Improve Your Restaurant Experience – The Right Table by L. A. Keller
Improve your restaurant experience – the right table
I recently dined with a girlfriend at a restaurant that I have favorably reviewed in the past. I’m disappointed to report that I need to revise my prior review as this trip was disappointing and unsavory.
After trying to squeeze into a seat at the bar of four other restaurants, we opted to try Brio at the Scottsdale Quarter. Our first indication should have been that the bar had an abundance of seats. I’m covering what this means in a separate post but suffice it to say here that the red flags were waving.
However, I digress, and this post is not about Brio but rather about what you can do to move a bad experience to a better one. I admit I didn’t heed my own advice on this occasion.
Let’s say you have only a short time to dine and need to get in and out quickly. Perhaps, you’re starving and there’s only one option available. It may be a popular restaurant that you’ve been anxious to try or perhaps you are only in town for one night and this is your last chance to try Asian/Mexican/Latin fusion.
The restaurant is packed, and you and your companion finagle a seat at the bar where you have a view of the beer taps. You wait for an hour and a half for your reservation only to be seated at a table barely large enough to hold your cocktails in front of the men’s washroom under a dusty potted palm.
If you don’t register your displeasure before you are seated the opportunity to move becomes more difficult later. In the case of the only two seats at the bar, get the bartender’s attention and tell her you want to order dinner and would like to move to better seats as soon as they come available. Since most bartenders share tips, it doesn’t matter where you sit to them. Additionally, it’s easy for a bartender to direct a food runner to your new seats.
For table dining, ask the host when you check in to seat you in a particular area or table. For example, if you prefer to be seated in a booth versus a table tell the host immediately. Perhaps you don’t know the layout and don’t realize how bad the table is until the menus are dropped. Don’t sit down. Nicely request the host move you to a different location. Almost without exception when I do this the host gets a confused look and hesitates. Part of their job is to evenly distribute the guests among the servers. This requires an adjustment to the head count on the host’s part. It’s not rocket science but sometimes it seems as if it is.
In a different scenario, you are seated in an adequate table. You have plans to enjoy a reasonably intimate dining experience with your significant other-a nice bottle of wine, a lovely dinner and good conversation. Your wine has been served and you’ve just ordered dinner.
One table over a family is seated with a baby and a three-year-old. On the other side is a bachelorette party gearing up for the night’s festivities, starting with shots all around. You don’t want to be difficult, but you keep having to say, “What?” in order to follow the conversation at your own table. Don’t be miserable – move.
Ask your server, or go to the host stand, and ask to be moved to a different table. Although an inconvenience for the server and the host, it is your dining experience and they want you to enjoy it. A server is assigned a section of the restaurant with a set number of tables. This arrangement allows the host to keep the head count even between all servers and prevents the servers from running from one end of the restaurant to the other, thus monitoring their guests easily. But a server can either pass a check to another server or can keep you and simply swap tables with someone else.
Now that you have the right table or the best bar seats, we can move on to ordering in the next installment.
Happy Dining,
Leslie
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