[Editor’s Note: This is another sneak preview of Eating Las Vegas 2018, which will be released in November. Author John Curtas estimates he’s eaten 20,000 meals in restaurants over five decades and the following 20 lessons he’s learned about dining out are presented in the form of advice you can take with you to any eatery.]
Be in a good mood. You’ll get out of restaurants what you put into them. If you’re looking for a slight, or a service misstep, or a flabby French fry, you’ll find it. The happier you are with yourself, the less minor glitches will bother you.
Be hungry. A surprising number of people who go out to eat aren’t hungry.
Be in love with restaurants. What’s not to love? A number of people (usually young and attractive) are scurrying around trying to feed and please you. A surprising number of people who go out to eat don’t want to be there. Restaurants are like relationships: You must really want to be in one to make it work.
If you want great service in a restaurant, go there several times in a relatively short period of time. Time #1 will be pleasant enough, time #2 they’ll be happy to see you again, and by time #3, you’ll be treated like one of the family. When you start getting treated like one of the family, some freebie (a drink, a dessert, a taste of something special from the kitchen) usually starts showing up. By trip #3, you’ll also look like a total stud to whomever you’re dining with.
Be open-minded. Restaurants aren’t for picky eaters. Picky eaters should prepare their
own meals at home.
Remember how hard it is to own or work at a restaurant. Nothing is as easy as it seems. A cook is remembering a dozen details; the dishwasher is up to his elbows in 200-degree steam; the hostess is tracking who’s coming and going while she’s answering the phone, seating people, and trying to keep the owner’s hand off her ass.
Respect the staff. Be grateful they’re serving you and not the other way around.
Look at the menu carefully. Every restaurant in the world tells you right up front what it’s good at. If there’s a box at the top or bottom of the page that says: “Try our world-famous waffles!” get the friggin’ waffles. Don’t get the lasagna, fer chrissakes. If you insist on ordering a cheeseburger at a place advertising wood-fired pizzas, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Listen to the staff. Ask them what they like. Be honest with them when they ask you questions.
Don’t ask too many questions. You’re there to eat; the waiters are there to bring you food, not discuss breakthroughs in animal husbandry or the pedigree of the vegetables.
Be decisive. No one likes to watch you fret over the linguine versus the ravioli. Being too choosy in good restaurants is a bit like being finicky about oral sex: no matter what, you’ll still enjoy yourself.
Only order fish in restaurants specializing in fish.
Order champagne right off the bat. Admittedly, this is one of my pricier pieces of advice, but if you order two glasses of expensive French champagne (or better yet, a bottle of the expensive stuff) as soon as you sit down, the wait staff will snap to your attention immediately. Works every time.
Unless you enjoy polluting your body with the refuse of the land and sea, avoid all-you-can-eat anything.
Leave your food allergies at home. Face it: You’re not really allergic to anything; you just want the attention or you’re fat. Or both.
Never order a glass of wine in a cocktail bar. Never order a cocktail in a wine bar. Why do I have to keep telling you these things?
Show your enthusiasm. I don’t care if you’re in an izakaya in Tokyo, a Michelin-starred haute-cuisine palace in Paris, or a lunch counter in Paducah, Kentucky, tell your waiter how happy you are to be there.
Dress up! If you look like a slob, you’ll be treated like a slob. (Exception: barbecue restaurants. No one ares how you look in a barbecue restaurant. Barbecue restaurants are the great equalizers.)
Never eat out on a Saturday night. Saturday night is to eating out what New Year’s Eve is to drinking. Epicureans eat out on Wednesday and Thursday, when both the food and the staff are the freshest.
“Never eat at a place called Mom’s, play cards with a man named Doc, or sleep with someone whose troubles are worse than your own.” — Nelson Algren
Bon appetit!
Never miss another post
A corollary to the fish rule: Never order a steak in a restaurant that doesn’t have the word “steak” or “chop” in its title.
The exception, of course, is if steak is listed on the marquee followed by “Special $7.99”.
“Face it: You’re not really allergic to anything; you just want the attention or you’re fat. Or both.”
Wow, could you be more of a jerk?
Why the oral sex remark in what was otherwise an entertaining primer on eating out? Gross, very low class.
Loved it.