Granite Hill is nestled in a corner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is a popular lunch destination for primarily foreign museum-goers and for various aristocrats involved in the art world. It's owned by Stephen Starr, who owns several other notable restaurants on the east coast, and who served as a guest judge on Iron Chef. His restaurants are known for being high-class and trendy...which is why Granite Hill is such a confusing place. The dining room décor is blatantly unimaginative, with a light blue and white color scheme that should have never, ever left IHOP. The ambiance is reminiscent of a waiting room of a dentist's office. Despite the restaurant looking so lifeless, it is run as if it were a five-star restaurant. White tablecloths, polished silverware, fine crystal glasses, white cloth napkins (and black ones for when people request them to better match their attire or some shit). Serve food from the left, clear plates from the right. Silverware must be a fingernail's length from the edge of the table. When a guest goes to the restroom, you must go push their chair in and fold their napkin. Most importantly, never EVER, under ANY circumstance, leave the salt and pepper on the table after clearing the main entrée. Never. Barry will murder you. He is really a nice guy, but kind of eccentric, and disturbingly vehement about providing the finest in fine dining experiences. Which is cool and everything, but... I mean, this morning during the pre-shift meeting, he reviewed with the staff how we are to go in and out of the door. Because we don't know how to go in and out of doors. He stopped another busser from doing a task because there was a bread tie on the floor at the other end of the restaurant. Maybe I'm just spoiled from having worked at such an amazing establishment for four years, but this place sucks. It doesn't help that it's taking so long to break into the polish-able shoes I had to procure to aid in fooling the customers that they're eating in a high-end restaurant. It's not just blisters, it's that my feet are horrendously misshapen and feel like they're being folded in half hot-dog style after about an hour or so of working in these shoes. By the end of the shift, I'm in so much pain that I am really, really, really grumpy. Which is a crappy addition to my already dismal thoughts on this place. Not to mention how inconveniently-located the museum is, in relation to our house. And you don't even want to know how much I'm making.
Luckily I have a few more potential jobs lined up, and with any luck, I'll hear back from them in the next couple days. One's at that Mexican place (aesthetically similar-ish to Pete's, lol), another is at Drinker's. The last is at Tashan, a new Indian restaurant/lounge on South Broad that opened last week. My dad has an 'in' with the guy who opened it, so Will and I got into the grand opening last Thursday and made a few really good contacts. One of these contacts is Dennis Gaudenzi, Owner/President of virtually all the event-planning companies in Philadelphia. He gave me a call on Friday asking if Will and I wanted to work at Beer Fest at the Ball Park in return for more contacts, something to add to a resumé, and of course, beer. So we did that yesterday. He called it "volunteering," but I called it AWESOME.
Friday, Will DJ'd a party in South Philly called "Come at Me Bro." I think people took it too literally, because about a million bros came. It was pretty fun, but entirely too crowded and entirely too young. We left as soon as his set was over.
This is Hank, being NSFW.
The weather's getting cooler gradually. It's so refreshing!
