Llewellyn King: To stressed out wait staff — please don’t ask me
The White Horse Tavern, in Newport, R.I., built before 1673, is believed to be the oldest tavern building in the United States.
Union Oyster House, in Boston, opened to diners in 1826, and is among the oldest operating restaurants in the United States. It’s the oldest known to have been continuously operating since it was opened.
Sometimes I dine in fancy restaurants with starched white tablecloths, napkins and professional waiters; waiters who don’t ask me throughout the meal, “How is your food so far, sir?” To pestering waiters, I want to say, “If I am capable of ordering a meal, I am also capable of calling you to the table and telling you if the soup is cold, the fish is old, or the bread is stale.”
That is an occasional indulgence and reminds me of the time when, between journalistic gigs, I worked at a high-end restaurant in New York. It even featured a big band, Les Brown and His Band of Renown.
My wife and I frequently dine somewhere local, usually a pub-type eatery. After a while, you learn what they are good at and order accordingly. You are resigned to vinyl tablecloths and flimsy paper napkins.
And I resign myself to being asked at least three times some variant of “How is it so far?” The answer, which like other diners I never have the moral courage to voice, should be, “Go away! You are spoiling my dinner with an insincere inquiry about the comestibles. I am eating, aren’t I?”
Maybe these waiters should ask the chef how the food is for starters — it is too late by the time it gets to the table.
The other dinner-spoiling intrusion, if you don’t have a professional, is the young waiter who wants you to be their life coach. It begins something like this, “I am not really a waiter. I am studying sociology. Do you think I should switch my major to journalism?”
I am tempted to reply, “I don’t know anything about sociology and it is damn hard to make a living in journalism these days. But there is a huge shortage of plumbers. You might try an apprenticeship somewhere and give up college.”
Give up waiting tables, too, I hope.
Please don’t misunderstand; I love restaurants. It cheers me up to eat out. I rank towns with a vibrant restaurant culture as high on the quality-of-life scale.
I am writing this from Greece, where a cornucopia of restaurant choices beckons everywhere, from avgolemono soup to taramasalata. I am all in.
When your mouth is full, the awful business of asking you how the chef’s skills are that day doesn’t seem to be part of the continental culture. That, I find, is an egregious weakness of the English-speaking nations.
But the business of interrogating you about your breakfast, lunch or dinner isn’t confined to when you are at the table. If you make a reservation online, using one of the booking services, you will be pursued afterward, sometimes for days, by annoying questions about the restaurant’s food and ambiance, and the service.
The multiple-choice questions follow a formula like this, “On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your dining experience?” How do you explain that you loved the meal except for flies diving into your plate? Is that a one because of the flies, or a 10 because of the food? Splitting the difference with a five explains neither the failure nor the success.
A restaurant in Washington, D.C., once specialized in delicious roast beef sandwiches. They were the creation of the man who owned the restaurant, and he had cuts of beef, a sauce and rolls all made for the purpose.
But once I can remember, there was a distinct problem: A rat appeared next to a colleague when he was tucking into the sandwich.
How do you rate that dining experience when Yelp sends its questionnaire? Do you rate the food as a resounding 10 but the ambiance as one? How would the number-crunchers rate that in the overall dining experience?
Knowing how they like to seek averages, my suspicion is the roast beef eatery would have rated a five.
I read somewhere that during the Siege of Paris in 1870-71, an entrecote (a sirloin steak) was a slice of a rat. For years, I wondered about that place in Washington and its excellent roast beef sandwiches.
I would rather eat with an annoying server than a fraternizing rodent. Bon appetit!
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.
Charles Pinning: 'When what you want comes to you'
"Hope'' (oil and gold leaf on panel), by ELLEN GRANTER, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
I was devastated! I’d given Lisa Goodrich a Valentine’s Day card and a box of chocolates, and she could barely say thank you before shoving them into her book bag and hurrying off to her mother’s waiting Cadillac.
I walked home from school and must have looked as dejected as I felt, for as I approached our house, Anna Pasch, who lived next door, came out of hers and asked me what was wrong.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true,” she said.
“I gave a Valentine’s Day card to this girl in my class and she just put it in her book bag and walked away.”
Anna slung her arm around my shoulders. “C’mon inside and have some banana bread.”
Halfway through my second slice, Anna got it out of me that it was Lisa Goodrich and that I’d also given her a box of chocolates.
“Oh, boy,” sighed Anna.
I made a wounded animal sound.
“Will you do me a favor? asked Anna. “Will you be my Valentine?”
My older brother was slapping English Leather on his face in preparation for his Valentine’s night out with his girlfriend.
“I’m taking Sally to the Pier,” he said. The Pier was a fancy restaurant on the harbor in downtown Newport.
“I’m going to the White Horse Tavern,” I said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Anna’s taking me.”
My brother stopped. “What is it with you two, anyway?”
“I—” but before I could say anything he cut me off.
“Anna Pasch is the most gorgeous creature in Newport, possibly the entire United States. I’ve asked her out. Everybody has asked her out, and my fourteen year old brother is the only person she’ll go out with. I’ve asked you this before and I am asking you again: What do you two do together?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s impossible! Two people cannot do nothing together! Did you tell Mom and Dad?”
“Not yet.”
“They’ll let you go. They love her. You’ve never been to the White Horse.”
“So?”
“Well, you better start getting ready. It’s very fancy.”
“As fancy as The Pier?”
“Fancier.”
“Can I borrow one of your ties?”
“No.”
Anna and I sat at a round table in front of the fireplace in the barroom. I wore my blue blazer, plaid bell bottoms and loafers. I took a tie of my brothers anyway. He had so many he wouldn’t even notice, if I put it back just right.
Anna looked like a movie star. Sixteen years old and over six feet tall, her effect was always impressive. Add to that her sapphire-blue eyes and bright blonde hair, perfect complexion and Wonder Woman body and basically everyone in view was dropping dead.
Anna’s uncle was a manager at the White Horse, hence the table in front of the fireplace and the immediate tendering of two flute glasses of French ginger ale.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetheart,” Anna toasted, and after our first sip she kissed me. Her lipstick smelled like roses, made somehow more red and fragrant by the snow falling outside the windows, the candlelight and burning wood.
“Charlie, Lisa Goodrich will waste your time and break your heart. Her family came over on the Mayflower, and they think all that crap is actually important. She is cute but she’s conventional. Lisa will always be about Lisa.
“You are intense and you are smart. And you are sensitive. If you try to please Lisa Goodrich, your edge will dull. Did she wiggle her tail for you?”
Stifling a laugh, I aspirated ginger ale out my nose.
“A female does that to attract and then sort out the possibilities and you’ve been rejected. Consider yourself lucky. She’ll eventually settle on Barclay Belmont, or someone like him. You, as a male, are wired to fight for her and try to control her, even though actual life has surpassed the slow steps of biological evolution.”
“Wow.” I said wow a lot when I was around Anna.
“My love, you don’t win something by conquering it. You win when what you want comes to you.”
Before we got out of Anna’s yellow Mustang convertible, we kissed. Anna and I had a way of getting lost in our kisses. We could let one kiss just go on and on, breathing in out of each other. Our lips had fit together perfectly from the start.
She took my hand. “Here. Feel my heart. Can you feel it beating?”
“Wow.” I’d never felt anything like that before.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetheart. All we have to do is be ourselves and the world is ours. It will be easy for us, if you let it.”
Charles Pinning, an occasional contributor, is the author of the Rhode Island-based novel, “Irreplaceable.”