-star kitchens would risk their
painfully negotiated new health-and-pay deal over a sommelier's share of the
tip pool?

But that's the way it was in Gotham's truffle-scented gourmetville last
week. It transpires that a well-paid oeno-babbler named Andrew Brisker gets
a percentage of the tip at each of La Caravelle's tony tables, and the
rank-and-file grease-skimmers and dish-fetchers resent it. By tradition, the
staff decides each fellow worker's cut of the gratuity pool, and the
Caravellers had been knocking Mr. Brisker's share down to the level normally
taken home by busboys. Management tried to grab this arcane power, but Local
100 refused, at a cost of a whole night's tips. Both sides settled on
Friday, but didn't disclose terms. For everyone else, a basic problem
remained.

Speaking for an increasingly beleaguered group not represented at the
bargaining table (namely the folks who sit at restaurant tables and pay the
outrageous tabs), I say "Down with sommeliers!" They are part of an
insufferable tradition of pretentious overstaffing in luxury restaurants,
which only adds to the expense, not the enjoyment of a meal. Oh yes, there
are exceptions, serious experts who really do help you through the pages of
a wine list filled with unfamiliar labels and lead you to a few sleepers of
value amid the $500 bottles of old treasures. But for most people hoping to
find a bottle, any bottle not shamelessly pegged at triple the retail price,
the sommelier is just another marketing hurdle in the way of sensible dining
out.

According to the union, these stegosauruses of the cellar are already paid
handsome wages and don't deserve a tip for their mostly unnecessary
services. I say, why keep them on at all? Sommeliers belong in culinary
museums, along with silver duck presses and boxes for captains' tips on
credit-card chits. Send the sommeliers back to school to earn an honest
trade. But let them keep their taster's spittoons as souvenirs of the bad
old days.

Mr. Sokolov is the author, most recently, of "The Cook's Canon: 101 Classic
Recipes Everyone Should Know," just out from HarperCollins.