An Aunt B's mystery solved.

A few days ago, I got this comment on another post: Anonymous said... Jay, I think the world of Kathy and Janie so I am asking that you give them a message for me. The last two times I have eaten at Aunt B's, I have left with the feeling that they must be on the fringe of shutting it down. I usually go in about 11:00 am for lunch, and the last two times I did not see Kathy or Janie. I did tell a waitress about the food. It was cold, except for the fried chicken and pork chops. And the bisquits were at least a day old. These are a couple of indicators that give me the indication that they are on the slippery sloop. I will not go back there as cold food is not what I want for lunch. thanks Jay. October 19, 2009 8:20 AM Jay Moreno said... You just did. They both read my blog. In fact, Cathy and I had a few good laughs just yesterday about what a bunch of malarky this whole thong about my being rude is. If you are getting there right at 11:00, it could be that somebody is not turning the steam table on early enough. You can bet that will be taken care of ASAP. One thing about Cathy and Janie is that they not only appreciate sincere constructive criticism, but act upon it immediately. No, they are not about to shut down. What they are about to do is stop leasing that third room for sure and, unless they can get a concession on the lease on that second room, may close it as well and go back to their original footprint in that location. When business is down and rent is way up - both a reflection of the economy rather than the quality of their product, then you have to do what you have to do. By the way, when you find something wrong, tell them at the time. If they are not there, leave a message for them to call you. They'll appreciate it. They're both local Southern gals. You might also want to tell them when you find something exceptionally good, too. October 19, 2009 10:08 AM Now, flash forward to today about 2:30 PM. I had just sat down for my Sunday dinner at Aunt B's when co-owner Cathy Gentry came over and sat at my table. She told me that she can't find the time to read my blog but every few days. When she did get around to reading the above comments, she and her partner, Janie Highsmith, immediately sprung into action. By questioning the waitresses, they found out that here is what happened. One of their senior kitchen personnel is out on the injured list. The day in question, they were making bread pudding. One of the ingredients of bread pudding is the left over biscuits from the day before. Somebody took the sheet of day old biscuits out of the chill box and placed them in the bread warmer to warm up before crumbling into the bread pudding mix. Because they were short handed, the day old biscuits were not removed from the warmer as early as usual. One of the waitresses, thinking they were the fresh biscuits they make daily without fail, took the old biscuits to the serving line. As soon as they were aware of the error via a customer complaint they immediately pulled all of the old biscuits off of the line and replaced them with the hot biscuits fresh from the oven. When the waitress told Janie who that customer was, Janie got on the phone to that customer, apologised, explained what happened, and assured the customer that they had put in place some procedural safeguards to make sure that that never happens again. Now, as to the matter of the supposedly cold vegetables. They don't know whether that happened or not, but, in an abundance of caution, they have reemphasized to all kitchen hands that the steam tables are to be turned on the moment they walk in the door at 7:00 AM, no matter how uneconomical that might be. Moreover, in addition to the owner/managers and the head cook having thermometers, they went out and bought thermometers for all the kitchen personnel. Anything on the line not hot enough will be detected. If you are attentive, you will notice that every once in a while, someone on the serving line will go down the line and deeply stir all of the serving pans. The reason you do that is to bring up the warmer food from the bottom and bring the cooler food from the top down closer to the bottom and the heat source. If you turn the heat up too high - so that you have simmering food in the serving pans - it breaks down and goes to ruin in short order. As to their closing down, that is not going to happen. Business is way down, as it is everywhere, but they are not going anywhere. Trust me - these ladies will not cut corners on food quality and preparation to save a buck. They take customer satisfaction very seriously, as I think is evident with the way they handled these complaints. Trust me, that does not happen with all local restaurateurs. By the way, they had some killer rutabaga today.