The Battered Ram

The Battered Ram is a tavern just off Market Square in Jordine, D'har that specializes in delicious, toothy pancakes and fresh-made waffles, served with the buyer's choice of sweet and strongly alcoholic syrups, along with plenty of fresh cow butter and good strong coffee. The pancakes are made to size -- tiny ones for pixies, huge ones for Goliaths, and always a perfect circle. The proprietor, a slight, sharp-eyed, jittery Gnome named Zale Centrifuge, is normally the chef in charge though his staff is well-trained in his pancake-making techniques. This is advantageous, as the man's Brigganock brogue is so thick that he really needs a translator; having your order taken by Zale is a confusing experience of incomprehensible slang mixed with arcane words and phrases, though technically he's speaking common. Exactly where he's from, how old he is, or indeed if he really is a Gnome or not are all questions without firm answers.
Generally, everyone is too busy wolfing down big portions (for their size) to worry overmuch about such philosophical questions. In addition to the delightful food, the tavern serves a variety of other spirits, beer and ale, and wines from all across the Orbis, including the finest Ferecit wines. While the pancakes are by far the most popular items on the menu, the inn also puts together a Halfling-worthy charcuterie with strong Zareslich sausages and cheeses, fresh fruits (often of the pancake-able variety like blueberries, strawberries and currants) and also offers loose nuts and pitted dates in small bowls at the bar. The combination of sweet and savory syrups, pancakes, wonderful coffee and excellent wines along with mostly reasonable prices makes this the most popular eatery in Jordine.
Unlike most taverns that don't really open until the evenings, the Battered Ram only closes for a token clean out time between 4am and 9am, owing to the fact that Mr. Centrifuge only needs a couple of hours of sleep each night. He generally works a split shift, so he'll be at the pans for breakfast, then take a break around lunchtime to conduct the side business of the day, leaving operations in the capable hands of his general manager, a lanky halfling woman named Coltina Curry who normally manages the staff and works at the hostess stand during the busier parts of the day. Rounding out the team is a staff of seven additional table servers and bussers, 2 bartenders, and 4 additional cooks, one of which oversees nothing but the syrups and the coffee.
Jordine is a coastal town of fishing boats and salty breezes, and the Battered Ram is defiantly different in that regard, with decor more evocative of a temple to the Great Gnomon than to a crab shack or fish house. Zale has found an outlet for his sacred mathematics in the perfect circle, the spiral and whorl, and of his namesake, the centrifuge, in the making of his pancakes. He uses unique flat pans with centers that are slightly thicker than the edges, which are spun masterfully using detachable griddle-clamps rather than a normal cast-iron pan with a handle. The result is a perfectly round pancake, most of the time, perfectly soft in the center and butter-crisped along the edges.
"I won't reveal the full dark of it, me, but ye can find the Logat and the Tolgat in the recipe, should ye look for suchness. Not so much the ingredients, other than to skip off the leavening to keep em from, ye know, poofin' up like. No, i mean I use secret proportions, lost in the Pronoan Age, found again at me pans - arcane mysteries that invoke the Great Wheel, that honor the many emanations of the true Gnomon. And also, sometimes I throw in an extra egg."
The real appeal of the menu, however, isn't simply the flapjacks, though they're more than good enough to eat on their own. The alcoholic syrups add a gooey, delicious adult flair to what might otherwise seem to be a hopelessly childish food. Particular favorites are the sifted buckwheat berrycakes topped with butter rum syrup and a dash of raspberry cordial, and the Khazigiri-style buttermilk waffles layered with crushed walnuts and dates and topped with dark roasted butterscotch bourbon syrup, and a dollop of homemade vanilla custard. Combined with a cup of the excellent locally-sourced coffee, you're ready to wake up and face the day, drop into a food coma, or get into a rousing bar fight after every meal at the Battered Ram.

