Bonobos’s Hilarious Customer Service
t says: Some ads for “Bonobos” kept following me around the internet. It seemed like every time I opened up facebook, there was an ad off to the right hawking pants and/or shoes. Obviously, my recent web searches were being tracked so this ad was following me. (I hate it when this happens, but what’s a person to do?) Then I saw a “get $50 off on your first order” code. How could I resist? There’s a sucker born every minute, and for this minute, it was me. So I browsed the Bonobos website and ordered some shoes. Unfortunately, there was a very tiny defect in the leather upper, so I sent off an email to them with pictures of the little sliver of leather that was miscut and planned to call them the following day.
See the little miscut?
Somehow, I also attached a pic from our trip to Budapest. I must have highlighted it by accident from the memory card from our camera (we used the same camera on our recent trip).
This has NOTHING to do with my shoes ...
So I also sent a second email to them apologizing for the useless picture.
The following morning, I called them and I reached a REAL person immediately! No recordings, pushing buttons to “direct my call”, no foreign languages, just a straight-up person. It took me by surprise. I explained the situation and he pulled up the photos. He said that he’d see if the team could get a new shoe in from the manufacturer (I had ordered the last pair in that size) or alternatively I could keep the defective merchandise for a discount (or I could just return the shoes for a full refund). Because I loved the shoe, I opted to wait and see if a new pair could be sourced. A few hours later, I got an email from them.
“Hey t,
Derek
PS. Not sure why a picture of me leaving the Cloud City in my X-Wing was attached here”
Bonobos's employee's X-wing? If so, they are paying these guys WAY too much!
Naturally, I found this response to be HILARIOUS. As a former Star Wars fan (I lost faith when they released the prequel trilogy), I was intrigued. I also found it odd that he be so forward/bold as to include such a picture – I mean what if I had been a Trekie instead?
“best.
customer.
service.
email.
ever.(i was always more of an A-wing kind of guy – fast and annoying. and i think we can all agree that Y-wings are stupid).sounds good re: replacement. in an ideal world, i’ll take a brand new shoe (assuming it can be done relatively quickly – i kind of need it by august – but want to break it in beforehand – no one wants to be “that guy with the new shoes”). i’m thankful that england doesn’t care about the holiday weekend coming up – maybe they’ll get back to you guys quickly!!in a less-than-ideal world, i can be convinced to keep these – but we’ll cross that bridge if we need to, later.
thanks for all of your help.”
To which he responded:
“Hey t,
I’ll keep you abreast of what happens with those Grensons.
And yes, Y-wings are the worst.
Talk soon,
Derek”
What a great email exchange. On one hand, I’m sad I don’t yet have the pair of shoes I wanted. On the other, I’m ok with waiting if they’re going to be this cool about it …
UPDATE: At less than one week after these emails were initiated, a new pair of shoes has already been sourced from Grenson, sent to Bonobos, and is now on its way to me. AND, I got an email confirming it – without having to pester them. While I won’t hold my breath, I wonder if it’ll get here before the weekend – that’d be out-of-control!
Bistrot La Minette – not bad, not great
t says: Right before our recent trip (i.e. those pics from Vienna), g and I realized that we had no food in the house. Consequently, we just had to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Bistrot La Minette, as we had never been before …
June 2011, Weekday Dinner, Party of 2. g and I met the host, who showed us to our table. Right before parting, he said, “and I hope you enjoy your meal” – but he said it with such finality that g responded [to me, quietly], “I guess we’re not going to be seeing that guy again.” Lo and behold … we didn’t.
We were seated right next to the bread-cutting-table. Thankfully, we were not hit with any errant pieces of crusty bread. The bread was actually quite delicious, with a nice crispy crust, but a soft, forgiving interior. And they served it in a mini-bucket!
Bread bucket.
Easily some of the best baguette I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I was psyched!
My next course was the escargot, which was presented in individual little “pots”.
9 individual snails, waiting to be eaten.
