"restaurant etiquette" news and stories

Good servers are constantly questioning their guests: Would you like a cocktail before dinner? Is your steak cooked correctly? Are you considering dessert this evening?

But restaurant etiquette dictates that the questions stop as soon as the check's dropped. No matter how lousy the tip, servers aren't supposed to ask their guests whether they could have done anything to make their experience better – even if the phrasing's exceedingly polite.

Staying mum isn't easy, especially since servers are trained to make sure their guests are happy. A poor tip doesn't seem too different from a restaurant goer yelping, "I'm having a terrible time!", a cry no capable server would ignore.

Have you ever sat down in a Thai restaurant and found yourself confused by the menu and so went with the most seemingly innocuous item? However adventurous or timid an eater you might be, there are certain cultural differences that once explained, would enlighten your ordering.

Pailin Chongchitnant, a culinary student and guest writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, first noticed the drastic differences between Thai and North American culture when she moved from Thailand to Canada. Having been hit with this culture shock, Pailin offers her personal guide to ordering Thai food, to enable you to venture beyond curry and partake in a more authentic Thai dining experience.

Eating isn't the only thing people do in restaurants.

While seated at table, customers fight. They have sex. They sign contracts. And, sometimes, customers die.

At the busy restaurant where I work, we've had at least three customers suffer fatal heart attacks after their meals. That's not the restaurant's fault, of course, but it's always a strange situation for the server, who's stuck with a section full of traumatized diners and the knowledge that she served the victim his last-ever plate of lobster risotto.

A blogger over at the Huffington Post recently found a novel way to discourage restaurant goers from making tableside "lemonade": She argues the penny-pinching practice is as filthy as it is uncouth.

It's a point that bears repeating, if only because heaping scorn on the sugar-and-lemon set has done little to dissuade them. It's an argument that also has the distinct advantage of being true.

I'm not sure exactly when lemon wedges became as obligatory as plates and napkins, but I've never worked in a restaurant that didn't garnish their glasses with them. Server sidework invariably involves slicing a few dozen lemons into half-pinwheels, a process that's almost always messy.

Defying customer expectations, Little Rock's leading Tex-Mex restaurant last month slapped a price tag on its chips and salsa.

Lee Womack, manager of Juanita's Mexican Café and Bar, says the groundbreaking measure hasn't yet stimulated a free chip crackdown citywide, but he suspects more restaurants will follow suit after seeing what the new revenue buys. "We were able to get brand new glasses, new utensils and new linens," Womack says. "It's been kind of a radical change."

Juanita's opened in 1986, and rapidly acquired a national reputation for its margaritas and cheese dip, both of which were named Little Rock's best by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette last year. Womack resists calling the redone restaurant "fancy," but concedes, "We cleaned up the old girl."