Dining gripes: why all restaurants should take bookings
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Version 0 of 1. The founder of Polpo has made a list of everything he hates about eating out. I disagree with most of it, but here are my own bugbears – from time slots to up-selling When the restaurateur Russell Norman makes a list of everything he hates about eating out, this is a giant act of generosity: the man pretty much invented the small plate (the whole grand concept of making things so delicious that you don’t mind a tiny portion). Nevertheless, I have checked the list and disagree with most of it. For instance … The founder of the Polpo restaurants hates the question: “Do you have a reservation?” (It’s actually OK, if you still run a booking system, to ask people if they have booked); the “concept” (fair enough, but we are all humans just trying to plant a flag on the shifting soil); “artisanal”, “hand-cut”, square plates, novelty crockery (OK, granted); sommeliers sniffing corks (there is a theatrical framework to all human activity – what Lakoff would call Metaphors We Live By; sniffing stuff is merely part of that frame); waiters who go: “Don’t worry – I’ll remember everything” (but what if they can?): also, ones who say “Enjoy” (castigating expressions of goodwill is very 1980s). There are, however, plenty of things to legitimately hate about restaurants, of which these are merely the tip of the iceberg: Parsimonious time slots If you want people in and out, invent Leon. If you want to create a Faine Daining experience, put up with the fact that people will linger. This hit its apex when Brasserie Zédel started offering tables in slots of a single hour (relatedly: mad rushing from one course to the next; offering lunch and dinner reservations at times when no one has ever eaten lunch or dinner). No way of booking Even while I understand the last decade’s move towards not booking but simply turning up, let’s be frank that it favours the restaurant not the punter; they overcome the curse of the no-show, we get to spend half an hour in a queue. So when they overlay a bunch of other stipulations – your entire party has to be present before you can join the list, you have to wait on the street, not in the pub, etc – they’re having a laugh. Menu patter In menu rubric, nothing is more annoying that spelling out the price in words when perfectly good numbers exist (“scotch egg; five pounds”); except, possibly, chatting on the menu (“we love this little farm, and they produce the best damn offal within 50 miles” etc). Oh, wait: proselytising ethical statements that make no sense are bad, too: when the Duck and Waffle opened on Bishopsgate, in London, the menu honestly stated: “All our ingredients are seasonally sourced from all over the world”, entirely meaningless given that everything’s in season somewhere. Up-selling Sommeliers who hover over you, trying to make you feel bad about keeping to the top third of the list; anyone warning you that you will still be hungry if you don’t order a starter; anyone giving you the fish-eye when you don’t want pudding. First rule for everyone involved in the emotional co-production that is public eating: stay classy. |