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Story Filed: Friday, July 12, 2002 12:20 PM EDT
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Galatoire's restaurant, a French Quarter institution of fine dining, is in the middle of an all-out food fight.
It has received more than 120 letters of protest from its most loyal patrons, some of whom once dined there weekly. The angriest are boycotting the place. They say Galatoire's managers are ruining the 97-year-old restaurant.
The 19th-century Bourbon Street building was renovated. A new dining room opened. Hand-chipped ice gave way to machine-made cubes. A waiter was fired.
Minor changes? Not to these diners.
``Something drastic is afoot, a renovation not only of the physical features of the classic old Creole eatery, but a renovation of its very soul,'' W. Kenneth Holditch, a retired University of New Orleans literature professor, said in a letter of protest.
Patrons say the changes are galling because the restaurant has remained true to its roots for so long. It debuted in 1905, founded by Jean Galatoire, a French immigrant. It stands today as a civilized reminder that Bourbon Street was named after French kings, not American whiskey.
Galatoire's fans appreciate the dress code (jackets required for dinner), the lamb chops bearnaise ($28), and the sauteed poisson with crabmeat Yvonne ($26). They like the tiled floors, gleaming brass fixtures and the tuxedoed waiters.
``The mise en scene is as good as it gets in New Orleans,'' said John Stinson, an antiques dealer who takes clients to Galatoire's several times a year. ``The drinks are stiff, you're never hurried. The best dinners I've ever had in my life I had at Galatoire's.''
Galatoire's developed customers loyal enough to pay someone else to stand in line -- sometimes all day -- to guarantee a table and get around the restaurant's refusal to take reservations in its first-floor dining room.
A key to the restaurant's success has long been a staff of expert career waiters, some of whose fathers also worked there. Some regulars never look at the menu, relying on their waiter to pick appetizers, entrees and wines. Until recently, in fact, there was no wine list, only a waiter's suggestions. Waiters also mixed the cocktails.
``The waiter always knew what you wanted and how to make it,'' Holditch said.
The protest letters started coming after the April 27 firing of Gilberto Eyzaguirre, a waiter for 23 years who was popular with customers but had twice been accused of sexual harassment.
Holditch and other letter writers, including a former judge, doctors, lawyers and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, praised Eyzaguirre's wit, taste and skill. Some have said they won't go back unless he is rehired.
``I urge you ... to reinstate Gilbert post haste and stop the radical, devastating tide of change,'' Holditch wrote.
Eyzaguirre was traveling and unavailable for comment. Melvin Rodrigue, Galatoire's general manager, would not discuss Eyzaguirre's case.
Rodrigue has become the main target for critics of changes at Galatoire's. He was hired five years ago, the first time in history that the family-dominated board of directors had selected a non-Galatoire to run the restaurant.
When some longtime patrons noticed changes after his hiring, they blamed Rodrigue. He declined to address their complaints directly.
``I'm very appreciative of how passionate people are about our restaurant,'' he said. ``They hold our traditions dearly, and we appreciate that.''
The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune ran a three-page article about the dispute. In some circles, Galatoire's and Eyzaguirre's firing have become topic No. 1. Others say the issue has been overblown.
``It's a tempest in a martini glass,'' said Marcelle Saussy, who eats at Galatoire's on special occasions. ``I think it's crazy for them to say they'll never go back to Galatoire's.''
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FIRST-PERSON Change: its agonies & inevitability
by Joe McKeever
July 18, 2002
KENNER, La. (BP)--We have a firestorm raging here in New Orleans. It started the other day when Galatoire's restaurant fired a veteran waiter named Gilberto for sexual harassment. First, a word about this world-famous eatery which some refer to as a temple of food.
Thirty years ago when I was traveling to New Orleans every week to work on a doctorate at the Baptist seminary, a friend handed me some bills and said, "Go to Galatoire's and eat their trout amandine. It's the best in the world." So, along with my buddy and fellow student J. Roy McComb, I made the trek to Bourbon Street and joined the crowd standing in line on the sidewalk -- no advance reservations taken -- and enjoyed a great meal. I've been back once, but there endeth my knowledge of this legendary restaurant.
When the news of Gilberto's termination got out, the restaurant began to be swamped with letters from patrons. One diner contacted others who all wrote letters to be bound in book form and delivered to the restaurant. It turns out that losing their favorite waiter was not the only gripe these folks had.
