Patterico's Pontifications

Jack Benny when he went to a fancy Hollywood restaurant

would ask for a table near a waiter.

rab (7a9e13) — 5/28/2008 @ 4:21 am

I agree with him on two levels:

1. The wine: It nearly breaks my heart to see good wine go to waste. Might as well pour that DeLoach OFS Pinot down the sink than pour into several glasses I know. Cost irrelevant, it’s just a heart-rending travesty. Then again, cost included, table-wide pours are a great way of finding oneself in need of additional bottles not otherwise needed.

2. My pet peave was hit squarely on the jaw here. Especially during lunch, which for me almost always includes business, nothing irks me more than to be in the midst — or worse, a client in the midst — of describing something of importance and a waiter walk up and immediately interrupt to ask his own question regarding our order, service, etc. Time and again, the fellow or gal walks right up and immediately interrupts. A simple pause at the table would allow thoughts to be completed and still allow the waiter to capture that order/info without lost time. The nicer the restaurant, the less likely this is to occur, but it happens in every city I visit, North and South, East and West.

Betcha $5 that today’s lunch is void of service and I must each my words here…

EHeavenlyGads (f29174) — 5/28/2008 @ 6:01 am

I simply don’t tip when they do that…

Scott Jacobs (fa5e57) — 5/28/2008 @ 6:08 am

Probably he’s whining (wining?) because he was doing the talking when the waiter appeared. He’s just angry that his spectular verbalizations received an unnecessary hiatus.

Plus the column gets allows him to display snobbery: he knows the inside social history of DC.

kishnevi (fb6ec3) — 5/28/2008 @ 6:48 am

Philistines.

I think the Israelis ought to give them their own country.

Dan Collins (5885b2) — 5/28/2008 @ 7:01 am

#1 Jack Benny’s spiel was being a cheapskate. My aunt was a cocktail waitress on the Strip in Vegas in the Fifties. Mr. Benny ordered a cup of coffee and left a $100 tip.
I wonder how much difference there is between Hitchens and Sullivan, other than Sullivan having a lesbian lurking inside him.

madmax333 (cc44b1) — 5/28/2008 @ 7:01 am

I usually tell the waiter that I will be doing the pouring myself.

Alta Bob (53a695) — 5/28/2008 @ 7:03 am

This, of course, is argument Number One why everyone should leave the wine in the cellar and drink gin martinis at lunch. I prefer to order them Rodney Dangerfield/Back to School-style: Bring a round every ten minutes until someone passes out, then start bringing them every seven minutes.

JVW (78155f) — 5/28/2008 @ 9:22 am

Hitchens goes out in public to be noticed, and to be “witty” for all to see. To be upstaged by a waiter is to be unprepared. He should have a few “saves” in his pocket, much like a professional comedian or street performer. Another solution would be to just drink faster.

TimesDisliker (e34011) — 5/28/2008 @ 9:56 am

” . . . and I felt it might seem rather churlish of me to . . . WHAT THE F***, DUDE?”

Dan Collins (5885b2) — 5/28/2008 @ 10:43 am

Wine service, indeed service in general has been badly degraded by marketing (as has a lot of other stuff I guess.

I am of the opinion that service ought to be invisible–you should not notice its absence or its presence.

But now so much is theater.

But some of us are guilty from our side.

I recall from an earlier life participating in what was at the time the oldest computer-users organization. At the semi-annual conference it was the tradition that the representatives of The Vendor took the members of the Board of Governors and their consorts to dinner at a fancy restaurant in what ever city was hosting us.

One of the members of the BOG my first year there had persuaded others that he was The Wine Authority. What he did, I am sure, was pick the two most expensive wines in the cellar because he wanted to hurt the vendor or something.

But he knew ALL of the moves (feel the cork, smell the cork, swirl the glass, smell the glass, sip the wine, make the ghastly sucking noise, the whole drill).

This one time, by the time the steward got to me (quite a ways down-table) he had served most of a bottle.

