Now, I live in Fresno, and Fresno has never been, to my knowledge, mistaken for a culinary hotspot. It is a terrific town in many ways, a place I have always called home and whose restaurants I have enjoyed a great deal over the years. Many old-time places especially, with their long-standing clienteles and established (if sometimes odd) ways of doing business, are to me especially fun. But considering that we live in a town just a couple of hours from San Francisco, I think most honest folk would agree that our local restaurant scene has some real quirks.

Cue several new restaurants that have recently opened, or are in the process of opening,
always cause for anticipation, and sadly, dread.

Local wine lovers ask: "How spectacularly will this new restaurant overprice its list (a virtual given in my neck of the woods), and what flashy new marketing tools will it employ to pass off those same tired, mostly-corporate brands as $15 glasses of wine?" "How inept and silly will the wine service be?" How poorly will the list be constructed, and managed?"

What's the problem? The most noticable is the dominance of big restaurant chains (not talking about locally-based restaurant groups here), and the food they serve, which is occasionally copied by local entrepreneurs trying to hit on a winning formula for expansion and franchising. Fresnans love fried things, and they love big orders of fried things. There it is. Chains dominate the market here in a way which chokes local establishments, and makes the development of the culture of the 'neighborhood restaurant' extremely difficult to embed. Even the basics suffer, which is why a really good, local pizza place doesn't exist here.

A second problem is that every proprietor seems to want Reidel-and-white-tablecloth money from their customers - though without the provision of any actual Reidel stems or white tablecloths, or the other trappings that justify such pices: good, professional service; consistency from the kitchen; and front-of-house professionalism. I have long thought this drive upmarket was a mistake, with what would otherwise be good neighborhood restaurants promising more than they could deliver.

Nowhere is this clearer than in many restaurants' wine programs. Here, with a little thought and some expertise, restaurants could elevate te diner's experience, by giving some thought to the composition and pricing of their offerings, including those they choose to pour by the glass. This might begin to justify the astonishing prices (often 3 or 4 times wholesale, sometimes even more) eing charged by the restaurant. I hope to be wrong about the newest of these establishments; if Iam, I'll say so here.