I’m part of a huge group that gathers at a watering hole (on the water, so nice views and great sunsets) every Friday night. (to be clear, it’s a bar attached to a restaurant - not the restaurant itself)
On any given night, we’re like a nonstop game of musical chairs and musical tables – as people come and go, and conversations drift.
Fortunately, we’re regulars to a point that the servers have done a very acceptable job of learning everyone’s names and what we usually order. it’s kinda nice to walk in the place and someone meets me at the entry (because there’s no door…) with a drink.
My husband and I actually have that at a restaurant we go to. The bartender knows our drinks and no sooner do we sit down at the table then our drinks come! It’s great. If we are with others whoever brings the drinks, usually the bartender, will take their orders and bring them right away. Its the best!!
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
64
On the other hand.
I’d made a solo reservation at a place. I get there to find it’s busy. Well, one of the rooms is busy - that’s the nice front room, not the dingy room at the back, which had no-one in. Guy points to a vacant four top in the nice room. I say, “it’s OK , I don’t want to take up so much space - happy to go in the back room”. Response was “But you’ve reserved, Mr Harters” and leads me off, clearing all the other place settings - I do hate it when they don’t do this - makes me look as though I’ve been stood up. Now that was hospitality as I understand it.
I mentioned way up top, in my catch-all list of why I don’t like eating in restaurants. It’s very jarring to me when I visit America, because in Italy, I am invariably addressed as signora.
Except when it’s not. My husband always orders the same thing at one restaurant. A couple of times ago he ordered something different, just for the change, and they still brought his usual!
Insider language. If you’re gonna put a house-made sauce on a sandwich, don’t give me its cutesy name without any explanation of what Hipster Fedora Sauce IS. A new customer is unlikely to know how it differs from, say, Soul Patch Sauce.
Substandard sandwich construction. Yes, it’s sandwich-annoyance day. You know why the Cuban sandwich is a classic? It’s not just flavor. DESIGN. Pressed sandwiches don’t fall apart if you look at them hard. They fit in your mouth. A delicious sandwich is one I want to EAT and EATING requires conveying it, intact, to my open mouth, which is – and this is key – wider than the sandwich is tall. Yet it’s a challenge to find sandwiches, burgers that don’t resemble an edible house of cards or require the jaw-unhinging ability of a snake.