The Sunday edition of The Times-Picayune ran a long cover article on the restaurant blowup and the barrage of criticism the management is receiving. Reporters interviewed patrons -- mostly from the elite of the city, you understand (this is not a cheap place to eat) -- who each had additional complaints to lodge.
There was the business about the new manager. He's 29 years old. What could he possibly know of this restaurant's great traditions? Furthermore, they are now taking reservations, can you believe? They've opened up a second floor of the restaurant, whereas before it was small and cozy and diners could sit at a table for hours, lingering over their coffee. In the good old days, a waiter would chip ice for your drinks at your table, whereas now the management has brought in an ice- making machine! One diner recalled days when the eggplant was served with the skin intact, but now it has been removed. "It's still delicious," he says, "but I miss the skin." Formerly, there was no bartender and waiters mixed drinks for their diners, sometimes over- generously. These days, a bartender rides herd on the booze. Add to that the final insult of firing their favorite waiter, Gilberto -- who knew everyone's names, who took a personal interest in you, who had even been known to go back to the kitchen and cook up a special meal for you himself -- and it was the last straw.
The editor had to clear off the editorial page for several days. Citizens were incensed at the hoity-toity attitude of the city's elite who in this post-Sept. 11 world have nothing better to do than complain about the skin of an eggplant and defend a sexual harasser, and wanted to register their rancor. Meanwhile, Gilberto is still out of a job.
Someone came up to me Sunday night at church and asked if I had read the article about Galatoire's. "You need to read it," he said, "it's just exactly like what churches go through." He was right.
My first pastorate was Unity Baptist Church in Kimberly, Ala., for the calendar year of 1963. I've been at it ever since. Changes? How much time do you have? I recall the first time I saw a drum set in a sanctuary. I thought it was like putting a Minnie Pearl hat on the Mona Lisa. These days, my church has a set of digital drums up there. And chairs for the rest of the orchestra. And banners around the wall. And fulltime staffers to deal with preschool and youth and singles and every other segment of the population you can name.
Everyone has his own computer terminal and some carry laptops around. Cell phones. Fax machines. Projectors and screens in church. Drama. And members going out this year to minister in Thailand, Moscow, Tanzania, Romania, Ireland, Peru, China and Australia.
You don't hear stories anymore of churches that split because some wanted the piano on the left side of the church, or over the color of the carpet. It's bigger stuff now, like whether we will have a contemporary or traditional or blended worship service, whether to relocate to where the population is or to hold forth on the block where my grand-daddy was the Sunday School superintendent. Shall we change our format to reach the young adults or sing the old songs that the retirees cut their teeth on?
In 40-plus years of pastoral ministry, here is what I have learned about change in the church:
1. It's real hard, even for those of us doing it. Almost no one enjoys it.
2. It's necessary if we want to stay fresh and to find better ways to do our work.
3. It's foolish, however, to make changes just for changes' sake.
4. The best way to minimize the difficulty of change is to always be tweaking the services and forever be making little changes around the place. That way, no one gets too settled in liking it one way.
5. To be alive is to change. Not to change is to die. The only way the human body stays alive and fresh and energetic is the continual process of regeneration it goes through, replenishing every cell every few years.
6. Every time God calls away old members, by moving van or hearse, and every time new people move in, he is fine-tuning your church. That's another term for change.
What was it the Lord said? "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins" (Luke 5:37-38).
Big tips, big uproar in the Big Easy 8/8/02
By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — A ruckus has erupted down on Bourbon Street, if you can imagine that.
But not one of your every-night slobberfests starring
wobbly convention-
No, this contretemps is fraying the social fabric of the upper classes. Ruffling the seersucker. It carries a whiff of local boy Tennessee Williams' work, involving as it does charges of sexual misconduct, a splintered old family, meddling outsiders and diluted Sazerac cocktails.
This one involves a restaurant that is the city's soul.
It began on April 27, when Gilberto Eyzaguirre, a waiter for nearly 23 years at Galatoire's, was fired after two female employees accused him of sexual harassment within two months.
Eyzaguirre, 56, disputes the accusations but says he isn't fighting his dismissal. The women haven't spoken publicly, and the restaurant management won't discuss the situation.
Normally, a sad episode such as this would have been quietly flushed into the Mississippi by now. But the aftermath has evolved into a summer-long tragicomedy. Huge segments of The City That Care Forgot have been paying extra-close attention.
To understand why a city beleaguered by street crime, political corruption and chronically bad pro football would clutch its breast over the firing of a waiter, one must accept certain New Orleans truths: The sword swallowers in Jackson Square are the sanest residents. It's crazy-hot. Tradition is thicker than the humidity and often more unbearable. And 97-year-old Galatoire's is sacred ground.
