“Can we go yet?”
“Don’t tell me they’re sending out more dessert!”
“I’m tired of foie gras.”
Those are all comments I have heard from people—adult people—while eating dinner in public with them.
Usually when I’m eating in a restaurant, I’m doing it for work. I’m a food writer in New York City, where the savvy restaurant operators know who the food writers are, so sometimes I get better service than your average customer.
The chefs and/or owners come out and chat. They send out extra menu items and make sure I sample whatever extravagant delicacies they might have on hand. Often they offer to prepare a tasting menu for me.
An end-of-the-meal dessert deluge—in which every sweet on the menu arrives at my table—is not uncommon.
This is the context in which my friends complain.
Why? Because if chefs are going to entertain you, it is going to take time, and I’ve found that many people don’t have the patience to sit through meals that last for three hours or more.
Some can’t last for more than an hour, but that’s another story.
If you ask me, the inability to sit for more than three courses or any but the most cursory explanation of what you’re eating and drinking is a sign of bad manners, childishness and, possibly, a mental defect.
Sometimes, to avoid putting up with such behavior, I dine alone. That allows me to concentrate on the food, catch up on reading, or just enjoy some alone time without having to explain to anyone that they’re not expected to finish the 12 desserts that have just been placed on the table and that, no, the resulting waste of food, though perhaps unfortunate, is not an appropriate topic of conversation to have with management.
Nor do I have to explain that, when the chef is preparing a tasting menu for you, it is not appropriate to specify the starches and side dishes you want.
I know plenty of other food writers who might not need those basic rules explained to them, but who are equally impatient. They dread being recognized in restaurants on nights when they’re not working because it inevitably will add another hour and perhaps 1,500 calories to their meal, and they just want to be left alone.
That’s not my problem—I don’t have to eat with them—but it could be yours.
As much as I’d like to chastise my friends for expressing their likes and dislikes, and as silly as I find some of their requests to be, they have a point: Giving customers things that they don’t want, even if it’s free food or extra attention, is bad service.
It is never the customer’s job to make the restaurateurs feel comfortable. It is up to the chefs and servers to give the customers what they want.
That seems like a pretty obvious point, but it is often forgotten.
But of course, if a diner wants to flirt—within reason—find out more about a menu item, linger at the table, not drink, or even behave in ways that are petulant, demanding, childish or simply inexplicable, it’s the restaurant staff’s job to deal with that in a way that results in the customer leaving satisfied.
Even if customers behave strangely—like looking exasperated at free food or overwhelmed by another glass of port—it’s the restaurateur’s job to notice.
For the record, when my friends misbehave in public, they are always treated with warmth and graciousness by restaurateurs, even if they are not by me.
Also for the record, I was the one who said he was tired of foie gras.
That was a long time ago; I’m not tired of foie gras anymore.