Dining & dishing
The event today was distinctly fun, and I can heartily recommend the food and atmosphere at Rendezvous. Various restaurant owners, along with Globe readers, showed up, and after lunch we discussed various good practices and bad practices for waiters/managers and diners alike. Here's what I learned:
1. People steal! Apparently steak knives are a popular "take home" item. Can you believe it? I was shocked. People. Really. Do not take the steak knives, do not take the flowers in the bathroom (yes, someone said this had happened at his restaurant), do not take anything but the food you have paid for!
2. Making reservations online (e.g., at OpenTable) involves a cost to the restaurant. Generally, they'd prefer if you called; in addition to not costing them, it can enable them to serve you better; a good restaurant can ask a few questions (e.g., is this a big whoo-hoo party, or an intimate anniversary celebration) that can help them maximize your experience.
3. Restaurateurs: the restaurant-going population, like the population at large, is aging. Please keep this in mind. Dim lighting is lovely, but not so dim that a person with reduced vision cannot see their food. Music ought to be kept to a minimal level; for anyone with minor hearing loss (which can happen quite early in adulthood), ambient noise makes it harder to pick out voices, such as those of one's dining companions. Menus do not have to be works of narrative and graphic art--they primarily need to be legible, in a clear and decent-sized font that contrasts with the paper. (Word on this--I'm often the youngest in my dining-out crowd and I do get tired of "designated menu-reader" duty.) And old, hard-of-hearing people who take a while with the menu are not mentally impaired and shouldn't be treated as such. The older friends we dine with often have horror stories of being treated like subnormal children by wait staff. People, please.
Other concerns emerged as well, largely around--in my analysis--saving face and dignity. This applies on both sides of the equation. Servers, clearly, are angry about being treated as less than human. Customers who refuse to look at them and continue conversations as the server recites the specials; who leave bulky coats and backpacks on the floor for the servers to navigate around; who don't remove their elbows from the table and lean back as the server clears and "crumbs"--such people are unmitigated schmucks. (And if Judaism teaches anything, it's that a schmuck must always be mitigated.)
My favorite on this was a sommelier who said, (I paraphrase), "Don't act like you're all superior and smarter than me and then pull out a calculator to figure the tip. I can figure what 20% of $150 is in my head. If you can't, you aren't so dang much smarter." Indeed.
Restaurant-goers, also, are concerned with losing face. One of the major complaints I received is menus on which no prices are listed for the specials. Then, of course, you have to ask the server, and if it's too much or you decide you'd really prefer the gnocchi anyway you feel a bit abashed. List the prices! Patrons shouldn't have to reveal their monthly household budget to strangers.
These are the things I picked up from our delightful discussion (it was delightful, truly; it was dine & dish, not dine & bitch, and people talked about nice things as well) today. More advice to come in a special feature on dining-out etiquette in this Sunday's dining-out issue of the Globe magazine. And comments are open, so please share your thoughts as well!
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Poor Robin! "Designated menu-reader" duty sounds a bit unfair!
Robin says: No, I just need to start making some younger friends so I'll have someone to read the menus to me when the time comes!
Forgive me Miss Conduct, for I have sinned.....I have stolen both steak knives and the little ramikin dishes that sauce sometimes comes in.
Robin says: Well, I hope you stop doing that! How did you steal sauce-filled ramekins, anyway? Did you sneak them into the ladies' room and wash them off and dry them with paper towels?
This may belong to the previous post. It's great to give small children restaurant experience, but I hate to see them allowed to dart about underfoot--wouldn't everybody feel awful if a waiter tripped and dropped a tray of hot food on a child!
As a server, would you like to stab me through the heart? Just ask me if I am "still working on that." In other words, am I still laboriously sawing away with my knife and fork, ever more resolved to finish whatever it is, and determined not to give up? --- or am I finally ready to admit defeat? In a restaurant where I've paid more than $4.95 for an entree, the server asking that question will observe a widening of my eyes, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. Thus, servers of mine, you have solved the mystery of my less-than-15% tip.
Robin says: You're being a jerk if you'd tip someone less than 15% for using a commonly accepted colloquialism. Sorry, there's no other word for it. (Actually, there are many other words for it, but I'll stick with the relatively polite "jerk.")
Thanks for the wonderful event on Friday.
I had a great time and met some very interesting women through sharing a table.
The flip side of people respecting waiters is, they need to respect you as well. I'm very proud of the fact that I rarely tip under 20%. I've only done so 3 times in my life. (When your family members tell stories of waiting tables, you learn to respect waiters jobs very quickly.)
Robin says: True enough about servers respecting customers. Servers are as prone to prejudice--against people of color, young people, old people, the disabled, the overweight--as anyone else. If you're in customer service of any kind, it will behoove you to work through these issues!
Continuing my comment because it got cut off.
Last week, I tipped a waiter 15% because he ignored my table to chat with his friends who were sitting at the table behind my party for the length of our meal.
He did not check in to ask how our food was and he brought me a desert even though I specifically requested to not receive one. I was not charged, but it proves he was not listening to me. This mistake was even more annoying because I'm very proud of losing 25 pounds on weight watchers, but I still have problems ignoring a desert if it is placed in front of me.
Music ought to be kept to a minimal level...
Oh, my, yes. I, personally, don't have hearing loss; I have very good hearing. Which means that casual music is often WAY too loud for me. If I have to shout to be heard over the music and the roar of all the other patrons who have to shout to be heard, it's really not conducive to a good evening out.
Also, having sound baffling in place would go a long way to help. Large echoing rooms just fill up with sound faster than you can imagine.
Robin says: That's an excellent point, about the hearing! Yes, if you have very GOOD hearing loud music is annoying; if you have hearing loss, or just a cognitive difficulty processing auditory information (i.e., you "hear slow") it is also annoying.
I use OpenTable often. Why? I get 100 pts from most restaurants when fulfilling a reservation or 1000 pts for being an off-hour diner. After 2000 pts, I get $20 to spend at an OpenTable restaurant. Why wouldn't I use it? It might cost them money to use OpenTable, but OpenTable drives business to them as well. It's a marketing tool and I'm not going to feel guilty by using a marketing tool anymore than I'd feel guilty about reading their ad in the Yellow Pages or in the Globe. If the restaurants didn't feel this expense was worth undertaking, they wouldn't participate and would rely on other marketing means to drive their business.
This blogger might want to review your comment before posting it.
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