Has the democratisation of dining out finally, irrevocably crowned the
customer as king? Is that a good thing, or do you prefer the more
established approach where everyone knows their place?

Reading my favourite food forum recently I came across a link to a recent article by Jenifer Lang, the owner of the now defunct Café Des Artistes in New York. In it, Lang bemoans the fact that modern restaurants have altered the natural order of things between diners and staff.

"Whatever
happened," she asks, "to the days when everybody knew his or her part
in the restaurant dance? You went to a nice restaurant — there weren't
that many to choose from — and you showed up on time, you were seated
as soon as you got there, the captain greeted you and took your order,
the waiter served you, the sommelier poured your wine, you drank coffee
and brandy and tipped the maître d'hotel on your way out."

She
blames the change on restaurants like the terrific Union Square Café,
part of the Union Square Hospitality Group owned by Danny Meyer, which
offers great food alongside superb but informal service. This, Lang
claims have given diners an undeserved sense of entitlement when they
enter a restaurant making them "presumptuous" and waiters "cranky".

It's
an extraordinary argument to suggest that bad service is the fault of
the customer rather than a failing of the restaurant. It is one that
could only have come from someone on her side of the restaurant /
customer divide and someone who laments that old school restaurant
models no longer apply. She follows up her argument with a series of
quite frankly bizarre tips from luminary New York critics and
restaurant owners on how to get the best service in the city's
restaurants. These include not expecting to receive good service at
peak times in a restaurant (although presumably they will still expect
to present you with the same bill) and bonding with your server by
making them laugh or talking about pop music, suggesting that it is
part of the diner's role to win over the waiter to their side, through
false bonhomie or a big tip.

Her argument and advice strike me as
entirely missing the point, harking back to a time when there were far
fewer restaurants and only a select number of people who could afford
to cross their thresholds. Anyone who didn't know there was a
"restaurant dance" let alone what their part in it was found themselves
intimidated by snooty staff and made to feel unwelcome. The fact that
Café Des Artistes closed its doors in 2009 probably means that Lang is
now only too aware how times have changed, and that the power in the
customer/restaurant relationship now rests entirely in the hands of the
diner.

It is not just in New York where this change is obvious.
In London too, the last 20 years have seen a huge increase in the
number of casual dining spots, filling the gap between the old school
fine dining restaurants and 'carry your own tray' fast food joints.
With them they have brought more casual styles of service that have
made eating out a lot less intimidating and available to a much wider
audience.

Informal service can go too far, of course,
particularly in Britain, where we feel uncomfortable if service becomes
too chummy. I still get very cross in a restaurant when forced to guess
which of the young people, with jeans positioned just below their
buttocks, are actually members of staff. I shudder when a waiter calls
me "mate" agreeing with my father that "I don't want to be amigos, I
just want my dinner" and God help any waiter who hunkers down at the
Majumdar table or even worse, decides to pull up a seat.

However,
on the other side of the coin, Lang is absolutely right to recognise
that with a new wave of diners often comes a new wave of idiots who
fail to acknowledge even basic levels of good manners and feel that
their very presence in a restaurant entitles them to treat the staff
like garbage. It may be foolish to suggest that you have to earn the
good humour of your waiter, but a little mutual respect goes a long way
to making sure your dining experience is a happy one.

Do you
think, like me, that the fact the customer is now king is both correct
and irrevocable or, like Jenifer Lang, do you long for the days when
there may have been fewer restaurants but everyone knew their place in
the restaurant dance?

By: Simon Majumdar

Source: The Guardian