"We'll get to your needs in a minute. Here's what would be great from my point of view, and which would make up entirely for the time I was in the Marais with my pregnant wife and this jumped-up little terrier in a Basque restaurant sneered at us for arriving without a reservation at his entirely empty restaurant at 6 p.m. He was plenty sophisticated-European. He responded to our request for a table for two with a curt, 'Non,' adding that all the tables-he even swept his arm back to indicate them-were reserved. So do me a favor and take your husband to Peter Luger in Brooklyn and see how he fares with those waiters, speaking English with a French accent. Just in the interest of explaining to him how New York used to be. Hey, now: the food's plenty authentic."
-Sam Sifton sort of attacks a reader who wrote in asking where she should take her "sophisticated-European" French husband to eat on their visit to New York City. All in good fun, though. After grinding that small personal axe a bit, he recommends Scarpetta, Le Bernadin, Annisa and 11 Madison Park.
Friday, August 27, 2010
24
I've been to Paris a few times and eaten in a lot or restaurants there (mostly small neighborhood places) that were all excellent as well as being friendly as hell so I've never experienced this 'snotty French waiter' attitude. Have I just been lucky or are the people that go on about it behaving like entitled assholes?
snotty Maitre-d's and restaurant service are not unique to, nor are they representative of any culture. Sure, I've encountered them in Europe, they definitely exist there. But I've also encountered some amazingly polite and professional restaurateurs who did not condescend to my clearly American countenance despite their usual clientele being wealthy landowners and rich international types on 6-month staycations.
I'll never forget the maitre'd of a certain restaurant in Santa Fe telling my dad, "MEESTEUR _______. WE APPRECIATE COAT-AND-TIE." as if he was perhaps too declasse to own one. (...Summer vacation, like we always did, in a town full of taco-and-margarita restaurants. Of COURSE he packed the Savile Row 3-piece!)
Actually, the rudest I've ever been treated in a "restaurant" was at a Wendy's in north-central Florida, so, you know, it's not always the sophisticated places.
TW;NS, but I expect such treatment from service employees who get paid five bucks an hour.
Oh but this was the manager, so we're talking more like six dollars an hour, and for that kind of money...
Reputations be damned, the waiters at Luger's have always been really nice to me. Maybe it's because I smile at them!
Yeah, why the random shot at Peter Luger? I don't even say "youze" and I had terrific service there.
Paul Bunyan couldn't grind an axe that big. Sifton must be a riot when he bumps into ex-girlfriends.
Good God. What about The Modern, Craft, and even the Mercer Kitchen?
As my experiences are in line with what LondonLee and Ms. Mantooth have offered up, may I suggest that Sifton is Le Fucking Problem here?
They don't refuse to put ice in your wine?
I ask for it on the side. I'm sneaky like that.
"Madame, you seem to have speeled ice into your wine. I weel bring anozzer."
"Just bring us the box of Corbett Canyon and a chiller of ice-cubes tableside, please. That'll be all, thank you!"
I'd like to apologize to Monsieur Sifton in the name of my people, we didn't realize that having a pregnant wife entitles one to steal people's tables and act like a dick. We stand corrected.
PS fuck you a million times viz. the accent thing.
The server at the freaking Great Jones Cafe did the same thing to me yesterday. Bar full, restaurant side empty, wouldn't seat me at a table for two even though I planned to order food even before my friend arrived -- I was HUNGRY. So I shot her.
The server or the late friend?
It was Yucko's gun, so I shot both, hit neither, and eventually had a nice pulled pork sandwich.
I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS LOADED
I'm pretty sure it was the trying-to-eat-dinner at 6pm thing that generated contempt.
"Yes, my good man, I'll have the milk steak, boiled over hard, and your finest jelly beans... raw."
"Don't put regular steak, put milk-steak, she'll know what it is."
Service in an empty restaurant is always the very, very worst.
It annoys the staff and interrupts their precious downtime!