"There are priorities down here that aren't the same as the rest of the country's," says food writer Gene Bourg. "New Orleans was restaurant-obsessed before any other city in the United States. Dining was a way of life here before the Civil War, not just for the wealthy but for the man in the street."
And no place is more obsessed over than Galatoire's, a family-owned bastion of French Creole cooking that shares a French Quarter block with Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, Mango Mango Daiquiris and The Bourbon Strip Tease adult gift shop.
The food is neither the city's best nor its most expensive. But it is often said that the only important business in New Orleans gets transacted over Friday lunches at Galatoire's — lunches that may bleed into the cocktail hour and then into dinner. William Faulkner, Walker Percy and Williams have graced the tables, and numerous indicted politicians have disgraced them.
"It's a place where people fall in and out of love," says French Quarter antiques dealer Patrick Dunne, who has dined there for decades.
The restaurant's clubby, old-world tone was set in the
early 20th century by founder Jean Galatoire and his descendants, and it has
changed very little until some recent tweaking. Tuxedoed waiters such as
"Having your own waiter made you feel like a hotshot," Dunne says. "You could give me a car, and it wouldn't make me feel as good as signing my name to a Galatoire's charge slip.
"They knew your drink and made it themselves. The waiters all had their fiefdoms and clients, and they rewarded us with a giant portion of crab or a big bourbon on the rocks. And I'm sure that created anarchy. On the other hand, that's what creates the magic."
But anarchy staged in an aging venue eventually takes its toll, as the Galatoire family investors, now numbering 24, came to realize.
By the early 1990s, the place was tired, "like a museum," says Bourg, who speculates that revenues hadn't kept pace, either.
So in 1997, the board of directors looked outside the family for a general manager and hired New Orleans native Melvin Rodrigue, then 24. They charged him with overseeing a renovation, reining in the excesses and ushering in a few modern business practices such as tracking orders by computer and accepting reservations.
Many customers believe some of those moves might have contributed to Eyzaguirre's dismissal and certainly led to the outsized outcry from the old-guard regulars.
So does Eyzaguirre. "I think I had become too popular." The waiter says he would return if asked but doesn't believe that will happen and is sending out résumés.
Soon after Eyzaguirre's firing, word spread among his former clients, and a letter-writing campaign commenced. In late May, prominent physician Brobson Lutz collected 123 letters of protest, bound them in plastic and sent them to Galatoire's board. Among those pleading for Eyzaguirre's return were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford and a high-powered collection of judges, lawyers, businessmen and socialites.
Some of the missives were calm and measured: "Surely, after 22 years of his life being a good ambassador for Galatoire's to the world, there is still room for him there," Ford wrote.
Others slathered on the local color: "I laid ridiculously high tips on Gilberto because he understood the importance of wit and hard drinking to my Galatoire's meal," wrote businessman John Stinson. "All of my clients and ugly girlfriends have been delighted with him."
In the letters and subsequent endless debates, Eyzaguirre's dismissal became the excuse for the old guard to air every niggling grievance that had been festering in their souls for years.
Socialite Mickey Easterling complained about the drink-diluting, machine-made ice that replaced the ice chipped from blocks. Writer Kenneth Holditch speaks of a slackened dress code and changes in the shrimp Clemenceau. Others weighed in on what they feel is the tackiness of the upstairs dining rooms, reopened in 1999 after a $3 million renovation.
Some of the anger was directed at Rodrigue, who, until he was hired, had never dined at the restaurant. Though some of the changes had occurred or were planned before his hiring, he became a target.
"I don't want to change Galatoire's," Rodrigue says. "But whether we like it or not, Galatoire's changed a long time ago. It's a different market, more competitive, and you just can't keep letting things go the way that they go and hope that in the end you still have a restaurant. You can't have 26 waiters making the decisions for a business."
Nonsense, says Holditch, who is working on a book about the early days at Galatoire's. "Nobody wants Galatoire's to be current," he says. "It's a time warp. Change is necessary on occasion, but you don't change that which is working."
Adds Dunne, wearily: "Things change. This city is addicted to looking backward rather than forward. People want to have cocktails with ghosts, not prophets."
The dialogue has spilled out into a Web site, www.welove
The Times-Picayune newspaper weighed in with a three-page article, unleashing a flood of letters to the editor, mostly bashing the pro-Gilberto faction for whining about a waiter when the world around them is going to hell.
