If you’re like me, you deep-six tons of email without reading, but I always at least glance at messages from restaurant trade bureaus or advocacy groups because they can be good sources of information and ideas for stories for this column. This morning, I opened email from FohBoh – “Food Service Social Media” – and found a link to a piece that originally appeared on the Huffington Post online: “The 10 Most Controversial Restaurant Policies.” All right, I thought, this is right up my alley, as my late father used to say to my consternation, since as far as I knew he didn’t own an alley and we did not, thank goodness, live in one.Faithful readers, may your tribe increase, will recognize that I have written about some of the issues over the past two years, but I want to go through these matters briefly to reiterate or pronounce anew.
NO KIDS. All sorts of restaurants exist that cater to families with children, who belong in fine dining restaurants only if they have the background and training in manners. Honestly, though, there’s no sense making eating out too demanding on the kiddies, as well as hard on the parents and other diners. Now if we could get the grown-ups to use their inside voices.
NO SUBSTITUTIONS. Restaurants usually make every effort to accommodate customers with allergies, dietary restrictions or just personal preferences. Requesting a substitution, however, should be within rational limits. None of this “I’ll have the red snapper with mango sauce, please, but substitute a veal chop for the fish” stuff. And why go to a restaurant that specializes in a niche cuisine, unique ingredients or narrow range of techniques if you’re disposed not to like it in the first place?
AUTO-GRATUITY FOR LARGE GROUPS. Few menus nowadays don’t include these or similar words at the bottom: “A gratuity of 20 percent will be added to checks for groups of six or more.” “Hey,” we want to say, “it’s the customer’s right to determine the amount of the tip. And besides, tipping is customary, not legally imposed.” As we head into the holiday office luncheon season, however, remember that it’s very hard work serving a table of 10 or 12 or more people; give the waiter a break. Besides, if the tip is included in the final amount, you and your cohort don’t have to tax your brains with knotty percentages and multiplication. Or is that division?
NO RESERVATIONS. OK, this is a toughy, and I’ll admit that my reaction to being told that there’s a wait of an hour for a table tends to be, “See you later, alligator – or never!” On the other hand, it’s über-irritating to have a reservation and still be asked to wait in the bar for half-a-freakin’-hour. Yes, fine dining restaurants should take reservations – and they should honor them, as should patrons.
CREDIT CARD REQUIRED TO MAKE RESERVATIONS. This is the other side of the reservation coin. You would be amazed how many people don’t show up for their reserved table, which the restaurant is holding out of courtesy, and don’t call to inform management that they will be absent. Giving a credit card number to secure a reservation doesn’t bother me, and besides, the practice is not prevalent in Memphis.
NO CELL PHONES/CAMERAS. Well, duh on the cell phone thing. Ever notice that when people talk on cell phones in public their voices go up, often by rock concert decibels, as if the person on the other end is dead? Nix to that, especially in fine dining restaurants; chat away at Chuck E. Cheese’s all you want. The camera issue is trickier. No, you mustn’t bring your $1,000 Nikon with industrial-scale lens and tripod into a restaurant, but in an age in which food-lovers like to post their dinner pix on Facebook or blogger/reviewers want food porn for their sites, maybe we can go easy on a discreet phone camera; no flash, please, so watch the light.
DINING TIME LIMITS. Another tricky matter. Restaurants need to make a profit (as do waiters), so management wants to turn over tables; patrons want to linger over coffee and bon-bons to conclude what perhaps was a wonderful or romantic occasion. Let’s compromise: When you make a reservation at Chez Panopticon, don’t assume that the table is yours for the night. I mean, it’s a little unconscionable to sit down at seven and leave at 11. Two hours, two and a half hours; does dinner really need to be longer? .Book/Reserve Table at Infusion Restaurant
DRESS CODES. Face it: dress codes are dying. So be it. That death knell does not mean, however, that’s it’s hunky-dory to stroll into, say, Erling Jensen or Acre or Felicia Suzanne’s in flip-flops, cut-off jeans and tank-top. I mean, really, if you don’t have the common sense god gave a goose, you don’t deserve great food anyway.
NO STANDING AT THE BAR. Ouch! Certainly if you’re at a restaurant bar on a busy night, especially if you’re dining as is increasingly the habit, you don’t want to be hemmed in by suits demanding the bartender’s attention, jostling your elbows or, worse, to have a Harvey Wallbanger dumped down your neck. Still, do any bars in Memphis enforce such a policy? Not that I’ve observed.
CASH ONLY. I’ve written quite a bit about the credit card conundrum and how much servicing credit cards costs restaurants, but there’s no excuse today for a restaurant not to accept them. Credit cards are simply how business gets done. Expecting people to carry hundreds of dollars in cash with them to lunch or dinner is unreasonable.
