Mad Dogs & Englishmen May Newsletter
When Mad Dogs opened its doors in its original location our neighbor was the pizzeria Parranellis.
Parranellis has gone down in legend, not only for its extraordinarily good pizzas but for its eccentricity. In terms of bizarreness, our little pub at 4115, with all its peculiarities, paled by comparison.
The owner, Jack, part native American, part various other exotic blood lines, was fond of stuffed pigs. They had their own table and refused to budge even when the rest of the joint was jammed to capacity. Jack was not fond of complaints. Ask for a re-do, question the wait- time, complain about your server or the table not being wiped to your satisfaction and you would be asked to leave. Actually, not asked...ordered
Mad Dogs opened its doors in late 1991 without much clue of what it took to operate a restaurant. Jack was paternal towards us right from the start. His sympathies lay with the operator not the customers. Customers were a nuisance that got in the way of everything. The customer was almost always wrong. He treated customers much like a techy rock star treats fans who demand he play his old hits. His pizzas were delicious, inventive, unrivalled, lovingly prepared and never to be questioned. His loyalty was to his staff, never the customer and yet they came in droves for his exquisite dishes. Perhaps they even enjoyed being bullied. It was a novel experience.
The demise of Parranellis has always been shrouded in mystery. It certainly didn’t help that Jack decided to let off Fourth of July fireworks from the roof of his building and that a rocket hit the windscreen of a passing police car resulting in a shouting match. I remember seeing a row of servers and cooks spread- eagled in handcuffs on the pavement outside whilst customers, nervous of causing offence, were still trying to pay.
I have occasionally come across other proprietors that felt much the same way about operating their establishments. Near where I was brought up in England sat a pub up a hill, almost impossible to find, named The Dew Drop. A little gem of a country pub. There were no signposts as if the publican desired it to remain hidden. My father loved it, and we would often venture there on Sunday afternoons in the summer. He would sip a gin and tonic, and feast on Smiths crisps, whilst watching us run around in the garden or lose the letters on
the scrabble board. One such Sunday, I remember, he asked the publican, George, how he was.
“Not good Robert, not good at all.”
“Oh,” replied my father, “sorry to hear that, George. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Robert. I will tell you what’s wrong. All these people came in for lunch. It was a bloody nightmare.”
This summer I am thinking of touring some pubs in the Cotswolds with my children. They are very easy children in their early twenties. On holiday, they don’t spend hours looking at their phones, they seldom complain about anything I want to do, and almost never ask to buy anything. They view me with a mixture of affection and bemusement. On one famous occasion in Rome, whilst I was arguing with the proprietor of a trattoria over the size of the bill, I could see they had both moved to the far side of the Piazza Navona and were literally hiding, mortified by their nutty father.
The best time to plan a holiday is right after your accountant tells you that you can’t afford one. “Wouldn’t touring pubs in the Cotswolds be tax deductible for all of us?” I suggested to mine recently.
“I thought your daughter was a hairdresser,” he countered.
With restaurants, it’s usually safer to adopt the mantra that the customer must generally be right so why does this never work with accountants?