"It was like a class rage that simmered below the surface. I had never seen that before," says Brett Anderson, who wrote the article.
More theatrics have followed. On July 12, two men dashed into the dining room during lunch carrying about 100 helium-filled balloons printed with the Gilberto Web site address and released them toward the 14-foot ceiling, to the cheers of patrons.
Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose has written several humorous pieces, calling the book of protest letters "the best publication to come out of this city since A Confederacy of Dunces."
And last week at Le Chat Noir theater, Rose staged a show called The Galatoire's Monologues, in which comedians and actors read from the letters. The two sold-out performances, which benefited a food bank, were advertised as "feeding the hungry on the indignation of the overfed." Two more shows have just been added.
Meanwhile, business at the restaurant has been unusually strong. "Galatoire's owes The Times-Picayune and the letter writers a million bucks in free publicity," Bourg says. "That place is packed!"
With other local scandals emerging — last week, 84 city workers were charged with corruption — the Galatoire's drama finally seems to be playing out.
Or is it?
"In this city," says Lutz, "it usually takes a jazz funeral to end the mourning, and there has been no funeral."
Tempest in a saucepan: Scandal, New Orleans style
By William Hageman Tribune staff reporter Published November 7, 2002
NEW ORLEANS -- A waiter is fired for sexual harassment.
In most cities, the story might circulate among the restaurant's regulars for a few days, then die.
But this is New Orleans. The restaurant is the venerable Galatoire's. And the waiter is Gilberto Eyzaguirre, a top-notch server with, it's now obvious, many friends -- vocal friends, prominent friends, silly friends -- who have turned his dismissal into theater of the absurd.
There have been pranks, a mass letter-writing campaign, a series of performance art/cabaret shows based on the situation, and even a jazz funeral earlier this month tweaking Galatoire's.
"I've been in a couple of other cities, and I would say this is true New Orleans," says Galatoire's general manager, Melvin Rodrigue.
Only now, after six months, are there signs things are dying down. But before the goofy details, some history.
Eyzaguirre, 56, came to the U.S. from Peru in 1979 and got a job as a waiter at Galatoire's. He was a natural -- "I started developing an osmosis with customers," is how he puts it -- and even after earning a business degree from the University of New Orleans he stayed on as a waiter. A married father of three, his second family is the loyal clientele he has built over the years.
"When you wait on different generations of a family, you become part of their life," he says. "You're like a family member."
Problems began in April when Eyzaguirre was told to pack his tux and hit the bricks after he was accused of sexual harassment by a co-worker. It was the second accusation in two months against Eyzaguirre, forcing the hand of management at the bustling 97-year-old institution known for its French-Creole cooking and impeccable service.
What exactly happened is, of course, a matter of dispute. Eyzaguirre either touched a waitress from behind or merely placed his hand on her shoulder as he passed her in the narrow space between tables at Galatoire's. She may have dropped several beers when he touched her. Or not. The second incident allegedly involved him placing his hand on the hand or arm of another co-worker. He said he was merely trying to get past her. She claimed it was more. Classic cases of he said/she said.
"In 23 years, I waited on a million people," Eyzaguirre says. "I've never had a complaint on anything of this type in my file."
(Rodrigue declined to comment on the specifics of the firing, but he did say it hadn't hurt business. Galatoire's had "probably the best summer in the history of the restaurant," he says.)
The reasons vary
Eyzaguirre's supporters claim the firing was either a case of jealousy -- a few co-workers wanted him gone, the theory goes, because so many customers asked for him as their waiter that they lost out on tips -- or perhaps just another change in the way Galatoire's does business, something it has been under fire for recently.
Either way, once Eyzaguirre was fired, dozens of Galatoire's regulars -- "my people," he calls them -- rallied to his defense and tried to get him rehired.
When it became obvious Galatoire's was not going to bring Eyzaguirre back, he was hired by The Bombay Club, an eatery a couple of blocks away from Galatoire's. (Some of his followers scouted the place to make sure it would be a suitable establishment for him; he checked it out and pronounced it worthy, and went to work there in August.)
"He's brought his people," says owner/manager Richard Fiske. "They've been starting to come in."
If nothing else, Eyzaguirre's customers are loyal. And why not? Even at Galatoire's, with career waiters who know their regulars by name, mix a diner's cocktails and are trusted to the point of choosing their customers' meals, he was special.
"If you ever go to a restaurant, you realize there are those who know how to set a table, know how to serve a table, anticipate the needs of a client, especially if they've been serving that client many, many years," says Mickey Easterling, something of a grande dame around New Orleans and one of Eyzaguirre's "people" for more than 20 years.