I caught a off whiff when he poured to my left, and as soon as he poured mine I tasted, and as he finished pouring to my right I caught his attention as said quetly “this is vinegar”.

With arrogance dripping he took his little cup-on-a-chain and poured some and tasted it.

Then in one fluid motion, he empted his cup into an innocent ficus, signaled to somebody up-table, and started collecting filled glasses, mine first.

in a really funny incident at a Sizzler here (order at a sortakinda buffet counter, go sit, order brought later.

Before we could get seated, the waiterperson had asked us several times if our meal was OK. Finally told here that after we had gone back to the salad bar and after we had returned to our seats and after our entree had been brought to us and after we had had an opportunity to taste all that I would come find here and tell her how it was.

Larry Sheldon (ede583) — 5/28/2008 @ 1:55 pm

I am totally with Hitchens on this. It pisses me off exponentially when I watch some well-meaning young beer drinker who is waiting tables come over and pour an overly-large re-fill of damn good wine into the glass of one of my table-mates who I know is going to leave it sitting there. Waiters should leave the drinking to the drinkers. We know what we’re doing.

driver (faae10) — 5/28/2008 @ 3:24 pm

And only an idiot smells the cork….

driver (faae10) — 5/28/2008 @ 3:25 pm

or in my case “Would you care to sniff the cap, Sir?”

Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 5/28/2008 @ 3:48 pm

“Would you mind uncapping my quart of beer and letting it breathe?” One of my favorite BYOB lines that I ever heard.

Right up there with asking for “diet” mineral water. Cheap, clean fun.

driver (faae10) — 5/28/2008 @ 3:55 pm

“Diet water, please…”

Freaks the waiter out every time…

Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 5/28/2008 @ 4:45 pm

I agree with Hitchens. Wine bottles should only be emptied by the folks seated at the table.

h2u (81b7bd) — 5/28/2008 @ 5:36 pm

It’s interesting what passes for manners these days. I was always given to understand that good manners was not a matter of obeying a set of arcane rules, but of caring for the people around you – whether you were serving them or they were serving you. Oenophile pretension (#11) is self-serving. So, obviously, is “blasting” a bottle of wine in order to get the customer to purchase as much as possible. But by the same token the customers in a restaurant don’t *own* their space, and they don’t own their wait staff. They are borrowing that space and the people who serve them depend upon their customers using only a reasonable amount of time for meal. Hitchens may believe that all the world is waiting to hear his next witty remark, but in reality they’re waiting for him to finish his wine, handle his check, and vacate his seat.

It’s sad to see that he’s raising his son to be as insufferably arrogant as himself. They are called “waiters” and “waitresses” because in the old days they waited upon your command like a faithful pet eager for you to throw a stick. If Junior Hitchens has to wait for his food he feels inconvenienced. Life has let him down. I’d say he needs to be on the other end of that equation for a while.

Don (3c5555) — 5/29/2008 @ 10:24 am

I agree with Hitchens. I don’t need my wine glass to be filled at 60% all the time! Lead on Hitchens!

Roy Mustang (7a82d5) — 5/29/2008 @ 12:14 pm

That’s so wrong, Don. The restaurants are also dependent heavily on repeat business. If they have a reputation for pushing people out to churn tables, folks who enjoy a leisurely dinner conversation (and are willing to dine at restaurants that charge prices high enough to allow this) will stop going. They aren’t “borrowing” the space, they are renting it.

Also, many such restaurants make significant profits on the alcoholic beverages they serve. They’re happy to keep you sitting there as long as possible, pouring more and more wine into you. Every bottle is more profit to them (plus, the waiters have learned from experience that drunk patrons leave, on average, higher tips).

How the heck is it “arrogant” to seek LESS service from the waiters and waitresses? Man, that’s arrogance: “Excuse me, I can do that for myself.” What’s next? Maybe he’ll object to their cutting his food for him, too!

PatHMV (653160) — 5/29/2008 @ 12:46 pm

5/28/2008

I May Be Misreading This . . .

20 Responses to “I May Be Misreading This . . .”

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