I don’t do much in the way of fine dining, but I had an opportunity to eat at a very well-regarded, upscale restaurant the other evening. Beforehand, I fretted a bit about what to wear: Suit? Tie? Surely a sports jacket, at least?
As it turns out, I needn’t have given it a thought. Many folks were strolling about in jeans, T-shirts and running shoes. Sure, there were some nicely-dressed diners, but I was amazed at how relaxed the dress requirements were. The waitstaff wore - I speak the truth - jeans.
Is this a sign of the times? Are the restaurants so hurting for business that they’ll not turn anyone away? I’ve always heard stories of maitre ds providing neckties to those in need so as not to embarrass them.
I’m certainly no snob, but I found myself a bit depressed by this reality.
Can you provide a link to the restaurant website? There are a lot of different interpretations as to what fine dining is. It could be a restaurant with a theme, or in a geographical location that doesn’t follow common form (say, Santa Fe.) Expensive, or excellent food doesn’t have to mean white tablecloth and gloved waiters.
Here in Manhattan, I’ve seldom had a problem showing up in jeans and a t-shirt (and denim or creaky old leather jacket if the weather requires it) and getting seated. The exceptions generally advertise prominently (there’s a Russian or Ukrainian joint on restaurant row that requires a jacket, for example).
I don’t do ties and rarely do dress jackets (like once every 4 years). I’m not unusual; lots of cityfolks just don’t do the dressup thing, and still like to eat nice food.
You gotta figure, to the people who frequent upscale restaurants, it’s really not a big deal. There are people who drop a hundred bucks on a meal the way that we go to McDonald’s.
Here in Austin, if you’re going to have dinner at an expensive fancy restaurant, you can dress up or down, as the mood strikes you.
If you’re a marketing executive taking a Dell bigwig to dinner at the Driskill Hotel, you can wear a 3-piece Brooks Brothers suit, and you’ll fit right in. But the guy in jeans and a cowboy hat at the table next to you will fit in just as well.
Those of us who live in tourist areas find it annoying as (insert expletive here) to try to go out for a nice meal and have a family of sunburned yokels from Ohio in shorts and flip flops there. Especially as they’re typically the ones who would have given me withering glares if I chose to wear shorts to their place back home.
IMO, if you don’t have a decent change of clothes, stay away from the $100/person places and stick to Applebee’s or Outback.
I’ve seen people at the Savoy in Firenze with jeans and trainers…of course the jeans were 450 Euro D&G and the trainers were some Italian name I can’t afford.
The idea of dressing for a fancy dinner is a thing of the past, even among my generation (and my parents’). There may be a few upscale restaurants that have a dress code, but they’re fewer and fewer each year.
Of course, I don’t wear jeans to a restaurant, but I don’t wear jeans anywhere. I’ve only owned one pair in my adult life, and that was because they were required as a costume for a play I was in.
Well I guess I learned something. For the record, it is not a tourist area at all (Detroit - insert joke here). Their dress code is considered ‘business casual’. Entrees are in the $25-$30 dollar range (my side of mac n cheese was 7 clams). Dinner for four came to around $200.
I mentioned this in a thread a while ago - I have eaten in places that are in the top ten restaurants in the world and I have never felt the need to dress for the occasion unless asked to by a female companion who feels like it.
At most upscale restaurants, you CAN pull out all the stops and wear your snazziest clothes, and nobody will suggest that you’re overdressed.
But if you wear Dockers and a sweater, nobody’s going to look down on you, either. You never have to worry about being overdressed, and rarely have to worry about being underdressed.
My husband and I went to some pretty fancy restaurants when we were on our honeymoon in New York. The only two restaurants we felt obliged to dress up at were Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo and at Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardain. At Ripert’s restaurants, it is explicitly jacket required… and it cost us $300 for two people for lunch. Babbo doesn’t require a jacket, but pretty much everyone was wearing one. There were a few men in sweaters, but most were dressed very nicely.
We went to some other restaurants that were nice, but khakis and a sweater were fine at them.
It drives me nuts, personally. Can’t we have anything special anymore? I know people are going to say it’s none of my business what they wear when we’re in the same restaurant, but if my party is all dressed up for a birthday or anniversary and you’re wearing your jorts at the next table it makes it less nice for us. Ruins the atmosphere.
