Can’t believe I’m only finding this thread now. 1000% agreement on the high chairs/stools. I’m under 5 ft, and the climbing up and down is annoying. You usually can’t easily shift your chair either - once you pull it out to climb up, you’re too far from the table or bar and you can’t shift it forward. When you slide off to go to the restroom, it’s also all sorts of shifting of your clothes into the wrong position. Just uncomfortable!
Little snack sized tables and restaurants favoring the giant artwork sized plates and bowls. Someone clearly didn’t think this through. I find the overly large and ornate dishes to be eye-rolling anyway.
Dress codes - and I don’t mean just requiring a shirt or shoes to get in. Anything more than a reasonable casual dress is just crazy and reeks of desperately trying to be hip or fashionable. You either want to be a club or restaurant; most that try to be both aren’t great at one or the other.
Most outdoor seating in urban restaurants. Rooftop lounges aside, which I do often appreciate, any place that puts those tables outside. I know plenty who love this because they just want to soak up those UV rays like there’s no tomorrow. I just think most outdoor seating is absolutely terrible. If you use those horrendous wrought iron tables that are never table and your straws and forms start falling through gaps and holes, that’s so annoying. Most seating like this means eating with cars zooming by, and shockingly exhaust does not enhance the food. Nor does the rando who is smoking and wafts all the cigarette smoke as they walk by too. It’s often too noisy, too windy, too hot and all other sorts of reason why sitting outside is the bane of my existence at most team meals. At least half always vote to sit outside and I just let out a sigh and roll my eyes.
I am with you on outdoor dining. I actually enjoy it at the few places that have terraces (especially on the water). But more often, the tables are out on the street or in a parking lot (and no, exhaust certainly does not enhance the experience). And as you say, there are few days when dining outdoors is pleasant–not too hot\cold, not windy. And yep, I tend to be outvoted when this option is selected.
Yes, yes, YES. Given the choice, Mrs. ricepad would choose to sit outside 80% of the time, whereas I would choose to sit outside perhaps 10% of the time. We usually compromise and sit outside.
Before I retired, we had an occasional member of our usual lunch group that always wanted to sit outside, too, and would claim the best seat. What constituted ‘best’ depended on weather and location, and too often I found myself sitting in full sun on a 90 degree day or next to the curb on a busy thoroughfare. I solved that by not going when she was in the group.
I hear ya about the tables outside. There’s one main street near where I live that was “beautified” (the city’s expression) just before covid. The water mains were dug up and replaced in 2019 which was much needed since our sewer system dates back to the 1800s and Ottawa has grown exponentially since then. Then in 2020, during the summer, the sidewalks were widened to accommodate patios for the restaurants that wanted one. One of my friends wanted to sit on one of those sidewalk patios a couple of summers ago and we ended up sitting at the far end near the sidewalk. It felt like a loss of privacy. I solved the problem by recommending restaurants that didn’t have patios.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
365
I’ll second this (er, is it “fifth” this?). Away from urban areas, and especially in tropical-ish areas like South FL or the Keys, I enjoy spring and fall dining (but not summer) outside but only with pleasant water views (and hopefully no unpleasant water smells). But summer in most of S.FL can be brutal (hot/humid), not to mention if a lot of sea grass has been pushed up by a storm, the sulfur can get eye watering.
I guess I’m lucky in that Berlin’s sidewalks are famously ginormously wide, so that most cafes, restaurants & bars will, in fact, put out tables and chairs as soon as the first rays are out for longer than 3 hours. There’s enough space to be comfortably far enough away from traffic.
Northern Germany is a dark and temperate - cool climate to live (or at least used to be, since it’s heating up like everywhere else, of course), and so at the first sign of spring / last hurrah of fall errrrrybody wants to sit outside - whether that requires the now banned gas heaters that have the advantage of frying the top of your head while your toes still get frostbite, or supplying diners with blankets. A lot of Germans also still smoke, so there’s that “advantage.”
But the truth is that almost nobody wants to sit inside when the weather is nice, probz also bc a/c is not a thing in most restaurants, still.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
367
That’s to handle the drunken Americans and Brits as they sway and stumble about!
Munich, too, especially at the end of September I’ve heard they double the width of the sidewalks (yes, this is a joke).
Hamburg also seemed to have sidewalks about 2X what you tend to see in US cities. Some smaller cities I’ve been to also have plenty of room for a 4-person table, taking up half or less of the width. I’ve only walked to a few restaurants in Frankfurt and at least in the areas I was in, the sidewalks seemed smaller, more like US. But that could just be due to limited exposure.
I generally like dining al fresco, provided the weather is clement and the setting is reasonably relaxing and quiet. I also value the fresh air exchange and distancing. Views from outside always beat views through windows.
But I also agree with many here that far too many places’ outdoor seating are too loud, polluted and lack privacy.
I think many of these “ugly” areas are artifacts of the depths of the Pandemic, when putting them in was the only way for a business to survive.
They certainly increased with the pandemic, but crowded streets and parking lot dining has been around for decades in the Philadelphia\Delaware Valley regions.
Yes! And then there are the people walking dogs along the sidewalk who don’t seem to notice or care that their dog is jumping at you and your food.
And the pigeons that poop on your food.
And the bees and flies that get attracted to your food, and the mosquitos that are attracted to you.
The restaurants with patios and gardens that offer dining in good weather are very different and delightful compared to the actual street. Oleana in Cambridge, MA, is a prime example. Twinkling, not garish fairy lights are also lovely.
Some photos here (beyond pay wall, I think, unfortunately, and the Globe doesn’t allow me to gift). Pre covid prices but some menu items are still current.
And a photo from Facebook…Tried to paste it in but I’m not on Facebook so you’d have to log in, apparently, to see it. It’s a lovely photo
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
374
Not sure but I guess there’s fewer staff trips to table (no need to stop and drop them off) and maybe if they’re keeping a clean shop, wiping down the menus after use? (just spitballing, and I wonder how often the menus really get wiped anyway)
I’d say the biggest things the QR codes did was cut down on menu reprints (and/or labor intensive over-writes) during a time of rapidly changing food costs. One small family-run joint I sometimes visit does not have a website, and had to keep pulling their menus out of the glossies and stickering over the old prices.
Finally they just put a big sticker on the front saying “prices may not be up to date, ask us for current price”. When my son and I were last in there he asked why I didn’t inquire about the current pricing, and I told him it was because I trusted them and they wouldn’t charge more than they needed to.
Call me stupid but I can’t understand how your poor service is attributable to the medium of the menus, nor how it leads to job losses as asked previously.
QR code menus often give you the option (or the imperative) to order your food online, without the interaction of a human standing near your table. This was the case at (among others) Freehold in the Park - I sat down, brought up the menu on my phone, and ordered. A runner brought me my food and a busser removed the empty plates. There were a few waitstaff roaming about, but their main role was to get flagged down and asked questions. So this place could get by with fewer servers, because the job of taking orders and conveying them to the kitchen was done by the diners themselves.
Ahhh! Got it! It’s not just to view the menu, it’s an entire platform to order and expedite. I’ve never dined anywhere like that. Maybe an airport… I think T5 JFK.
I have nothing against the practice in theory, but a 20% tip for nothing at all rubs me the wrong way. At Sweet Chick, not only do you order your own food, you also bus your own table and refill your own water. Obviously, I tipped anyway, I’m not an ogre. But I wasn’t thrilled about it.
