"Hanna Raskin" news and stories

Summarizing what Christmas celebrants used to serve at their festive dinners is no simpler than listing what eaters today consider requisite holiday foods: For various families on a single city block, it might not feel like Christmas without getting drunk on eggnog; slicing up a pannetone; gorging on baccala; tucking into a roasted goose; slurping down glogg or munching on stollen.

Americans' conception of Christmas dinner has always turned on such inalienable attributes as ethnic heritage and birthplace: A first-generation Vietnamese-American living in Louisiana probably doesn't set the same Christmas table as a fourth-generation Swedish-American with a home in northern Minnesota.

Still, it's possible to get some sense of what early Americans deemed standard Christmas fare by examining what they served their society's least fortunate members. Holiday menus from prisons provide a pretty good guide to which foods Americans thought of as so indispensable that even robbers, counterfeiters and killers deserved to enjoy them come Dec. 25.

Remember the Omnibot? When Radio Shack first introduced the short-lived 1980s sensation, it promised buyers could "astound and impress their party guests" by relying on the personal robot to deliver their drinks.

Now Applebee's is borrowing the Omnibot's shtick, employing a newfangled electronic system that's designed to downplay the human element of service. In restaurants across central Florida, servers are now outfitted with watches that vibrate whenever their guests press tabletop buttons.

Applebee's diner Virginia Wesson this week told the Orlando Sentinel she loves her button, since she often has trouble getting her server's attention.

"This way, they have no choice," Wesson said. "They make sure you can't be ignored."

Kudos to the anonymous waitress in Manhattan, the unnamed server in suburban Chicago and the pizza-chain staffer who helped Reader's Digest assemble its story this month about restaurant secrets. Just in time for holiday dining, the expert panel has reminded restaurant-goers that it's not OK to let your shy kid order for himself on a busy night, whistle for service or leave a compliment instead of a cash tip.

I'd concur with just about every item on the list, most of which will be familiar to readers of this column. Not surprisingly, many of the gripes center on beverages, which seem to be the bane of the service biz. I was only slightly annoyed that a waitress revealed servers, who don't want to mess with the noisy, time-consuming process of mixing froufrou drinks, nearly always claim the frozen drink maker's broken; I'd hate for a customer to challenge my colleagues or me the next time we trot out that standard line.

Only a few of the touted secrets seem generated just to round out the list: I'd have serious concerns about the sanity of a server who told guests her "brother's off to war" in hopes of getting better tips, and I've never worked with anyone who would dare leave the alcohol out of a customer's cocktail.

But perhaps the story's most interesting secret isn't a secret at all: It's a question posed by Kansas City waitress Charity Ohlund, who blogs for frothygirlz.com.

Serious diners may revile the open restaurant kitchen as noisy and passé, but the worst behaved among them should thank their lucky stars for the unfortified layout. After all, it's much harder for a server to spit in their food with everyone in the room watching.

But no amount of interior decorating can stop servers from taking revenge on their most miserable customers. Cads who pat their servers' behinds and cheapskates who order water, sugar and lemon instead of paying for lemonade should know their hijinks don't go unnoticed: Even the sweetest-seeming server will punish offenses at the table -- usually smiling all the while.

Spitting gets all the press, but few servers at sit-down restaurants like to mess with bodily fluids: Spitting's considered a rather déclassé and uninspired way of getting back at customers. Savvy restaurant workers aim for pocketbooks, not their guests' immune systems.

Photo: Erix, Flickr

Want to really confuse your server? Leave a 15-percent tip.

There's nothing more ambiguous than the 15-percent tip, which could just as well be a "thanks for nothing" grat from a miffed diner who always leaves 20 percent or a sincere show of gratitude from an infrequent restaurantgoer who thinks 15 percent is still the going rate for good service. Only the tipper knows for sure.

Fortunately for servers, fewer customers today seem to fall into the latter category, which is now mostly populated by the very old and very stubborn. Surveys show the vast majority of Americans have transitioned away from the 15-percent standard which ruled the food and beverage industry for decades, with the national average tip rising to 19 percent in 2008.