I can, 1989. Dead Poets Society.
I agree that it’s problematic when you’re made to feel rushed in a good restaurant where you’re paying good money for an opportunity to chat with friends over a nice dinner. But details matter.
“Are you done?” or “Did you enjoy that?” are fine when everyone is sitting there with obviously empty plates or otherwise looking like they’re indeed done.
“Are you done?” is definitely not fine when you still have a bunch of food on your plate, others are still eating, and you’re just taking a breath to say something to your dinner companions. And it’s positively rude to take anyone’s plate away while others are still eating. And so is interrupting diners’ conversations so the waitstaff can get their duties done as fast as possible.
I suspect that these practices are the result of the usual economic squeeze, too few waitstaff with too heavy a workload. It doesn’t generally happen at high-end restaurants, but that’s part of what you’re paying a big premium for.
I agree with you, but I do not think that everyone feels that way anymore. Taking the fastest eater’s plate happens 99% of the time at medium-end restaurants, and about 50% of the time at nicer places (and 0% at super high-end restaurants, which is interesting). I have had it happen while I am still chewing or have food on the fork, but more commonly it’s just sometime after I finish but before others at the table do.
IMHO, when the staff waits to clear the table until after everyone is done whatever course they’re having, it conveys a sense of respect and decorum and the idea that they’re being treated as a dinner group.
If a plate is whisked away from someone as soon as they’re done or have stopped eating for a moment, it conveys a sense of feeding time at the zoo.
If a waiter came to remove my plate while I was still eating I’d be tempted to stab him with my fork. Especially if it was the same waiter who had earlier interrupted my conversation as if he/she was the only person in the room who mattered.
I certainly don’t feel that way. I feel the opposite. If a plate is clear, I want it out of the way and not cluttering up the table. Proper waitstaff will remove it rather than letting it sit there, uselessly taking up space.
I’m almost 50 and it has always been this way, so this isn’t anything new. Maybe there are areas where this is weirdly seen as rude, but it’s efficient. I remember even as a kid handing my empty plate to clear away.
What do you people do when the appetizer plates are clear, or soup, or salad, and the entree is coming and there isn’t much room for it? Stack plates on top of each other?! So odd.
(And yeah, somebody might be slow finishing their salad, do you leave the 10 other plates sitting there hostage until they get around to finishiing?)
Let me add too, waiters don’t barge in and start grabbing things; they politely ask if the plate is done and if they can take it. I’ve never considered it to be disruptive.
Each course should be cleared, the whole table at once, when everyone has finished, before the next one is brought. And yes, you leave the other plates so as not to shame Slugella for her slow salad consuption.
But as with all customs, there are variant customs that contradict: your version seems to be gaining ground at the expense of mine in society as a whole.
Yeah, and it has been gaining ground for many decades apparently.
By the way, I do kind of see what you and @wolfpup are saying about the appeal of the old method, but it still seems bizarre to me. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced that, or at least never noticed anything different.
Look at it this way. Have you noticed that in any decent restaurant, every effort is made to deliver everyone’s course at the same time? This of course is to avoid having some diners stuffing their faces while others sit there waiting.
IMHO, it’s all in the service of supporting the concept of “group dinner” as opposed to “feeding time at the zoo”. Dinners are a highly socialized concept, and while some of the more elaborate conventions are stupid, some of the fundamental social behaviours are deeply ingrained.
That’s why IMHO it’s inappropriate for waitstaff to whisk away the empty the plate of someone who’s done, while others are still eating. The concept should be one of commonality: this dinner group is having their first course, or second course, or whatever, and so it should remain until the group as a whole is ready to move on to the next course, which is both practically and symbolically executed by clearing the table in preparation.
That’s where there is a disconnect for me. I do see the delivery of food with being a communal event but not the gathering of plates. The food is the dinner, the plates are inconsequential and have nothing to do with anything.
Plates can and do get picked up with subtlety. Food delivery is an event, a (hopefully positive) disruption. Picking up an empty plate isn’t.
It sounds like you’re describing some 5 course dinner in a royal banquet hall, and maybe that’s why I don’t share your experience or opinion. When I eat out, you might get an appetizer, and maybe you have soup and/or salad first, but often you just get an entree and that’s it. And maybe dessert afterwards, but often not. This extremely rigid and formal situation where everyone has a bunch of different courses all synchronized together sounds completely foreign to me.
Not at all. The same principle should apply if it’s just you and a friend having dinner at a mid-scale restaurant. The general expectation when your plate is removed is to ask what you’d like to have afterwards. What kind of question is that while your friend is still eating?
This really is about restaurant’s pursuit of efficiency versus diners giving a shit about their experience. Whisking plates away is the sort of thing I’d expect at Denny’s or Applebee’s. Or with one person eating alone at a slightly better national chain.
If there are any soups, salads, appetizers, or bread served before the main plate, then I would insist on them leaving everything until we are ready for the next course, then clearing the previous course, then bringing out the next course.
