Eating out & Formerly Fine Dining

[Stillhomewardbound]

Jay Rayner rings the changes in the dining out experience.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/fine-dining-tablecloth#comment-54278544

Meanwhile, in best Ed Reardon fashion, I add some pet peeves of my own:


** I happen to prefer a side-plate for my bread. Where this 'au peasant' bread on the table cloth rollocks came from I'm not quite sure, but it's not for me.

** I have very nearly broken the arms of waiters that have deigned to top up my glass without my bidding. The ones that actually got a fracture, at least, were those dim enough not to be able to interpret the grimace on my face for an expression of extreme displeasure.

** 'How was your day', 'Hi, how are YOU!' etc. None of your e**in' business. I've come here to eat. If I want to join a fake glee club I'll go next door to the local AA meeting.

** 'I'm sorry but I can't HEAR you. What was that about the specials, again?' What really do michelin stars mean for any restaurant when the food might be fantastic but you know you won't be able to discuss it with your dining partner until you go to bed that night because of the current obsession with laminate flooring, stark decor and open kitchen areas so it feels almost like your dining on the factory floor of a car factory.

** 'This restaurant is almost empty. What on earth are you doing putting us next to the only other couple in the room??!!'

** 'Actually, my female friend is my host on this occasion, so why are you presuming that I will be picking up the tab because I'm the man?'

** I enjoy a leisurely meal with no pressures, but when I gesture to the waiter that I am ready to pay the bill, that means I'm hoping to leave shortly. Why then do I find myself in too many restaurants sill waiting to settle up ten minutes later? If I left without paying I suspect it wouldn't be as long before someone came after me.

** 'How is everything for you?' Well, at least give me a moment to actually pick up my knife and fork and give it a go. Yea? Also, I'd be happier if you're asking that question that you will kindly and politely respond with similar alacrity to the following: the wine glass is chipped, the desert spoon is not clean, the gazpacho is warmed, the vegetables are days old, the butter is frozen, the steak is rare (as requested) but only at one end and by my reckoning I expect to see a fifteen percent discount on the bill. NO, not a discount on the food, but a discount on the entire bill.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VLwV48OHs

[Sir Velo]

From my own experience and from conversations with restaurateurs I am now inclined to give most dining out opportunities a miss: the poor (almost non-existent) hygiene as practised by those involved in the preparation and cooking of the food; the poor quality ingredients (e.g. "scrapped" hens for chicken meat - ie those hens which have finished laying and are then sold in bulk to the catering industry) to keep costs down; the surly or incompetent waiting staff etc.

A far finer gourmet experience can be had from cultivating the right kind of acquaintance.

[french frank]

I don't dine formally. Yesterday morning, my neighbourhood Italian cook (chef) was chatting with his nephew outside the restaurant at the 'smokers' table' (not smoking of course, but they provide a table) and, yes, he did ask me how I was - and whether I'd like a coffee. I stopped, chatted about what was wrong with my pizza dough (mustn't use a roller, for one thing), drank my coffee and then went on my way. Tomorrow or next day I'll drop in for lunch and I don't care if the bread is on the table cloth. And I take guests there. As dining, it's more life-enhancing than fine.

[Don Petter]

A far finer gourmet experience can be had from cultivating the right kind of acquaintance.

Not anthropophagy!

[vinteuil]

I don't dine formally..

... I choose not be so self-restrictive.

We mainly eat at home. Sometimes we eat out at informal places, gastropubs and the like, where of course there are no table cloths and service is casual.

But sometimes we - (to be honest, I ) - feel the need to be pampered: and heavy linen, solid cutlery, knowledgeable sommeliers, friendly waiters and waitresses, a 'correct' atmosphere, - is all part of the experience, and paid for en connaissance de cause. "It's cheaper than therapy... " as I point out to mme v.

But the point made by one of the comments - that one resents paying for meals one could do as well or better at home certainly resonates. So I wd prefer going to a restaurant doing stuff we don't try to do at home - proper oriental, middle eastern, indian etc cuisines - or stuff which is done immeasurably better by really high-end michelin-rosette restaurants.

I don't diss 'fine dining' - that would seem to me to be an inappropriate self-denying puritanism, an immature gesture. We look for the best in the music we want to listen to, the books we want to read. Food can be taken seriously too.

[subcontrabass]

I don't dine formally.

But did you dine formerly?

[Don Petter]

But did you dine formerly?

Bad experience in a tie restaurant?

[Sir Velo]

Not anthropophagy!

Call me Hannibal

[Serial_Apologist]

Call me Hannibal

Not servile-o.

[Nick Armstrong]

I add some pet peeves of my own

May I just say that I love your OP, Shb, and cannot (1) sufficiently express my agreement with every word; and (2) improve upon or add to it!

[french frank]

I don't diss 'fine dining' - that would seem to me to be an inappropriate self-denying puritanism, an immature gesture. We look for the best in the music we want to listen to, the books we want to read. Food can be taken seriously too.

I don't, erm, 'diss' it, but even from what you say, I wonder what percentage is style rather than gastronomy? It's style I don't do!

I tend to eat out, very locally, when there doesn't seem to be much of interest to eat at home.

[vinteuil]

It's style I don't do!
.

... would you, erm, 'unpack' that a little?

I can well imagine that there are certain 'styles' of dining experience which wdn't be pleasant - muzak, overly obsequious staff, poncey menus, the kind of service objected to in stillhomewdbound's opening post... And I imagine there are 'styles' which you wd enjoy more.

... but 'style' tout court ? What, specifically, is it that you, erm, "don't do"?

[french frank]

... would you, erm, 'unpack' that a little?[...] ... but 'style' tout court ? What, specifically, is it that you, erm, "don't do"?

Ooh, I dunno, heavy linen, solid cutlery ... a 'correct' atmosphere An' dressin' up. That sort of style.

I've even been known to remove my knife and fork from my plate, and place them on the paper tablecloth to use again for the next course …

[vinteuil]

heavy linen, solid cutlery …

... o, the linen can be so important as part of the scene! Who can forget poor Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors -

"It was on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time gathered them in, the explanations — he had stored them up; but it was at present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them — he couldn’t tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn’t seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window? — the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions."