Theft exacting heavy toll at fine restaurants

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, June 7, 2000 | 11:41 a.m.

Restaurants often provide us with little mementoes of our visit: matchbooks, toothpick holders or takeout menus. Just about anything else with a restaurant logo, such as an ashtray, is off-limits and should never be removed from a restaurant. Sugarcoat it if you want, but taking property from a restaurant is theft.

Lately though, pilfering restaurant property not intended to be given away has become a syndrome that has gotten out of hand. It isn't uncommon for restaurants to lose crystal, flatware, vases and costly items restaurant owners must replace. This is a problem that drives owners crazy. It also ultimately drives up the price of a meal, since it is always we, the consumers, who absorb costs.

Some people say the moral compass is broken in this country. That pronouncement seems rather harsh. But speaking to managers and chefs at several of our leading restaurants, places such as Spago, Andre's, Drai's, Circo, Renoir and Picasso, reveals that this is a problem that may not go away anytime soon. And some of the stories these people have to tell are incredible and, well, even funny.

Tom Kaplan is managing partner for the four Wolfgang Puck restaurants in Las Vegas: Spago, Chinois, Lupo and Postrio. He knows this subject as well as anyone in town.

"Certain people will take anything," he says. "Ashtrays have always been popular, so now our ashtrays at Spago have no logo on them. We were spending between $500 and $1,000 a month just to replace them. People take the chopsticks from Chinois, the Illy espresso cups from Lupo. Some customers, at least, get pangs of conscience. They call back and offer to pay."

Kaplan then goes on to recount how a customer in the original West Hollywood Spago was once caught red-handed by Puck's wife Barbara Lazaroff, in the process of removing an expensive lithograph from its frame -- in the men's room.

"Occasionally an expert will take expensive Riedel wine glasses or Schott highball glasses into the Caesar's casino. Any small piece of china is vulnerable as well," says Kaplan.

Gregory Urban is a manager at Drai's, located in the Barbary Coast. Drai's sells little tins of chocolate with a leopard skin pattern on the covers, as well as leopard-patterned china and disposable cameras, which also have a leopard pattern on their covers. These are not intended to be given away, much less taken surreptitiously.

But according to Urban, customers take great liberties with these items.

"People will take anything that isn't nailed down," Urban says wryly. And then he goes on to relate an amazingly cheeky story. It seems that pictures of owner Victor Drai's family were lifted directly from a bookshelf located in the restaurant. Later a girlfriend of Urban was having a birthday party in the restaurant, and as a gift she received one of the pictures, gift-wrapped. That's nerve.

At Circo in Bellagio, the problem is also acute.

"Naturally salt and pepper shakers are popular," says David Hjalmervik, an assistant manager at Circo. "So are shot glasses, grappa glasses, our signature silver martini shakers, and our flowers, which cost $25 for a bunch, not to mention the glass vases they come in."

On one occasion another Circo manager named Peter Tischmann spotted a lady putting one of the beautiful Circo vases, water and all, into her rather large purse. So he waited discreetly for the lady to change her mind, which she did not. He then noticed that the vase at an adjoining table was missing. It ended up in the purse of her dining companion.

As the ladies got up to leave Tischmann approached them, asking them if there wasn't something they wanted to put back. The ladies did not take the hint, even though water was leaking from the bottom of their purses.

Eventually the vases were reclaimed by the management, after an embarrassing moment or two had passed. If this happened in a department store, it would become a legal matter, but because fine restaurants do not wish to embarrass their clientele or make a scene, these matters are often smoothed over and forgotten.

The solution for many restaurants is simply to remove the more expensive items, ones that make a restaurant more attractive, from the inventory altogether. Chef Julian Serrano of the ultra-luxe Picasso used to serve cube sugar with exquisite little silver tongs from Christofle. People lifted so many of them that he eventually stopped replacing them, and now the sugar is served sans tongs. Picasso is still having a problem with silver spoons for their demitasse cups. Not to mention the cups themselves.

David Renna, the manager at the posh Renoir in Mirage recently saw a high- rolling female customer loading three mother-of-pearl caviar spoons into her purse. The restaurant also has a problem with its beautiful Sheffield silver lemon squeezers. At least no one, as yet, has attempted to snatch one of the priceless works of art from these restaurants.

These are not problems limited to casino restaurants. Mary Jane Jarvis is a partner at Andre's, and although the restaurant has a location in the Monte Carlo, the older downtown location has suffered through this syndrome for decades.

"People have taken irreplaceable items from us for years," she says. "Tissue box covers in the ladies room, antique lamps, glassware."

In the Monte Carlo, at least, the restaurant has a few security cameras. The cameras once prevented the theft of valuable Versace china, via replay. The culprit was spotted, confronted and told that security would be called if the item were not replaced. It was. Those of us who are uncomfortable with the idea that chefs are now training cameras on the guests might consider that this trend could also save a restaurant money.

So the next time you are tempted by that table decoration or anything else that belongs to the restaurant, it would be wise to remember that you might be paying a hefty price for dinner, but that doesn't entitle to you anything more than food, service and a memorable evening.

There is a perfectly descriptive word for those who would follow a different course. The word is thief.

Max Jacobson writes about food for the Sun. Reach him at max@vegas.com or 990-2454.