That's Eyzaguirre, though he brings a lot more to the table than warm bread.
"He almost guides the customer through the dining experience," Fiske says. "First, with information -- what is on the menu, what we have to offer that night. Second, he delivers service, smooth and unobtrusive, reflecting the pace of the customer. Finally, it's the general conversation that goes with the meal. Information like little tidbits about the club, information about who he is. He gives his regulars a sense of entertainment while they're dining."
The making of a regular
Eyzaguirre worked his charm on Dr. Brobson Lutz about a dozen years ago. Lutz, the former director of health for the City of New Orleans, went to Galatoire's with a friend, who introduced him to Eyzaguirre.
"About a month later I got this phone call," Lutz says. "It's Gilberto, and he says, `Dr. Lutz, you haven't come back. You didn't like my restaurant?' So I went back. And then I learned that if I didn't go at least once a month, Gilberto would call. So I'd go every month just to miss the phone call."
He soon was a regular, as was Dakin Williams, brother of Tennessee Williams. When he's in New Orleans for the annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, he has always brought a crowd to Galatoire's to see his friend.
"Gilberto gives me special treatment," he says. "We have drinks, usually, before dinner, and he makes sure we get ample size -- with minimum ice and maximum amount of alcohol. And during cocktails he brings in special hors d'oeuvres that aren't on the menu. And he's very attentive. Everybody has a delightful time."
You just don't find guys like that falling off balconies in the French Quarter. Usually. That's why there was an uproar when Eyzaguirre was fired. Angry letters were written to Galatoire's. A Web site (www.welovegilberto.com) was set up to display the letters and keep his fans updated. Copies of more than 130 letters were collected in bound volumes and delivered to the restaurant's board of directors at its annual meeting last summer. A revolt -- though genteel -- was in full swing.
The board, though, was unmoved. So the protests escalated into guerrilla warfare. During one busy Friday lunchtime -- Galatoire's is the meeting place for lawyers on Friday afternoons -- two men walked into the restaurant and released 100 black helium balloons with "welovegilberto.com" printed on them. They floated to the ceiling, out of reach of Galatoire's staff, which could only keep serving up martinis and Sazeracs.
The restaurant took another hit in July when New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant writer Brett Anderson did a long piece detailing not only le affaire d'Gilberto, but other recent changes that had alienated longtime regulars. (To outsiders, these are really small potatoes, such as using machine-made ice cubes instead of hand-chipped ice, or letting customers -- gasp! -- pay via credit card. But this is, after all, New Orleans. And this is, after all, Galatoire's.)
The issue runs its course
After the letters and the newspaper articles, the story began to fade. But every time things would quiet down, someone would stir the pot once more.
In July, for example, a group of local actors, stand-up comedians, singers and dancers picked up the cause. They began doing readings of the angry letters written on Eyzaguirre's behalf at a local cabaret. The shows, "Galatoire's Monologues," are regular sellouts.
"On any given night, about half the people there either wrote the letters or support the people who did, and the other half think the people who wrote the letters are idiots," says Chris Rose, a columnist for the Times-Picayune and the director of the production.
"It's fun. And it seems to have taken on a life of its own. In fact, we can't seem to stop it."
Last month they held what they vow are their last four shows, which they called "Last Call at Galatoire's."
"After this I think it's time to focus on other topics," Rose says.
Some folks have been saying that for months. But Eyzaguirre's supporters made one last splash last month by holding a surprise New Orleans jazz funeral at Galatoire's. The festivities started with 35 or 40 supporters planted in the usual Friday afternoon crowd. A rag-tag funeral band arrived out front and the diners stood up en masse and walked out, following the musicians from Galatoire's to The Bombay Club.
"Some people thought the funeral was Gilberto, that he had died," Lutz says with a hearty laugh. "But the funeral was laying to rest the old traditions of Galatoire's, and they were resurrected at The Bombay Club."
The funeral has been held and the "Monologues" are history. The party may finally be over.
"It's been a gas," Rose says. "Nobody has ever approached us about what lies beneath. We're well aware of, and everybody is, the unspoken thing, that technically this is not stuff you joke about. I mean, Adam Sandler is not going to make a bright comedy about sexual harassment. And we seem to have gone and made it a very ridiculous topic."
"Is it over? I really don't know," says Rodrigue. "I mean, I hope so. This isn't something we wanted to drag out. Every time I think it's over something else happens."
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
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