For those of you who don’t know, this week is Harrisburg Restaurant Week. You have until Thursday to check out special $30 three-course menus at raspberries, The Firehouse, Carley’s, El Sol, Stocks on 2nd, Cafe Fresco, Zia’s at Red Door and McGrath's Pub. None of them found their way into this week’s Restaurant Round-Up, but Spotobe encourages all of you to help make this first-time event a success. This week in the round-up, Pete talks up the highly-regarded Spring Garden Restaurant, Dave submits a mediocre experience at Spice and local Twitterer Twoiterrings (who submitted this existential bent on fast food by email) looks at going to McDonald’s in a whole new way. Spring Garden Restaurant Name: Pete When: Friday night at 7:00pm Been Before: Yes Ordered: Pork, beef and rib Korean BBQ lettuce wraps with sides of rice and kimchi served family style. The Food: 4 out of 5. Although kimchi is not my favorite Asian dish, it’s interesting to try all of the different types. The Korean BBQ was delicious and satisfying without being overly filling. The food is very spicy and hot. Three to four family style dishes was more than enough for two couples. The Ambiance: Authentic, bright and clean. Company: A small group of friends. Did Others Like Their Meals: Yes; this was our second trip with the same group. Cost: $15 - 20 per person. The Service: Very good. In most cases the owner serves you and makes good suggestions about what to eat and how to eat it. Notes: Go to Spring Garden when you’re feeling slightly adventurous. The experience is unique and personal. Go with a group of friends that like to try new things. I believe it is BYOB so take a bottle of wine (and maybe wine glasses just to be safe). Have fun! Recommendation: Yes Spice Name: Dave B. When: Sunday Brunch Been Before: Yes Ordered: Chicken bruschetta wrap with chips and a turkey bacon wrap. The Food: Probably like a 6 out of 10. The Ambiance: Very superficial. Somewhat smoky. Slightly rude. Disturbingly noisy. I’m not sure how to say this, but the staff seemed slightly embarrassed and apologized for themselves the whole time. Sorry for the late food, sorry for the mistake, sorry, sorry, sorry. Company: My beautiful daughter. Did Others Like Their Meals: She ate it. Cost: $8 per meal. The Service: I wish this were an isolated incident, but unfortunately, it isn’t. The service is always lacking at Spice. 2 out of 10. Notes: There are plenty of other restaurants in the area to be ignored at. Choose wisely. Recommendation: Sorry, but no. Never again.  McDonald’s Name: Twoitterings When: 3 AM. I feel that if a McDonald’s is open 24-hours a day, 3:00am usually brings out the best in them. Been Before: Once, as a child. Ordered: A Happy Meal. The Food: I’ve come to realize that in this world of user-generated content, my opinion is only as good as the multitude who would so easily resort to giving McDonald’s 3 out of 5 Yahoo stars. Nothing says patronizing like right in the middle. That being said, ratings are existential, they force us to look inward, to examine the core of our uniquely American experience. But, I’ve come to learn that what I’ve so long taken for granted as being synonymous with the Stars and Stripes has been expropriated by the former Soviet Bloc countries. What I’ve also come to learn, is that those same Soviet Bloc countries receive a sodium loaded facsimile of our patriotic Big Mac. In fact, theirs contains over twice the amount of sodium that ours does. So, comrades, who’s on Norvasc now? Oh, yes, the food? I give it 3 out of 5.  The Ambiance: What this is really asking is, did my McDonald’s experience make me happy? Well, it IS a HAPPY meal isn’t it? Shouldn’t that be the point? What kind of toy did I get with my Happy Meal? An Anakin Skywalker bobble-head. Did Anakin make me joyful? The clear answer is no. In fact, I think I threw Anakin out after I was through pretending to be the Hamburglar. Do you know what would have made me truly joyful and thankful? A Princess Leia doll; the one from Return of the Jedi.  Company: Evidently, billions and billions have been served, so it’s more a question of whom I wasn’t with. Of course, I believe this refers to the number of burgers served, not people. Did Others Like Their Meals: Why must we apply absolutes to ethereal questions? Do I appreciate that a 16-year old took a handful of pickles and three squirts too many of ketchup and slapped it on my burger? The answer, my friends, can barely be pondered. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many finely-diced onions can fit between two buns?  Cost: I’ve found that you have to extrapolate the true cost of McDonald’s food over decades of use. Yes, $5.89 for a value meal sounds good now, but how does a quadruple bypass hit you? The Service: I once heard an ancient proverb. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The same can be applied here. Give a man an all white meat Chicken McNugget and you’ll feed him for a few minutes. Show him how they’re made and he’ll never be hungry again. I would rate McDonald’s service as beyond reproach. Recommendation: Not sure.

Patriot News reporter Daniel Victor wrote a story about the negative effects the weak economy is having on restaurant servers and bartenders tip monies. The story ran on the front page, above the fold of this past Sunday’s Patriot News. Within that story, a server and a bartender from the restaurant Spice in Downtown Harrisburg were interviewed [...]