The escargots were pretty good. Great texture and made in such a way to show off the flavors of the snails, themselves (and garlic …). Personally, I prefer Bibou’s, which impart a bit more flavor due to the surrounding jus, but that’s just me. Purists may prefer it this way. So this was tasty, but not quite a home-run.
For our mains, I believe g had rabbit and pasta. It was only “ok” for her, as the rabbit (which they serve a large portion of), while being cooked well, didn’t have a lot of flavor, which was sad (she said it was, “like chicken”). And then the sauce, itself, didn’t really do much to help the situation in that it really didn’t complement the flavors/textures of rabbit – it was more like a thick, creamy, way-too-heavy sauce that made the dish seem far heartier than it should have. I had the lamb “stew”, which was more like an entree of lamb cooked two ways (some of it was sous vide I believe) accompanied by some veggies. Once again, the sous vide lamb, itself, was a beautiful texture, but there was no flavor that blew me away. The veggies were fine (peas were a little too al dente for me – call me a pea wuss) but a bit underwhelming in flavor – but nonetheless served a purpose in that they broke the monotony of the lamb. Actually, I almost feel like there needed to be either more accompaniment or less lamb so that I wouldn’t get too “tired” with the dish.
And for dessert, g and I ventured the strawberry cafloutie which was a pretty sad dessert. The strawberry tasted weak, the dough bordered on rubbery/insipid, and the ice cream was forgettable (I actually forget what flavor it was). Bummer.
So, in the end, Bistro La Minette didn’t quite do it for us. Maybe it was because we were just coming off of a dinner at Bibou. Maybe they were having a bad night (some sort of graduation party was going on the back). Maybe it was because my primitive tastebuds can’t appreciate the subtleties in their cooking. Unfortunately, this puts Bistro La Minette in the category of restaurants that we’ll be happy to go to with friends, but not likely returning on our own accord. It’s a bummer because the chef, from what we gather, is a really nice guy. Sorry chef.
It’s a Viennese Food Picture Whirlwind!
t says: g and I visited drb and his now-fiance in Vienna. A lot of awesome sites were visited and various foods were eaten. Here’s the picture-show! While we did do some sight-seeing and cultural edification, we recognize that this is a “food and lifestyle blog”, not to be confused with a “lifestyle and food blog”. Consequently, we will consolidate the far-less-important, non-food things into a separate post later. So, without further ado …
The first thing we did was go to a restaurant and EAT. We told drb to take us someplace unmistakably "Austrian". He did - we went to some restaurant that translates into "7 Star Bar" or something like that (named after the street it was on). What awaited on the menu was this bad boy you see before you: the "pork knuckle". It was huge - it took two of us to eat it. What we appreciated was the accompaniment which is apparently an Austrian attempt at "a well-balanced diet" (i.e. some shreds of lettuce and three slices of tomato).
This is a horrible picture, but it illustrates hearty Austrian cooking: "gnocchi" covered in cheese and bacon. What more do you need than starch, cheese, and bacon?
The next day, we went to Meierei which is a "cheese bar" that is associated with Steiereck, the only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Vienna. We were in for a ridiculous cheese brunch. drb reportedly had "cheese legs" by the time he was done eating. The clinical manifestations and pathophysiology of this disease have not yet been characterized, but I'll be sure to write up a case report for NEJM.
Fresh from the oven apple strudel. I'm not a huge fan of apples, but this was damn tasty.
drb detests fruit, so he went for the "milk strudel" and vanilla cream. I suspect that this is a contributing factor in the development of "cheese legs".
We did hit up a couple of Asian restaurants in Vienna. This was from our first one. It's apparently kimchi. At the time, I wondered why it was that it appeared so anemic and suspected that maybe the Austrians couldn't handle the heat, preferring instead garlic and vinegar. Apparently this "white kimchi" is a separate style of kimchi altogether and can be found in Korea along with normal kimchi! (Thanks for the 4-1-1 mom)
The Austrians do sushi as well ... but they're rice:fish ratio is a bit off (a LOT of rice). I want to say that nothing was at all "bad" or "wrong" or anything like that, but I nevertheless still think it's hilarious that we were in Austria ... eating sushi ... Of course, we did get to hang out with one of drb's super-cool physics friends at this meal, so it was totally worth it.