Note I said when we are ready. Which is not when the kitchen finishes making it. It’s when I’m ready to have it at the table. I have sent back perfectly well-made entrees that arrived 3 minutes after the soups or salads were tabled. And explained to the waitperson or food delivery carrier exactly what was wrong and why. All modern kitchen management systems have features to time when items are started to meet a required ready time. Use them. To be fair, when I order I also explain to the waitperson that my / our dining is not a fast process. e.g. when salads are nearly done being eaten, then start the entrees; not before.
Under modern commerce, you get the shittiest product you’re willing to put up with. I am willing to put up with very little in the way of them rushing me for their corporate overlords’ revenue’s sake.
Clearing the plates is one thing, I don’t really care either way and can see both sides, but what absolutely has to go is the outdated idea that you can’t start eating until everyone has been served. I am not letting my food go cold because we are waiting on something else and I 1000% do not want everyone else waiting because of me.
That has never happened to me. Not unless everyone is done and it’s time for dessert.
You have, at most, 3 different times where you’ll order food. Or 4 depending on your perspective. Usually they’ll ask what drinks you want first, which you can request before anything else. That’s not food, but it’s a round of orders so you might count that.
Then they will ask if you want appetizers, which people may or may not want, and sometimes (often) will share if ordered. You can also order your entree at this point if you’re ready, or order when the appetizer is delivered.
Usually they wait until everyone is done with their entrees before they ask if anyone needs dessert.
The only time any plates are being removed as you are asked what you want is at dessert. At no other time does that happen. There are no plates to remove yet when you order appetizers and if you don’t order your entree at the same time as the appetizer order, you order when the first plates are being delivered (appetizers arrive).
So if the entire complaint is simply about asking if anyone wants dessert before everyone is done, I agree about that. That’s the one time. Meanwhile, usually at various points they’ve come along to refill drinks, remove appetizer and/or entree plates at various points. That’s a typical sit-down restaurant dinner.
One thing I often see is when a waiter is taking an order, they’ll ask if we want to stagger out soup/salad/appetizers before entrees or if we want them delivered at once, I assume for that very reason.
This whole discussion reminds of how much I prefer the dinning experience in Japan. For all restaurants that serve food, they don’t bother you unless you ask. At most of them you push a button to summon the wait staff both to order and to have them clear your plate or order something else. No one is trying to take a plate from you, or anyone else unless they have been summoned (and no arcane runes are needed to do so).
//i\\
That’s really cool. A place that has a “summon waiter” button sounds awesome. Need a refill, want dessert, want to pay, want someone to clear away plates. That’s amazing. I’ve never seen that but I love the idea.
The closest I can think of ever experiencing is a place where you can order and pay from an electronic device at the table, but you still have to wait for the waiter for anything else.
This also becoming more and more the norm at what are called Family Restaurants in Japan with robots delivering your food (not walking ones, rolling ones). There is still a summon waitstaff button though that you can press in case you don’t want to order using the screens, or need something else. Paying is usually at the front/entrance not using the screen/device.
It is something that you have to get used to though, I remember being shown to a table and then expecting someone to take my order until the person I was with showed me I needed to push the button.
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P.s. Happy SDBM birthday
Thank you!
Quite honestly, I can see both sides of the plate removal debate, and I think it comes down to the fact that some of us have become sensitized to the general problem of being rushed in restaurants, where sometimes it’s just a little too obvious that the primary motivation is to get you in, take your money, and get you out – all under the guise of a fake veneer of friendly graciousness.
Also, some, like me, are a little more sensitive than others to the rudimentary basics of tradition and protocol. There’s no right or wrong about it, it’s just that to me, when a plate is removed, it seems to signal that “this course (this phase of dinner) is over” which is just a little bit uncomfortable for the person still eating. It’s almost like an implied rebuke from the waiter to quit being such a laggard and holding up the proceedings.
My belief is just basically that the waitstaff should leave a restaurant table the hell alone until there’s a real need for their services, like clearing the table and bringing the next course.
I’ve said this before, but I know for a fact that my slimeball cable company sells their customer information to anyone willing to pay for it, including spammers.
By a quirk of circumstance, my name on my cable account is spelled wrong. Guess how my name is spelled on 90% of the junk mail I get? I’m certain that the same applies to the spam calls I get (the same fuckers also provide my landline service). This is supported by the fact that I get lots of spam calls on the landline, and virtually none on my cell phone.
This rant was triggered by the fact that over the last couple of days I’ve been deluged by spam calls on the landline. I never answer, of course, and the cable provider even flags the calls as “Likely Spam”. If I’m sitting at my desk, as I often am, I just press the “Monitor” button, which answers the call and turns on the speaker, but there’s no input.
Most of the time, the spammers’ phone systems are designed to detect a voice response before turning the call over to them, but this last batch over the past few days isn’t that sophisticated, which makes me suspect that they’re all from the same source. So now when the phone rings and I see “Likely Spam” I just press the Monitor button and get back to what I was doing, and delight in listening to some asshole going “Hello? Hello? Good afternoon. Hello?” 
Apparently they also provide entertainment services.