Nosh Pit

High-Tech Meets Good Eatin’

Restaurant gadgetry, meet Seattle.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 07, 2011 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy tabbedout.com

First there was that restaurant in Germany that fired all its waiters in favor of at-table computers for ordering and automated table delivery. Soon iPads began replacing menus across New York. Now Palisade in Magnolia announces that it’s the first Seattle restaurant to launch an iPad wine list.

Allowing real-time updates and major green cred (Palisade’s paper list numbered 35 pages), the iPad wine list at Palisade also enables searches by grape, price range, even vineyard.

And menus aren’t the only aspect of dining out that can benefit from tech tweaks. Poquitos on Capitol Hill is but the latest of several local joints to sign on with Tabbedout, a service which allows you to settle up by mobile phone. The mobile payment service allows users to open a tab, view that tab in real time, then pay it from their phone.  

Tabbedout’s website lists some 19 other Seattle places that make use of their services, with conspicuous overrepresentation among the watering holes of Capitol Hill (Auto Battery, Unicorn) and Ballard (Sunset Tavern, BalMar, Hattie’s Hat).

All discussion of which is really just an excuse to flog the best technological restaurant development in town: Seattle Met’s own brand new, indescribably useful, really really smart restaurant app, available in the iTunes store. (Dig the critic’s picks!)

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Tags: Tech, critic's picks, Food Apps, Critic's Notebook

Crush’s Technical Nightmare

Oh, the humanity! A technical glitch causes uproar and egregious use of the word “idiot” among Crush restaurant’s newsletter recipients.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 18, 2010 at 10:00AM 12 Comments

UPDATE EMAIL FROM CRUSH:

Dear friends,
I am terribly sorry for this horrible e-mial problem. Apparently there was an error with our e-mail news system that I was unaware of when I sent out this press release! Our email provider has also recognized the issue and we are shutting this down immediatly! Please forgive me, this was not the intent of CRUSH restaurant. A setting malfunction with our newsletter email account was at fault. I understand this has upset many of you and caused a major headache to us all, I cannot express the grief CRUSH has endured this morning. Again, I am so sorry and please feel free to contact me.
Jonny Brodie
CRUSH Matre [SIC] D

It started with an email announcement on January 17th. To celebrate its fifth anniversary, Crush, Jason and Nicole Wilson’s mush-acclaimed Madison Valley restaurant, was holding a special dinner on Tuesday, February 23rd. Featuring a lineup of famous chefs, including Poppy’s Jerry Traunfeld and Christophe Eme of Ortolan in Los Angeles, the dinner cost $255, please contact Crush for reservations. The message was sent to a group of people who had presumably signed up to receive news from Crush.

The problem began when one recipient responded to the sender crushnews@chefjasonwilson.com, asking for a trade deal for tickets to the dinner. Awkwardly, that message was sent to the entire distribution list. And then they started coming: dozens of emails—each increasingly irate—requesting removal from the list. The problem was, each of those emails was also received by EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE LIST.

So people started getting mad. The word “idiots” has been used more than once (mostly to refer to fellow newsletter recipients, some of them very recognizable names). Threats to boycott the restaurant (sort of astonishing, considering that this was clearly some sort of simple technical glitch) have been plentiful. “I am done with Crush,” read one message. One of the more circumspect recipients suggested everyone simply stop sending emails asking to be taken off the list, and then we would all stop receiving them.

So far, no word from Crush. Will keep you posted. In the meantime, I have some emails to delete.

Oh and for anyone on the list who wants to be taken off: email Nicole@chefjasonwilson.com. (Thanks Erin Boudreau).

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Tags: Tech, Restaurant News