The following day, we started off the Austrian way by going to a cafe … But apparently I accidentally deleted the pictures. Imagine a toasted ham and cheese sandwich topped with a fried, over-medium egg. Pretty delicious! g noted that the ham over there isn’t so “hammy” – we ate ham a few times and she didn’t cry uncle! (Normally, g can consume only a small amount of ham over a given period.)
Later in the day – we had to find us some ice cream, as it was hot as “bwawls” outside.
Zanoni and Zanoni gelato ... Frommer's says it's "the best". I'd say it was "good", but hoped there was some better gelato hiding somewhere else ...
drb cooked us a fabulous dinner. I have no pictures of his curry, but it was delicious. kp better watch out, cuz this white boy has some skills.
The "bread basket" at Cafe Westend: croissant, hard pretzels, and a piece of jerky ... totally expected, right?
Some sort of apricot pastry from Naschmarkt. The Austrians LOVE apricot, apparently. Overall, the pastry was "meh" - too much apricot!
Also from Nashmarkt: the best danish that g has ever had!! It's not like it was some sort of novel blow-your-mind, redefine-danishes-forever danish. But the strawberry filling was REAL strawberry, the dough was soft with a light crust, nothing was mushy, nothing was over-sweetened. Basically, it was a danish that lacked all of the normal danish-related flaws - "best ever danish" by default!
"Hot dogs" in Vienna are different than those here. Over there, they use REAL rolls (like Amaroso rolls). They stab these rolls with a heated metal spike, and shoved into it a sausage of your choice (e.g. kielbasa). It was approximately 87 times better than a normal hot dog.
This sucky picture was to remind me to tell the world that there is gelato in Vienna better than Zanoni and Zanoni. Wherever the crap drb took us on this day has awesome flavors (that green is green tea!) and superb texture. Very nearly as good as capo giro!
Cafe Ritter's "chocolate pancake dessert" (which I ate for breakfast). It's like crepes and nutella (and some fruit). It was so frickin delicious (although probably not that different than eating straight-up nutella).
We were told there was an awesome gelato place right next to Zanoni and Zanoni that was superior to Zanoni and Zanoni. So we set out to look for it. We couldn't find it. We were so hungry for ice cream (it was hot outside) that we no choice but to eat at ... Zanoni and Zanoni - BLAST! It wasn't bad, but let's just say that the "chicken shnitzel sandwich" is precisely the same as those chicken patties you could find in any cafeteria across the US.
This picture is to remind me to tell you of a restaurant called "Kontrapunkt". They do this thing where you sit down and courses will start coming out (which you have no say in what comes except to specify food restrictions/allergies), and then you tell them to stop at whatever course you're full. We lasted four courses (this was #1 - some sort of meat carpaccio), but it soon got really dark outside, so I'll spare you the other pictures. It was a wonderful time though! I liked the element of surprise. So if you ever go to Vienna, check out this restaurant (and don't ever eat the non-gelato food at Zanoni and Zanoni). The owner of Kontrapunkt came out and chatted with us some throughout the meal - he is a SUPER nice guy. He showed up later at the end of the meal and said "yea, so we have an unlabeled bottle of sweet wine in the cellar - it's got to be at least 30 years old ... you want some". Yes we did ... it tasted like a really caramelly Tokaji (Hungarian sweet wine). Not too shabby!
We next traveled to Budapest … more pictures to come …
On our way back!
t says: g and I have been MIA over the past week or so – we’ve been conquering a little slice of eastern Europe – but we’ll be back soon, with stories and pictures!
Cannele fight
t says: On Saturdays in the Rittenhouse Market, there’s a guy that sells little baked thingees called canneles.
Ever had a canele?
They are these wonderfully delicious cylindrical treats that are a little crisp on the outside (kind of like burnt sugar) and egg-custardy (not like soft serve ice cream – kind of like a really really moist French Cruller) on the inside.
I’ve seen these at Garces Trading Company, too – but trust me they are not the same. The inside isn’t as eggy/moist, and the outside definitely does not have that crisped exterior.
