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!
Who is Miss Conduct?
Robin Abrahams writes the weekly "Miss Conduct" column for The Boston Globe Magazine. Robin, who has a PhD in psychology from Boston University, has worked as a theater publicist, organizational-change communications manager, editor, stand-up comedian, and professor of psychology and English. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, which are given annually for achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.
