Don’t be chintzy with the garnishes. Don’t charge extra because the customer wants bleu cheese dressing or guacamole. Either build it into the cost of the salad or wings or what have you.
A co-worker ordered 50 wings from a sports bar. They gave him one plastic ramekin EACH of ranch and bleu cheese dressing. He asked for more, considering he’d just spent about $45 on wings, and the manager told him it was policy to charge for extra dressing.
It’s my theory that places like that, when they start to nickel and dime you, are getting ready to fold up.
I will also tell you that one of my favorite treats is dining alone with a good book.
This bears repeating. The author isn’t talking about your local sports bar, a TGI Fridays, or the place that’s the favorite with all the locals.
He’s opening his first restaurant that’s going to serve fish, organic veggies, and nothing else. No beef, no chicken.
I would guess that this place would offer entrees in the $35 range, and a salad would probably be $15. People who go to such places know what an amuse-bouche is, and in my experience going to such places, if it isn’t prime time, I think getting an amuse-bouche is a common (although maybe not probable) thing for a customers who are likely to pay $75 or $100 each for dinner.
I like most of the rules as they would apply to a restaurant of this type. I wouldn’t apply them to all restaurants, because they’re different.
And I don’t think the water pitcher (or wine bottle) should touch the glass because there’s the chance the glass will tip over, not for any concern about germs.
I understand what you are saying, but the problem is the article is titled, “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)”. Not things they shouldn’t do at my restaurant, or at the most expensive restaurants that make up less than 1% of the places out there.
I’m afraid you didn’t read the very first sentence in the article: “Herewith is a modest list of dos and don’ts for servers at the seafood restaurant I am building.”
The staff doesn’t have anything to do with setting the prices, nor do they have the ability to change them or give you free food. How about just not trying to chisel freebies out of the waitstaff? They have enough headaches.
I remember it happening a few times when I was a kid, at family-friendly type chain restaurants.
I haven’t seen it in years, though, but we also don’t eat at lot of the supposedly “family friendly” places that make their servesr do the “I’m your best friend for the evening!” schtick.
Always take orders of tables in the order that the tables were seated, not by whcih table has the most customers or better dressed guests.
This really bothers me as an occasionally-singleton diner. I sit down. Party X with two or more people sit down. Waitron takes the order of Party X first, then mine. I’ve walked out of restaurants several times because this happened. Surprisingly, it never happens when I’m on a date, with a friend, or out with family; only when I’m alone.
You’re correct that this is a list geared to his own restaurant, but a good number of the first 50 rules would be well applied nearly universally. We’re only haggling over three or four out of 50 rules (discounting ones like “Steam the label off the wine bottle”, where people just can’t fathom that ever being done).
Just for the record, I used to have a restaurant majoring in wine, and I tried to remove the labels (to put in the wine list), and some came off like a feather on a baby’s bottom, and some were completely impossible to remove. I used to spend hours trying to get them off. Some used something like superglue, and others, due to their age, just crumbled.
I had to look that up, and I’ve eaten in some fine dining establishments in my life. I’m guessing the author assumes the readers are limiting their dining to Michelin starred restaurants or the types of places where an entree is an ounce of organic, free-range Kobe beef with three heirloom peas, with caramelized this and reduction that.
I’d like to add one more, although this may be one that’s not encountered in the French Laundry-type places the author seems to be addressing - don’t push cheese like a Best Buy employee hard-selling warranties. Yes, I’m sure I don’t want cheese with that. Really. And when I get pasta, don’t take your peen-grinder or grater out and start churning away, while asking at the same time “would you like some fresh-grated pepper?” or “Would you like some fresh-grated cheese?” Looks like I don’t have a choice now, huh? Now can you being me an unadulterated dish, and maybe an amuse-bouche for my troubles?
Oh lord, yes. Some years ago I cooked at a small, popular diner. This place was almost always packed, and the owner was doing extremely well for herself. Then the owner died, and her husband sold the place. The new owner was terrible. Sweet lady, but just … clueless. She started getting really cheap with the condiments. If a customer asked for steak sauce, instead of giving them the bottle she’d open the bottle herself, pour some into a 2 oz. portion cup, and give them that. Pancake syrup? 2 oz. portion cup. Catsup preportioned into 2 oz. cups. One day, going over the invoices, she discovered that sugar-free pancake syrup cost her more than the regular syrup (which made sense - the regular syrup came from the vendor in a case of four 1-gallon jugs, for pouring into the big syrup warmer or filling the little syrup pitchers, while the sugar-free syrup was delivered in a case of 12 individual, grocery-store-sized bottles). Her response to this was to start charging 10 cents extra for sugar-free syrup :dubious: This, despite all of us employees pointing out that it was discriminatory against, say, diabetics. Also, because of 2 or 3 regular customers who would request “no garnish” on their plates, she decided we’d just stop garnishing the plates altogether.
Astonishingly, she’s still in business almost eight years later. But the amount of business she has is less than half of what the previous owner had. And I learned from my buddy (who still works there) that she has recently taken up selling real estate and isn’t actually in the diner much any more.
and
I noted that as well. But if people here missed that bit, you can be sure that an awful lot of other people missed it as well, and they’re going to come away with the idea that these “rules” are what they should expect when they go to Denny’s.
A couple of thingsthat always make me uncomfortable:
I don’t like it when the server doesn’t write down the orders. This seems to be trendy in some more upscale kinds of places, and I don’t get it. It doesn’t impress me, it just makes me nervous. Humor me. write it down.
I’m also not a fan of tableside services, such as grinding pepper onto my food, or preparing anything at the table. I don’t need the assistance. Give me some space.
This is one of the things that bugs me about some high-end steak restaurants, where most everything is a la carte. If you’re going to charge me $28 for a piece of meat, buddy, you can cough up a baked potato and some asparagus to go along with it.
Yes, but keep in mind that the list was published in the NY Times, not the Podunkville Gazette.
I think it’s pretty obvious that this article is talking about the fine dining restaurants that are commonplace in Manhattan… you know, the classy high end joints that cater to the kind of people who probably wouldn’t be caught dead in a TGI Friday’s. These places may be 1% of places in the country, but they’re basically 99% of what’s in NYC once you omit the delis and the greasy spoons (which are in a class of their own, as far as I’m concerned).
IMO, if I’m paying $100+ for a meal, you bet your ass I expect most, if not all, of these behaviours from a server. At that price, I’m paying for service and ambiance, not just for my plateful of food.
(The wine label thing is a bit over the top, though. In all my years of eating in fine dining restaurants, I’ve had this happen exactly once, and that was in a teensy little bistro in Nanaimo, BC of all places)
I’m glad that “we” have only one way to do things and that you are it’s official spokesman.
In actuality, though, it’s not in the slightest uncommon to say “you” followed by a qualifier of some sort: you on the left, you ladies, you all. It’s certainly more prevalent in some areas than others, but it most certainly isn’t proscribed.
There was a place I used to go to that catered to the younger after-work white-collar crowd. All of the tables were booths, and all of the waitresses were good-looking ladies with low-cut gowns slit to mid-thigh. It was part of the restaurant’s procedure that the waitress would sit down with you while you ordered. Aside from that, I’ve never encountered this in several decades of eating out.
Hey, that’s like chanting “Beetlejuice” three times. Don’t do that. You’ll summon her!