Staff

The bar is relatively large for a town of only a few thousand, and Cschedules staff on overlapping shifts to ensure the staff is adequate for the busy breakfast, dinner and late night crowds without overworking the team. Coltina employs four cooks in addition to Zale himself, but due to the mysteries of the Profundum he only allows a maximum of three in the kitchen at any one time, and when they are all on the schedule on busy feast days, the fourth one fills in with the servers. One of these cooks is the Concoctioner, Ssevrila Animosa, who almost certainly had no idea what she was actually applying for when she came in to ask about the job. But her talent for mixing alchemical concoctions was made clear in her interview and she has held a certain favored status in the tavern ever since; the perfect pancakes are certainly the core of the Battered Ram branding, but the variety of delicious alcoholic syrups, both savory and sweet, that Animosa has developed over the years is what elevates the tavern above a mere rowdy breakfast nook. Halflings and gnomes often simply order shots of the cream-buttered rum or walnut whiskey syrups as an aperitif before tucking into a stack of golden waffles drenched in apricot brandy syrup and a mountain of fresh whipped cream. Animosa also supervises the selection and brewing of coffees and teas; she does none of the cooking of the pancakes, waffles, or other menu items other than syrups and some beverages.
The tavern has a hostess stand normally staffed by Coltina as the front-of-house general manager. It comes into play at the busiest times, with benches in the entry foyer for those who wish to wait for a table or bar stool. The tavern also employs a rotation of servers and table-bussers, many of whom might be worthy of note, but Zale fears this may go to their head and leave them demanding raises so we won't detail them here any further. He's hiring bussers who'll get 5 copper a table, so if you're interested, let Coltina know and she can handle all the paperwork.

Layout

The Battered Ram is a standalone 2-story building with a dirt-floor basement for additional food and bar storage, and the second floor provides additional long-term storage of things like holiday and seasonal decorations, chairs and tables in storage and spare sets of plates and silverware. The upstairs level is accessed by a separate exterior stairwell.
The main floor is well-designed and fairly spacious, providing plenty of elbow room for guests and serving staff though during busy holiday seasons additional seating can be crammed in to maximize the space. The layout is oriented west to east by the compass, with the main entrance and foyer area with benches for waiting and a stand for a host to seat guests in the west, and a small back door in the storage room along the eastern wall. The L-shaped bar cradles a large kitchen filled with foodstuffs, cookstoves and prep areas. Barrels of wine, beers and whiskey are placed wherever room can be found in the working areas as well as in the dedicated storage room. Additional cool storage under the tavern can be accessed through a grate door in the floor of the storage room. The storage room is situated in the corner with access to the kitchen as well as to the private dining area with a single long table seating up to 12, with separate access to the kitchen.
The bar seats 19, the largest prime number lower than 20, which holds numerological power, and seats an additional 26 at tables, double the prime 13; when the private dining room is being used, Zale will often try to sneak in an additional chair as he finds 13 a much more satisfying number than 12; generally Coltina Curry and the staff she manages on behalf of Zale humor his quirks, as long as he remains reasonable. He only rarely works himself up into a real lather.

Tavern Intrigues

The Battered Ram fosters an upscale environment as much as it's possible in the sleepy seaside town of Jordine. The staff is large enough to have some internal politics and conflicts, most of which Zale is willfully oblivious to as he works on crafting perfectly round pancakes and perfectly square waffles. Coltina Curry, the top of the pecking order, is a very reasonable and conscientious manager, but she doesn't have a great deal of sympathy or an excess of emotion for anyone. This works well when it comes to managing Ssevrila Animosa, who has far less of an emotional response than any reasonable human would. But it has created some separation between the line staff and the bartenders, as Daphne can be moody and uncooperative, and Eilig is very easily offended and a hothead when he's mad. Zale pays well, and Coltina has found that in many cases where she can't navigate the emotional rollercoasters of her staff's lives, she can at least tamp down a potential conflict by awarding a small bonus or a few days off.
Everyone on the staff has a reason for being there, and a story they tell themselves about their job. Feel free to take the brief strokes in the sidebar and embellish or rewrite as needed if you'd like to add a Battered Ram to your own campaign.
Find out more about Jordine here:

Jordine And surrounding areas

Open full size

A map showing the area around Jordine, a west coast county of the Royal Commonwealth of D'Har. 1 hex = 2 miles corner to corner. Buildings for area but not to scale.

