Now that were all back to dining out like we did in the good old days (pre-COVID), the rules of whats acceptable and what isnt have changed. For instance, fine dining once required specific place settings and dress codes, but that hardly exists anymore.
Fine dining, as we used to know, is almost entirely dead, author and teacher Matt Batt told HuffPost. I think so many of the old rules of etiquette are kind of gone, and I think its for the better really.
For several years Batt worked in restaurants, including a mob-run diner in Milwaukee, an Asian-German fusion restaurant in Columbus, and the James Beard-nominated Brewers Table located above Surly Brewing in Minneapolis, which shuttered in 2017. It was in almost every way the best job Ive ever had, he said.
Last year he published the book The Last Supper Club: A Waiters Requiem about his experience waiting tables and working almost every position imaginable at restaurants.
Michelle Wildgen is a novelist and writes about her experiences in the food industry through the books Wine People and Bread and Butter. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, she waited tables in high school and college, and for a few years worked at the James Beard award-winning restaurant LEtoile.
Post pandemic, I do feel like the standard of service has kind of gone down, she told HuffPost. I think people are stretched thin. Theyre looking for more staff. They dont have as much to work with as they used to, in terms of who the restaurant can hire and how great those people are going to be and how happy they are to be there. I do feel like its a lot more common for there to be a kind of dismissive attitude or for you to wait for a while, and its not as great as it used to be. But I think the food is often better.
According to Batt and Wildgen, here are some rules to follow so dining out isnt the stuff of nightmares.
Be respectful with your phone usage
You can really tell by what people do with their phones what kind of table theyre going to be, Batt said. If you approach a table and not only are their phones out, but theyre all on them doing separate things, communication is going to be a nightmare. They dont listen to each other, so theyre not going to listen to you.
Wildgen worked at restaurants before phones were ubiquitous, but said the customer needs to pay attention.
I personally wouldnt care that much about phones as long as you stop talking and turn and talk to your waiter, she said. Theyre there to help you have a good experience. If you want to be on your phone the rest of the time, so be it. But its really about getting that connection made so you can actually enjoy your time.
However, be mindful of taking photos were looking at you, influencers.
It always irked me, Batt said. This is supposed to be a gustatory experience. At the best restaurants, they dont let food sit under heat lamps at all. They want to plate it the moment its ready to go and get it to the table as soon as possible. And even just a minute of screwing around with taking pictures can cool down a dish. Your sauce can get craggy and gross. Its food. Eat it.
Even worse than snapping photos is when customers use photo equipment.
When you see the ring light come out, you know its going to be a bad table, Batt said.
Wildgen agreed: The ring light coming in that would be completely insane.
Dont be afraid to ask questions
Its the worst when [diners] dont ask questions, Batt said. A lot of fine dining restaurants have really oblique menus where itll say scrod, tapenade and thats it. And youre like, I dont know what any of that is. Its the worst when people order stuff thinking they know what theyre going to get, but then they didnt ask any questions and they didnt let me explain. Then theyre super frustrated they didnt get what they wanted when its like, well, I could have told you what it was going to be, but you didnt let me tell you.
Its better to be safe than sorry, so dont be embarrassed to inquire about anything. I really wanted people to feel relaxed and comfortable to ask whatever they wanted to know and not feel stupid about it, Wildgen said.
At the same time, Wildgen said dont be afraid to send a dish back to the kitchen if its not good enough. Theres a way to be completely respectful and nice but still say, Im sorry, this is not great, or this is not what I pictured, she said. May I have something else? Restaurants understand that.
Keep your drinking in check
What if a customer gets out of hand with the boozing? Who handles it?
A bartender or a maitre d or manager would likely be the one to do that, Wildgen said. Its likely theyd first try to soft-pedal it just drop the check and try to smoothly move them out. Luckily with a restaurant there is more of a finite endpoint than a bar where people expect to sit and drink.
You dont want to make a big deal out of somebody whos not drinking and you want to make a big deal out of somebody who is drinking [too much], Wildgen said. You cant overdo it or its going to be really unpleasant. I think most people kind of get it together. And if theyre really hitting the drinks, then theres usually a bigger problem afoot than just etiquette.
Dont ask for too many samples or substitutions
One of the biggest frustrations I get working at a restaurant in a brewery is people want to sample everything first, Batt said. After a while its like, Dude, order a beer and drink it. And if you dont like it, order something else. It drives me crazy when people kind of fail to understand that if they order a drink or a sample of something, its the same amount of work for the server. They still have to get it from the bartender.
Wildgen spoke about a substitution request she had with a customer 20 years ago. She wasnt able to accommodate the customer, though he kept bringing it up. Every time I went back to the table for the rest of the night to say, What can I get for you? he would ask for the same thing again, just to make sure that I knew that he was upset about it, she said. Its a dish of caramelized turnips. I highly doubt you woke up that morning and were like, My life is worthless unless I can get my hands on caramelized turnips today. Get some perspective.
The customer isnt always right
Theyre absolutely not always right and sometimes need to be called out on it, Batt said. He explained when he worked at Brewers Table, one time a group of drunken people came in and wanted to order fries from Surly Brewing, located downstairs. However, food from downstairs didnt go upstairs and vice versa.
You wouldnt go to a food court at the mall and order from Sbarro and go, Will you get me a rootbeer float from A&W next door? Thats a different place. You got to go through the different menu and ordering system and all that.
Eventually, the chef kicked the misbehaving table out.
Wildgen echoed Batts thoughts. I think that youre all just trying to have a nice business relationship and a good interaction, she said. There are reasonable limits that I do think a lot of people forget because theyre busy thinking they can do anything they want because theyre the customer, which is not a reasonable way to go through life.
Dont split the bill with multiple cards
Finally, the bill comes. These days its easy to split bills, but its not advised to have multiple cards.
I have been out with people who became so angry at being told they couldnt split the bill entre by entre that they really acted rudely that, of course, is not acceptable, Wildgen said.
As long as you tell the server pretty much when you sit down or when you order, its not a problem at all, Batt said. But if youre like, By the way, heres a stack of six credit cards and I want all this different stuff assigned all these different ways, the risk of server suicide just went through the roof. I still have nightmares about it.
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