The Table Two Step…
I had a less than enjoyable game of the table two step with two English chaps on Tuesday night. The table two step is my moniker for that delightful moment when you show a party to their table only for them to dance around it whilst eyeing up other tables they'd rather be sat at. Obviously these two chaps picked the very recently vacated table beside the window. It was so recently vacated that the seats were probably still warm and the foam from the beer was still trickling down the pint glasses.
"You want to sit there? It's not cleaned", says I exasperated at their petty insistence at sitting beside the window. Fair enough the table I wanted to seat them on offered only a view of the bin are and bar but seriously it was a half hour off closing time. I wasn't in the mood for skylarking.
"Well....well if you insist...I'll have to get it cleaned. Take a seat in the bar and I'll call you in a half hour."
"Half an hour mate?"
"Yup, I am very busy at the moment." Now I assumed that this spoofed table clean time would put them off. It did not put them off and as they sloped off to the bar I cleaned and set their table in about two minutes flat.
They were ever so happy to get a table beside the window with it's startling views of the street and cars and is that a tramp picking stuff out of a bin? I think it is. Wonderful! It's just like dining on the beaches of Rio.
What is it with your demand to sit by the window? Eh? If the view is particularly wonderful, maybe a vista of a beautiful landscape with rolling hills and sheep and all that balls, I could understand it. But a regular street with regular street activity such as mentioned, then no, I don't get it.
Even when the sun is streaming in with the heat and intensity of a space shuttle launch people will mess themselves if they don't get a table in the middle of it. I served a chap last week who really messed himself in the worst way until we changed the booking sheet and moved other people's reservations and reset half the restaurant just so he could get a table by "the windies". Within ten minutes he was sweating like a dog in a Korean butchers. He was suffering bad but said nothing. It must have cost me twenty napkins though. And all this even after I had warned him of the problem with our lack of blinds.
Now how does that make sense?
Then there was the woman who cancelled her reservation because I couldn't guarantee her a quiet table on a Saturday night. I asked her to explain what she meant by quiet - "Well quiet, with little or no noise". Thanks, that cleared things up brilliantly. I pushed on. "Well we would prefer to be sat away from other tables, on our own." On a Saturday night? The busiest night of the week? Get til fuck. Sake.
Some people like dark corners, some prefer to be sat in the middle of the action, some, deviants in my opinion like to be sat in the kitchen. Que? Why? Why would you do that? Thankfully this is not a service we offer. Oh god, those letters of complaint just write themselves. What's with these people?
I don't understand these folks. Are they just hardcore foodies? Or attention seekers? Probably both. Whilst I like open plan kitchens that you can see from the restaurant floor I would not ever book a chef's table. I don't need to see things in that much detail when I am out for dinner. Actually there are a lot of things I would prefer not to see or hear for that matter. Professional kitchens are not hospitable environments for your dining pleasure unless of course you like to hear, "Yo mama jokes" ( yo mama so fat they should use her to plug the oil leak - lovely boys), swearing on a masterful level and you enjoy watching young men sweat whilst they wipe your plate. Chefs are like the children under the stairs, yes yes they have human rights and all that but they should never ever meet the public.
Chef's table? I'm very very much against them, hell I don't even like behind the scenes extras on DVDs.
All I am saying is take a look around you when the waiter shows you to your table. If the restaurant is busy just sit the feck down. If you really wanted a table beside the window you could have mentioned it when you were making your reservation, that wouldn't have been a problem. Oh you didn't make a reservation? Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, today's soup is vegetable.
Sheeesh.
It’s what I call Belfast Syndrome: Ignore the Please Wait sign and seat yourself at the only dirty table. Then wonder why someone hasn;t come to take your order and make a complaint that your table was dirty.
yer not wrong, so yer not…
for a brief period i worked in a box store ‘kitchen’ in high school not enough years to forget yet…its scarred me for life there will be no chef’s tables in my future. mostly i like a table near a wall out of traffic and i ask for that when i make my reservation if it can’t be done, i accept what i’m given and hope the food makes up for it. nothing puts my teeth on edge then the center of the room with *cough* other patrons bumping me when they are wandering about for no apparent reason. speaking of wandering guests..some should be seat belted into position! till they can prove they can behave.
add that to the list eh, seatbelts for wanderers
I am quite happy to sit anywhere but for the love of God do some waiters keep trying to seat me in booths when there’s only 2 of us and its quite obvious i wont fit (being rather rotund) when there are perfectly good tables for 2 free?
Sometimes its Human Nature, we feel safer with our backs to a wall! Its a privacy thing for me, in some resturants with lines of tables for 2, everyone can hear your conversation. Id rarely ever ask for another table, unless the waiter/waitress appears to be randomly seating people. Rest of the time i suffer in silence.
I don’t like sitting next to the window. I don’t want random people looking in the window staring at me and going ‘oh look at that woman eating with her mouth open’ and stuff.
Not that I do. Eat with my mouth open, that is..
Oh, never mind.
Prefer not to be in the centre of the room but seriously the food/people I’m with make or break it. chatting with the waiter also adds to the ambulance but I don’t want life stories, theirs or mine.
The window thing is a mystery.
Who wants the sun beating down while you eat?
There are few things more unpleasant than sweating while you eat.
Let me try to figure this out. People want a window seat(lovely view), with their back to a wall(security), facing the entrance(nosy), no-one within a twenty foot radius(other people too loud), the air-con on(it’s warm), the air-con off(too cold), the jukebox switched off(that’s noise not music), some your mama so fat jokes(there might be one they haven’t heard), a place in the kitchen(WHY?), the need to repeat thing’s back to the waiter several times(so you don’t have any…), and finally God forbid if they ask you about the wattage of the light bulbs and can you put a dimmer one in above their heads(Just plain nutters)
I love sitting by the windie and will always ask to get moved, even after reading your sighs Manuel. xx
some people never learn….heh…
I’ll respond to comments later….currently being consumed with iPhone envy….it’s taking up all my time and emotion…
So that’s where the coat hanger from my car went
‘Within ten minutes he was sweating like a dog in a Korean butchers’
Love it! I’m easily pleased so I don’t mind where I sit. Having said that I’d rather the waiter not park me next to the swing doors of the gents, or even worse the ladies. Last time that happened all the women going through were looking at me like I was perv of the year.
Which I’m not. Mostly.
freshly caught wild georgia shrimp are keeping me dining at home, sugar! *snickering* xoxoxo
(i always wanted to tell people -when we had the club- it’s a CLUB, not y’alls fucking dining room! sit were y’all are told and shutthefuckup!)
Sparky,
you missed out the whole can you light / put out the candle thing.
I’ve only got fork handles
Put me inside if it’s too hot or windy. Give me a window table if there’s a nice view and give me a LARGE table for two, not a feckin’ occasional table with tall legs – I do like to be able to put my elbows in the appropriately wrong place on the table and have room for salt, bread, water AND wine. Don’t, for the love of Jesus, put me near screamy kids or I may gag them with a napkin. And just keep being lovely for a large tip (unlike the snotbag in Eden Temple Bar the other week. Super is not meant to be used as a sneer word, you witch!)
Oh, I love sitting by the window. Good people watching opportunities.