Restaurants have started a lot of annoying trends in the last 50 years.
I was dining out with friends the other day, and I was thinking about how annoying eating at Restaurants has become. It was not always thus!
When my parents ate out, they usually took the kids. We had to behave,
of course (and for the most part, did). So I have been eating in
restaurants for half a century now. And a lot has changed - not for the better.
Here are ten annoying things that restaurants have decided to do in the last 50 years:
1. The waiter giving you his name. "Hello, my name is Steven, and I'll be your server tonight!" they
chirp, as they come to the table. This never happened back in 1969, at
high-end or low-end restaurants. You see, the meal wasn't all about Steven
back then, and waiters were discrete and efficient, not chatty. I
chalk this one up to Corporate Restaurant Chains, who instruct their
minions to do this, thinking that it equates to better service. If you
talk about service enough, maybe people will believe they are actually
getting it. Paul Zaloom, in one of his shows in the 1980's, parodied this trend with the line, "Hello, my name is Pat, and I'll be your butter...."
2. Leaving silverware on the table.
Many people remember the exact moment and where they were when 9/11
occurred. Similarly, I remember the exact moment, the first time I
went to a restaurant, and the server took silverware off my plate and put it back on the table. Whoa. Did she just do that?
The world just changed. It was in the early 1980's, as I recall, and
within a few years, almost every restaurant started doing it. Again, I
think the Corporate Chains started this, as it cut down on dishwashing
expenses and labor. But it just smacks of cheapness and it is also
gross - utensils sitting on the table, with food crusted on them,
leaving stains on the tablecloth, while you wait for the next course.
The best restaurants never did this, of course. And today, I think the
tide is turning back. Let's hope, anyway.
3. Servers who say, "How is everyone doing here? Does everything taste good?"
You know the drill. You and your friends are having a good time,
talking, eating and then the server pops in with these idiot questions.
It started in the late 1980's with the "how is everyone doing here?"
bit, which was annoying as you could not answer with a mouth full of
food. Again, it was Corporate Restaurant Chains that did this - trying
to get you to think the server really cared, by showing up when they
were not needed. This morphed in the last decade to this "Does
everything taste good?" line, which for some reason literally makes me want to gag. "Garcon, bring me a bucket, I wish to vomit!"
4. Servers who say, "Are you still working on that?"
Again, you know the drill on this. You are sitting at the table and
not done eating and they say, "Are you still working on that?" as if you
were plastering a wall or something. Again, this is Corporate Chain
Restaurant Edicts (like the Flair required at T.G.L. McTchotchkis)
and I think is designed to make you feel slightly ill - so you finish
your meal and they can flip the table. Again, bring me a bucket, I wish
to vomit.
5. Take home Styrofoam clamshells.
Back in the 1960's once in a great while, my parents would bring home a
"doggie bag" with a steak bone or a small piece of steak as a treat for our dog.
That was then. Today, it is almost standard procedure for most folks
to take half their meal back home in a Styrofoam clamshell, to be eaten
later on - by themselves, not their dog. This is gross and
disgusting and our European friends think we are insane for doing this
(they are right). It is unsanitary and unsafe - lukewarm meals in the
trunk of your car are sure-fire recipe for food poisoning. Today, the
waiters no longer handle the food, but bring you bags and clamshells (no
doubt due to a memo from the risk-management attorneys at the corporate
chain) and you can scoop your food at the table, into boxes and bags.
Disgusting!
6. Portion sizes. Closely related
to #5 above is the portion problem. Rather than provide properly-sized
portions of good quality food, Americans seem to prefer huge portions of
really, really bad food. A mountain of soggy french fries is
apparently a good thing because you get more of it. People look at restaurants like gas stations - how many calories are they getting per dollar.
And America's restaurants are up to the task, loading up meals with
lots of cheap starches so you get "value" for your dollar, instead of
quality.
7. Restaurants as Kitchens. And #5
and #6 morph into #7. For many folks, the restaurant has replaced the
kitchen as the place where most of their meals are prepared and
consumed. A lot of folks - even in the lower classes, eat out five
nights a week. They "fuel up" at a restaurant on high-sodium,
high-calorie, and high-starch foods, and then justify the expense by
bringing the leftovers to work as "lunch" the next day. A restaurant
is not a substitute for a kitchen, and eating out all the time is not
cost-effective. For the cost of one restaurant meal, you can make 5-10
meals at home (the subject of my next posting).
8. Lines out the door and Pagers.
For some reason, Americans love their impersonal Corporate Restaurant
Chains, and will line up out the door to eat there. Most of these
chains have bench seats near the door just so people can wait - and
pagers that flash and buzz when they've flipped a table for you. When
we lived in Ithaca, New York, there was a great locally-run Tex-Mex
place downtown. It was busy, to be sure. But most of the Cornell
students would drive out to the strip malls to wait in line at Chili's -
and pay more for a meal of lesser quality. Americans, despite their
pretensions at being "foodies" tend to be very conservative and
frightened about food. Having a bad meal is something they fear more
than anything. Suppose there are items on the menu they've never heard
of? How will they know what to order? More than one American has
told me that they "always" go to a chain restaurant, because "It is
always the same and you know what to expect". Hard to believe this is
the same country that put a man on the moon (what with there being no
Bennigans there and all).
9. Chain Restaurants.
Which brings us to #9. When I was a kid, there were few chain
restaurants. There was Howard Johnson's, which was usually located
next to the Motel of the same name. People ate at such places when
traveling as it was easy to find (next to the Motel) and as noted above,
"they knew what to expect". And what they expected was pretty good,
actually. Jacques Pepin was actually their corporate chef, and he
created a line of frozen entrees that were so good, they started selling
them in stores. Sadly, when the founder died, the next generation of
owners let Pepin go, and the chain went downhill. And new chains
sprung up - not catering to travelers looking for a quick meal, but to
the locals instead. Fast-food chains put the Mom & Pop burger and
breakfast joints out of business. Denny's killed off the Diners (and
replaced them with faked-up Diners, years later). Upscale chain
restaurants killed off local efforts, as they could charge less and
market far more effectively. Saturation advertisements on television
just are not in the cards for the owners of the local Olde Tyme Gaslight Restaurant.
10. Table Clutter and Menu Clutter.
Back in the day, if you wanted ketchup on your french fries, they
brought it to the table. Today, there are napkin dispensers, salt and
pepper shakers, ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, and a number of other
condiments - left out on the table at room temperature. Then there are
table decorations, and at the chain restaurants, little (or large)
tri-fold deals telling you about blender drinks or desserts. Some
chains even use "flip over" dealies like the scorecard from What's My Line?.
Menus are worse - often with inserts and specials (laminated, in
Corporate restaurants) and so many choices that you can never really be
sure what you want to order. A good restaurant has a few basic things
and does them all very well. Today's restaurants try to do everything
(Tex-Mex, Thai and Sushi!) and does none of them well.
* * *
Eating
in a restaurant should be a real treat and a special occasion, not a
chance to refuel your body by stuffing 1500 calories of bad food down
your gullet. Sadly, the trend in the last 50 years has been toward the
latter. Restaurants today are far more plentiful (in terms of per
capita) than when I was a youth. And today, they tend to be boring,
mindless, faceless chain creations, complete with faux patinas and
themes.
Why people eat at these places is beyond me. They are bad for your body, and bad for your pocketbook.
