5. Never order an abbreviated dinner. If there is a cheese course, have it. Let the world know—not that the world is watching—that you are fully at ease in a situation that would overwhelm a less confident person.
6. Leave at least a 25 percent tip. An entire restaurant has existed merely to please you. Your magnificent presence has brightened what could have been a miserable evening for the staff, so don’t ruin everything by leaving 12 percent, the way you usually do.
F O R K I T O V E R
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After the meal, I rather hoped my wife would compliment me on my performance, but of course she did not. (See previous reference to matrimonial behavior.) She said that despite my antics, the restaurant still felt empty to her. I told her she was mistaken, because I had demonstrated that my ego was large enough to fill any room.
GQ, april 2003
P A L A T E C L E A N S E R
Ten Commandments for Diners
1. Don’t Give Them Your Credit Card Until After Dessert Restaurants have started asking customers to guarantee reservations with credit cards. Don’t do it. Assure them you’ll show up. Promise them you’ll call to reconfirm—thoughtful restaurants will even provide special numbers for this service. Frankly, if restaurants want to start acting like airlines, they should offer similar perks, such as frequent-diner upgrades (“Ma’am, your pork loin tonight will now be prime rib—at no extra cost to you . . .”).
2. Pay No Attention When the Waiter Suggests a “Favorite Dish” I sympathize with waiters, I really do. They’re hardworking, starving actors barely surviving on one meal a day—but I never listen when they recommend their so-called favorite dish, the warm fricassee of roasted root vegetables with black truffle jus. The only jus they’ve ever tasted is canned gravy. It was a sad day in American dining when waiters decided their job was to give orders, not take them.
3. Insist on a Glass of Fresh, Tasty Ice Water Restaurants are not selling bottled water to keep you hydrated. They sell it because it costs them seventy-five cents and they can charge nine dollars and seventy-five cents. Unless the civil defense agency of the state where you are dining has declared a water-rationing emergency, restaurants should place tap water on every table. Tap water is your friend.
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A L A N R I C H M A N
4. Don’t Order Steak at a Seafood Restaurant However, seafood at a steakhouse is never bad.
5. Pass on the Omelette Station
You’re on vacation, ready to splurge. That means the hotel’s $39.95 Sunday buffet brunch. There’s salmon, sushi, crab claws, shrimp, and eggs Benedict. You head straight for the omelette station, where a guy in a Hawaiian shirt who has never been to cooking school is making fluffy four-egg omelets with scallions, peppers, Bac’Os, and a grated cheese product. Nice going. You’ve just filled up on an egg dish that costs $3.99
at Denny’s.
6. Stand Up for the Coat-Check Girl
Many restaurants have decided to profit from the decades of good will and affection that (male) customers have for coat-check girls. They do this by paying her a (meager) salary and keeping the tips for themselves. Shades of Oliver Twist, that buck or two that you press into her delicate palm is immediately snatched away. So I always ask the coat-check girl if she’s permitted to keep her tips. If she tells me she isn’t, I don’t leave one. What I do is complain to the manager.
7. Demand to See the Chef
If dinner for two is costing $200, you have every right to expect the chef to be at work. Restaurants where the famous celebrity chef has taken the night off (or, more likely, is making a few thousand bucks cooking at a corporate event) should post a notice, similar to the ones seen in Broadway theaters: “The role of our highly publicized head chef will be played tonight by sous-chef Willie Norkin, who took one semester of home economics at Scarsdale High School and can’t cook worth a damn.”
8. Never Order the House Wine
Anything is better: lager brewed from the toxic waters of America’s Great Lakes. Flat tonic water from the bartender’s soda gun. No matter F O R K I T O V E R
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what beverage you request, it’s going to be better than the house wine, which often comes from a box. If there are two of you having dinner, order the cheapest bottle on the list, even if you know you won’t be able to finish it. And, please, whatever you do, don’t sniff the cork—you’ll learn nothing and only smudge your nose.
9. Never Eat a Dish Credited to the Chef ’s Mother Honestly, do you really think Mom is back there at the stove? Maybe, just maybe, if you’re driving through Italy and stop for lunch in The Piemonte region you might find a sweet old lady chained to a chair in the kitchen, forced to make a few thousand agnolotti before lunch.
This doesn’t happen in America. Any restaurant dish called “Mama’s” was cooked up by some ungrateful son who probably hasn’t called home in two and a half years.
10. Even Worse Is a Dish Invented by the Chef ’s Father Because dads can’t cook.
E N T R E E S
T O O M U C H I S N E V E R E N O U G H
I came to Monte Carlo to eat, and to do so in a manner so ambitious that all who learned of my plan labeled me insane, except for the few who thought me blessed. My itinerary: book a room for five days at the Hôtel de Paris, home of Alain Ducasse’s restaurant