So when I saw the guy on Rittenhouse, I told him how I felt …
me: You know, they have these at Garces Trading Company, too. But to be honest, I yours are better.
him: Yea I think so too. But Garces knows it – he’s had mine a couple of times …
Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
The Wedge + Fig Takeover
v says: Just wanted to talk Wedge + Fig which took over OC Cheese Shop. According to the waiter, one of the new owners used to own Flying Monkey in Reading Terminal. The new ownership has brought this location more focus. Dining is the focus now, whereas before the focus wasn’t clear. They still have a nice selection of cheese, which seems reasonably priced. Their selection doesn’t compete with DiBruno’s or Garces, but would definitely suffice in a pinch.
Overall the food was simple yet good, light yet filling. The service was still working out some of its kinks, but generally accomodating and very nice. The draw here is both the simple food and the relaxing ambience. This is by far the most relaxing dining experience I’ve had since living in Central America. The fruit plate was very good, the lox and cream cheese on an everything bagel was great!
They do have a corkage fee of 4$ for brunch, but not for dinner. This is not the place you would go with a bottle of vodka and bloody mary mix. Stick to champagne, wine, and possibly beer.
a says: I agree with v’s assessment. My omelet of the day, with mushrooms, peppers, and chicken sausage, was well executed and plated. I think the flavor could “pop” a bit more but I have faith this will come. Also, the music selection was on-point, if you enjoy mainstream classical. All-in-all, a great way to spend Sunday (or any day) brunch when the weather is on your side.
Night Market Fun
Guapos! You're so far away!! (and no, we don't know the couple standing in front of us)
g and I decided on a hammer-and-anvil strategy. While she waited in line as the anvil, I was the hammer that went off on my own to search for foods could be had for faster. It was hot as bwawls (that’s not a typo), so I craved something cold. The drink lines, even for the lemonade, were very long. And then I spotted Jimmy’s (“Jimmies”).
Cupcakes, ay?
"Jaime Lee Curtis", ay?
A real ice cream sandwich!
Jaimee Lee Curtis cupcake?
We resumed waiting in line and k and cm showed up. They, too, decided to float and cm reported that he was going to retrieve some pizza. k, on the other hand, resumed being the social butterfly that she is and kept running into people to talk to.
Eventually, we made it to the front of the line – whoopee!
So close I can taste it!
But, as I placed our order and waited for it to be fulfilled, I looked over yonder only to see:
A storm's a-brewin' ...
And right as I received our tacos, it started raining. Booooo. I eventually located the rest of the party and we began to consume our foodstuffs. The pizza (?from Nomad Pizza?) wasn’t bad – not superb, but happily identifiable as “good pizza”. The tacos, to be honest, were a little of a letdown. g suspects that this is because we weren’t taking the time to savor each bite (as we were getting rained on and itching to get a move on). I suspect that it’s because the flavors were kind of muddled. I had a bite of the mushroom and chicken tacos and the entirety of a short rib taco. The two meat ones were dominated by their sauces. The short rib one was overly sour-cream-esque (I actually can’t identify what the major component of the sauce was – but it was white). The mushroom one was probably the best, with some good texture and brighter vegetable flavors. But regardless of which one, Tyson Bee’s totally blows guapos out of the water – the flavors are stronger, the textures are more variable. Hell, they even have a larger variety, from buns to tacos to burritos to curries – I’m glad that they’re close by to where I work. Sorry I didn’t have any pictures of the tacos, but my hands were too covered with taco shmutz to bother with fiddling around with my iPhone.
Night market was fun, but I was a little bummed that there weren’t more of the obvious/well-known tents/trucks of food. I mean, there are probably at least three more dessert trucks I can think of! And what about having a few more restaurants show? Midatlantic was there, but they only had a butterscotch krimpet bread pudding (which I really wanted to try but ran out of time). Here’s to hoping that they expand a little more – it’ll disperse the long lines and expose us to more because we’ll spend less time waiting for the obvious heavy hitters like Guapos and Tyson. I look forward to next time!
after dinner sneeze 