Neil Ganic
Neil grew up in Yugoslavia. He told me how, as a teenager, he had been sitting in a tank, buried in the ground at the Yugoslav border with Hungary, waiting for a Soviet invasion after the USSR had cracked down in Czechoslovakia. The invasion never came, but I think this sort of experience in his youth does help explain why he is unlikely to take any nonsense from anybody.
He has owned restaurants in Brooklyn for many years. He usually has a cook preparing the food most nights, but on Mondays, he gives the cook the night off, and he does the cooking. One Monday, I stopped in to say hello. As he was working in the tiny kitchen, I chatted with him sitting on a chair just outside the window where waiters would pick up their orders. While we were talking, the phone rang. He answered it, listened for a moment, and then said, “You want me to read you the fucking menu? I have no time for that fucking shit.” And then he slammed the phone down.
But his most famous incident of not taking any nonsense from a customer was told to me by my friend, Jon Tyler, who was the waiter for the table that this incident involved. A couple was in, I believe, for their anniversary. The man of the couple ordered lobster tails. When they arrived, he tasted one, and then called Jon over to his table. “These aren’t very fresh,” he told Jon. “Can you get me another plate?”
Jon agreed, brought the plate back to the kitchen, and came back a few minutes later with another pair of lobster tails. But the customer once again declared them not fresh. However, this time, while Jon was bringing them back, Neil intercepted him. “Johnny, I will take care of this,” Neil told him.
Neil dumped the plate, and then headed down to the basement. I imagine that Jon was watching with a combination of fascination and trepidation as to what was coming next. A moment later, Neil emerged from the basement, brandishing a live lobster in his hand. Jon watched as Neil charged over to the table that was returning the lobster tails. He stopped just before the table and yelled, “You want fucking fresh? Here is fucking fresh.” He then hurled the lobster down onto their table.
Jon said that the couple left the restaurant crying.
The incident was written up in every New York paper. (Since I was told the story by my friend who witnessed it firsthand, I believe the version here is more accurate than any I’ve seen in any of the papers.)
You might think that this would damage Neil’s business, but he told me, “Callahan, the restaurant was packed for weeks afterwards.” (He usuallly called me by my last name.)
I imagine people were coming in while saying to themselves, “Maybe tonight, he’ll throw a swordfish.”
The final piece of the tale is that Neil opened a wine bar next door to the restaurant, and named it “The Flying Lobster.”