Well I was slightly more polite (on the outside at least), but that was the gist of my response 
2 Likes
While I debate internally which is less offensive 
4 Likes
I’m an Old. I still hope for observant common sense on the part of the host/ess, but I know I’m probably just barking up the wrong tree for that.
4 Likes
EXACTLY.
5 Likes
Lotsa mine have already been mentioned, but one that I saw last night, as it happens, is cushioned bench seats with pillows that you have to move out of the way. Number of pillows needed on a restaurant bench seat: zero.
6 Likes
I absolutely will not sit at a high-top table. Even if the seats have foot peg rungs, they’re never the same distance as floor-to-seat regular distance, and so uncomfortable.
Darkness, I echo. I’m old enough that presbyopia is a problem. I want to see what the heck I’m eating.
My other gripe is “open ceiling” type setups. The acoustics are just SO bad. Echoes and reverb, causing people to talk louder and louder, finally shouting over each other. How hard is it to install some acoustic dampening material up there? I don’t want to look at your damned ductwork, anyway. Ever. So hide it.
8 Likes
And seating. Sticky where your butt or calves hit. Ew.
1 Like
Restaurants that don’t keep to their posted hours of business.
2 Likes
That’s Harters’ First Law of Restaurant Hygiene.
But application of it can be tricky at times. In the UK, restaurants are inspected by the local council’s environmental health department and awarded a rating of 1 - 5. Ratings are displayed on a national website - https://www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk/
If I come across a new restaurant where I really want to eat, I make a point of NOT looking at the ratings. It may put me off. And, yes, I know that’s the point. Having eaten there, if I decide I may want to go back, then I’ll check out the “scores on the doors” and factor that in to my decision process. I’m OK with a score of 3 and up. Not going back to a 0, 1 or 2.
2 Likes
I don’t mind the QR code menus. More often than not, laminated menus are obviously not wiped down these days as they were during the pandemic, at least not at the places that we patronize (largely pubs/sports bars). That necessitates a trip to the bathroom to wash hands, which may or may not be up to standards thus creating a death spiral.
2 Likes
Agree 100%, although it is expensive (and ugly) to install a drop ceiling in today’s cavernous mixed-use spaces. However, it’s easy to soften the walls.
You post brought back memories of a revered breakfast place in Lihu’e, Kaua’i with exposed ductwork and fans (Bonus points for anyone who can ID it). Anyway, the place was an instructive example of what happens after decades of service: the grey, greasy, mold-like, fuzzy accumulation. Easy for ownership to ignore precisely because it’s so hard to remove.
So add ‘dirty ceiling crud’ waiting to drop into my food to my list of annoyances.
9 Likes
Diner: Waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup?
Waiter: The back stroke.
5 Likes
What’s that fly doing in my soup?
I had to unzip it to get my dick out.
In a french restaurant:
Diner: Waiter there’s a fly in my soup. Le mouche!
Waiter: I will get you a new soup. And, by the way, it’s not le mouche, it’s la mouche.
Diner: My, you have good eyes.
11 Likes
I’ve never been to a restaurant with a QR code that didn’t offer a printed menu on request.
Restaurants didn’t adopt QR code menus to be hip; they adopted them because many people erroneously believed that Covid could be transferred via surfaces.
Glad it’s not a Spanish restaurant.
1 Like
That was part of it, and it also helped them cheap out of printing menus, fresh sheets and tap lists.
I ate (not dined) at a SoCal restaurant that was early on the Web/QR thing, and it definitely was for the hipness. They took it to the extreme of requiring patrons to order and request table service via their devices. If you bucked tham and actually asked for a menu or tried to wrangle a server the old-fashioned way, the attention you got was passive-aggressive, not-with-the-program.
Yes, early on in the pandemic, we were terrified of surface contact. In my house, we never isolated the mail after I read that Fauci didn’t, but hand sanitizer was a constant companion.
So much was learned about transmission as the pandemic went on.
A while back I was at a restaurant with QR menu. Server told me that they had printed menus but they weren’t accurate and hadn’t been updated for over a year. I hadn’t seen QR menus anywhere for months before that.
That was our experience in Silicon Valley last spring. The server rolled her eyes at our request for a physical menu and huffed off. Before she could return, one of our dining companions - who is definitely more hip than we are - whipped out her phone so we could peruse the menu and order.
Dirty bathrooms are getting a lot of attention in this thread, but I have to say that one benchmark my family has always noted for Chinese restaurants is that we have never eaten at a really good - as in authentic (and there’s that word atop the slippery slope!) - Chinese restaurant that had clean bathrooms. Yeah, I get the whole “what you see in the bathroom is emblematic of what is likely in the kitchen” thing, but having worked in commercial kitchens, not much would shock me. I know how the sausage is made, and I still choose to eat it. Conversely, the few Chinese places where we’ve eaten with clean bathrooms serve decidedly American-style Chinese food.
2 Likes
