A SNARKY GUIDE TO BEHAVING IN RESTAURANTS.
Eating out is suppose to be pleasurable event but is often spoiled by boorish customers, in the interests of better service, PRETORIA NEWS reporters have came up with tips for the diners.
A CHARTER FOR DINERS.
1. Note that square cardboard with writing on it?It is called menu.Use it.The odd request for a salad dressing to be served on the side is tolerable, but this fashion for ordering an entire meal not on the menu just makes us want to knee-cap you skinny fashionistas and green goblins. If the restaurant doesn't have what on the menu, go somewhere that does! And don't even think about summoning the chef in order to tell him how you would season the carpaccino, or to swop other cullinary insights, He's busy.
2. On the subject of pretentious prats, don't be a wine bore unless you are speaking to a Wine Steward.If you are at your local pizza joint, swirling and sniffing wine for ages merely irritates your fellow diners who know full well you are just quoting passages fromthe Jorn Platter guide. It doesn't impress restaurant staff either- after all, they didn't make the stuff; they just stuck a whopping surcharge on it.And BTW, unless the wine has turned to vinegar, the moment a bottle is opened, you pay for it.
3. When ordering, play to a restaurant's strength, Get fish at fish restaurant, meat at a steakhouse and so on.The place may have reams of other stuff on the menu to satisfy the most picky eaters but it's likely to be rubbish and you'll no doubt end up unhappy.
4. Spending aenos poring over the menu and asking for full ingredient lists or recommendations can turn a relaxing lunch hour into an anxious race against time for your companions. Good food is great, but it's not thst seriuos. It gets digested and turned into sewer filler-it isn't bronzed and placed on a museum pedestal. So , get over yourself and your interminable indescisiveness.
5. If you are speaking to a dining companion 8cm away and you are projecting your voice so that the entire restaurant knows you've just bought a BMW/been promoted to accountant exce/had sex , you should know that we'd like to stuff a service down your throat and , puh-leeze , don't broadcast your cellphone conversation loudly enough to make our eardrums bleed, Give us a thrill and put the cellphone on a vibrate.
6. Don't speak with your mouth full, slurp your soup, use cutlery to clean your fingernails, etc.In other words, learn some table manners.
7. You go to a restaurant to eat and drink, not to participate in S7M. Don't publicly flog the serving staff by screaming at them when something goes wrong or yelling at them to attract their attention, Be courteous and take up any problem with the manager- he is paid to take your abuse.
8. Something wrong with the food?If it isn't what you ordered , it's cold or hot, raw or overcooked, it has a fly oy hair in it, send it back by all means. Signal the waiter over and explain . Do not be one of the habitualy unsatisfied diners who throw wobblies for the sake of it-it's excruciating for the rest of us. Even worse is sending the meal back after you've eaten half of it!.
9. When bill arrives, divide it by the number of people at the table, if that's the understanding, Don't start long argument about who's paying for what in which you use calculator and decimal points-we don't care that you just had the salad.
10. Unless the service was dismal, leave a tip , for heaven's sake.
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