Spice-gate continues. For those of you who aren’t aware, Monday a server and a bartender at Spice were fired after being quoted in a story by reporter Daniel Victor that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Patriot-News. Molly Turner and John Burkholder were asked whether the downturn in the economy had affected the size of their tips, and both answered candidly. When they went to work on Monday, both were informed that their services were no longer required. Early Tuesday morning (12:01am actually, burning the midnight oil eh, Nancy?) the Patriot posted a follow-up story on pennlive.com quoting both about their ouster. Around lunchtime today , another story appeared on Pennlive which said that professional rabble-rouser, political showman and activist Gene Stilp was standing in front of Spice in support of Turner and Burkholder. The story did not include a picture [UPDATE: it does now], so I moseyed over to Spice to shoot one and ask Stilp what was up. Stilp’s antics generally amuse me to no end, and he assured me that he wasn’t trying to get passerby, many of whom stopped to chat, to boycott Spice. Instead, he wanted them to tip the wait staff especially generously and simply ask management to reinstate Turner and Burkholder. “We’ve got to take care of our servers and bartenders,” he said. I stopped by about 12:45, and he said that he hadn’t heard anything from Spice management except for a request to move away from the front door. All in all, it seems like the situation has been handled in a pretty genteel manner by both sides. Anyway, figured I’d take a picture for those of you who prefer them to words, but I really don’t have an opinion.

Sometimes — and I know this is going to be hard for some of you to believe — companies do colossally stupid things. Take Spice, for example. A few days ago, two Spice employees — Molly Turner and John Burkholder — spoke with a Patriot News reporter about how the economy is affecting their tips.  It was an interesting story, and the fact that the employees were actually willing to give honest answers made it somewhat refreshing in this era of watered-down press-release-driven commentary.  Nothing is more droll and un-insightful than reading a corporate press release, so when actual employees give actual answers, it’s always a welcome change of pace. Today, Nancy “Serious Business” Eshelman is reporting that both employees were fired.  Not so much “fired” as in “somebody called them up and told them not to come back”, but “fired” as in “Spice management took their names off the schedules and apparently didn’t bother to let them know until they arrived.”  When asked for a reason, Eric Desrosiers — CEO of Capitol Entertainment Group, owners of Spice — simply stated that their comments were not in line with Spice’s business principles. That’s an interesting point.  They weren’t fired for talking to the media; in fact, the reporter actually had the manager’s permission (who in turn led the reporter to the waiter).  Rather, it appears that they were fired for not saying what Spice wanted them to say. Naturally, Spice has a right to fire their employees for any reason and at any time.  If Eric Desrosiers doesn’t care for the fact that one of his bartenders drives a car, for example, he would be well within his legal rights to fire said bartender.  Pennsylvania is an “at-will” state which, with a few tiny exceptions, means that you can be fired without cause.  Unless the employer terminates over a protected class (such as firing an employee because she’s a woman), or violates a written employment contract, the employer is in the clear.  So with what I’ve read so far, it appears that Spice is entirely legally in the right. But that doesn’t mean it was a wise decision. Second Street is a picomarket driven by nothing if not PR.  My axiom for wireless applies to the downtown scene as much as it did to my stores:  The only metric that matters is customer perception.  All of the marketing, all of the sales, all of the P&L, all of the ARPU, all of the EBIDTA forecasting, all of the inventory, all of the specials — it’s all irrelevant if your customers don’t like you.  And Spice’s actions certainly aren’t going to win them anyone’s praises. I’ve done a lot of time in corporate America.  From small regional companies with barely a hundred employees to large-scale international mammoths.  I’ve seen managers lash out at their employees in anger.  I’ve seen employees fired without so much as a phone call because said employee is dating the boss’s boss’s ex-girlfriend.  I witnessed one employee terminated because her boss got a speeding ticket on the way to the office and needed to lash out at someone.  It’s not businesslike, and it reflects very poorly on the business at hand — to say nothing of the manager.  It’s tacky, it’s classless, and, like the schoolyard bully who beats up the other kids as a means of venting his own frustration, it’s indicative of a lack of grip on reality.  And professional standards. But as some less-ethical types will quickly point out, it isn’t technically illegal.  Therefore, they’ll continue, it must be okay. A better approach would have been to find and resolve any underlying problems that might have been the root of the commentary in question.  Is Spice failing?  Are the prices too high for the crowd?  Is the crowd too high for the prices?  Are there too many fights?  Is the staff allocated in an inefficient manner?  Any manager worth half his or her paycheck would look to eliminate any underlying cause of the problem.  And since the problem is our slowing economy, there’s little that Spice can do. Short of reflect back on the idea of launching a new mid- to high-price restaurant in a recession, of course. So rather than take the comment for what it was — a realistic observation on the real-life impacts of the worsening economy — Spice got mad.  Real mad.  They lashed out.  For a comment that did not reflect poorly on Spice at all, Spice fired two employees, then tried to cover the matter with some corporate babble about the Spice experience. Good job, Spice.  Some high-class ethics you’ve got there.