BookMyrestaurant Presenty Provides the table Reservation services in India .Where you can Book/Reserve table Online and can get Discount in each Book For More Info Visit http://www.bookmyrestaurant.co.in. Explore here Restaurants in Bangalore.
source "memphisdailynews"
NO KIDS. All sorts of restaurants exist that cater to families with children, who belong in fine dining restaurants only if they have the background and training in manners. Honestly, though, there’s no sense making eating out too demanding on the kiddies, as well as hard on the parents and other diners. Now if we could get the grown-ups to use their inside voices.
NO SUBSTITUTIONS. Restaurants usually make every effort to accommodate customers with allergies, dietary restrictions or just personal preferences. Requesting a substitution, however, should be within rational limits. None of this “I’ll have the red snapper with mango sauce, please, but substitute a veal chop for the fish” stuff. And why go to a restaurant that specializes in a niche cuisine, unique ingredients or narrow range of techniques if you’re disposed not to like it in the first place?
AUTO-GRATUITY FOR LARGE GROUPS. Few menus nowadays don’t include these or similar words at the bottom: “A gratuity of 20 percent will be added to checks for groups of six or more.” “Hey,” we want to say, “it’s the customer’s right to determine the amount of the tip. And besides, tipping is customary, not legally imposed.” As we head into the holiday office luncheon season, however, remember that it’s very hard work serving a table of 10 or 12 or more people; give the waiter a break. Besides, if the tip is included in the final amount, you and your cohort don’t have to tax your brains with knotty percentages and multiplication. Or is that division?
NO RESERVATIONS. OK, this is a toughy, and I’ll admit that my reaction to being told that there’s a wait of an hour for a table tends to be, “See you later, alligator – or never!” On the other hand, it’s über-irritating to have a reservation and still be asked to wait in the bar for half-a-freakin’-hour. Yes, fine dining restaurants should take reservations – and they should honor them, as should patrons.
CREDIT CARD REQUIRED TO MAKE RESERVATIONS. This is the other side of the reservation coin. You would be amazed how many people don’t show up for their reserved table, which the restaurant is holding out of courtesy, and don’t call to inform management that they will be absent. Giving a credit card number to secure a reservation doesn’t bother me, and besides, the practice is not prevalent in Memphis.
NO CELL PHONES/CAMERAS. Well, duh on the cell phone thing. Ever notice that when people talk on cell phones in public their voices go up, often by rock concert decibels, as if the person on the other end is dead? Nix to that, especially in fine dining restaurants; chat away at Chuck E. Cheese’s all you want. The camera issue is trickier. No, you mustn’t bring your $1,000 Nikon with industrial-scale lens and tripod into a restaurant, but in an age in which food-lovers like to post their dinner pix on Facebook or blogger/reviewers want food porn for their sites, maybe we can go easy on a discreet phone camera; no flash, please, so watch the light.
DINING TIME LIMITS. Another tricky matter. Restaurants need to make a profit (as do waiters), so management wants to turn over tables; patrons want to linger over coffee and bon-bons to conclude what perhaps was a wonderful or romantic occasion. Let’s compromise: When you make a reservation at Chez Panopticon, don’t assume that the table is yours for the night. I mean, it’s a little unconscionable to sit down at seven and leave at 11. Two hours, two and a half hours; does dinner really need to be longer? .Book/Reserve Table at Infusion Restaurant
DRESS CODES. Face it: dress codes are dying. So be it. That death knell does not mean, however, that’s it’s hunky-dory to stroll into, say, Erling Jensen or Acre or Felicia Suzanne’s in flip-flops, cut-off jeans and tank-top. I mean, really, if you don’t have the common sense god gave a goose, you don’t deserve great food anyway.
NO STANDING AT THE BAR. Ouch! Certainly if you’re at a restaurant bar on a busy night, especially if you’re dining as is increasingly the habit, you don’t want to be hemmed in by suits demanding the bartender’s attention, jostling your elbows or, worse, to have a Harvey Wallbanger dumped down your neck. Still, do any bars in Memphis enforce such a policy? Not that I’ve observed.
CASH ONLY. I’ve written quite a bit about the credit card conundrum and how much servicing credit cards costs restaurants, but there’s no excuse today for a restaurant not to accept them. Credit cards are simply how business gets done. Expecting people to carry hundreds of dollars in cash with them to lunch or dinner is unreasonable.
BookMyrestaurant Presenty Provides the table Reservation services in India .Where you can Book/Reserve table Online and can get Discount in each Book For More Info Visit http://www.bookmyrestaurant.co.in. Explore here Restaurants in Bangalore.
source "memphisdailynews"
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