"Ye haddent tasted cakes o' th' pan nor jacks o' th' flap, or Lees of the Waff, ye haddnt a'tall--Not tillent ye try one of me Battered Rams! And mind the cream for the love of the cow goddess! Tis religion, this, tis the magic of the Deep Hotcakery!" --Zale Centrifuge, Gnomish proprietor of the best (only) alcoholic pancake tavern in Jourdine

Type

Pub / Tavern / Restaurant

Proprietor

Zale Centrifuge, Gnome. This former camp cook worked a variety of crystal mines in the region, but always had better luck with cooking than with mining. His personality would be much less entertaining on a full-sized creature, but his stature is small even for a gnome, and his high-pitched voice and complicated accent make it difficult to take his occasional rages very seriously. He's a hothead on occasion with unruly customers, but fiercely defensive of his cooks and servers.

Cooks:

Lembish Kasik, Gnome. Head of the kitchen staff, Lembish is some familial relation to Zale but exactly what the connection is - cousin, nephew, stepson - is not immediately obvious, and possibly quite distant considering the usual size of gnome families. Like Zale, the man is like a wizard master, but for waffles and pancakes.
Ssevrila Animosa, Yuan-ti Pureblood. Ssevrila's official title is 'concoctionist' and the responsibility for developing new syrups and for ensuring the recipes are followed correctly falls to her. Though she is a master of her craft now, Zale is fairly certain that in her impatience as a young woman, she thought the help wanted posting was looking for a contortionist. She sailed through the interview regardless, bringing her skills as a poisoner and alchemist to the craft of blindingly alcoholic syrups to delight every palate. Her confusion over what she was supposed to do at work lifted after a few weeks, and she slithered into her important task with gusto. She remains impatient and quick to make a decision, but as yet has not actually poisoned anyone in the tavern.
Hoarta, Half-Orc. Hoarta is a commanding presence, having spent time as a marine in her younger days and now flipping pancakes and cooking up waffles as a sort of easy retirement. She provides a military discipline to the kitchen and ensures that few shenanigans ever make it to the back rooms.
Ordin Goffe, Human. Ordin is a junior chef who cooks up eggs and side dishes and mixes alcoholic syrups along with the bartenders, having not yet earned the honor to cook the actual pancakes. He hopes to master the 7" waffle iron in the next six months.

Bartenders:

Daphne Von Elbestein, Human. Daphne is a stunning beauty and claims to be the heir to some far-off barony in another nation-state. Exactly which nation state that would be is a topic of great speculation among the rest of the staff, with most people agreeing that the story is likely to just be made up, but in case it isn't, they all want to stay on her good side. She's been at the bar for years and has done more than her share of attracting men and more than a few women to the tavern. She's friendly, very competent behind the bar, but still aloof and seems wary of giving many details about her private life, including her marital status or family details. Her home is less than half a block away and on celebratory occasions she hosts afterparties at her house for the staff. When the bar isn't busy enough to need two bartenders, she sometimes fills in as a host to seat arriving guests.
Eilig Laawenschick, Dwarf. Eilig is tall enough for a Dwarf so that he can easily see and be seen over the edge of the bar. His background is connected to the crews and petty officer corps of many local sailing vessels, but a serious injury that damaged one of his eyes and the left side of his face persuaded him to take a safer job where depth perception wasn't a matter of life and death. His depth of knowledge of local brews, wines and spirits is encyclopedic. Daphne and Eilig are very close, possibly past lovers, definitely solid friends, and Eilig's ability to smile enthusiastically while beating an unruly bar patron nearly to death ensures she need not worry about anyone following her home after the bar closes for the night.