Menu Reading for Dummies

   A quick guide from your not-so-helpful server

     Avoiding problems is my number one priority. In no way do I enjoy seeing a customer's hand suddenly thrust in the air, their behind hovering over their seat in their impatience, like the classroom teacher's pet during quiz time. Nor do I appreciate approaching a table while I'm carrying a heavy stack of plates, a drizzle of olive oil slowly running down my forearm, and having to listen to a "my night is now ruined!" story.

     When a dish arrives incorrectly because of a kitchen or service error, well, that's our bad: "Let me just stick these plates on my head and I'll get your dish fixed." But a more sinister possibility exists‒ The customer didn't bother to read their menu. In these instances of blatant negligence, I may be tempted to drop my stack of plates on the customer's head.

 
     Tip #1:  A menu will typically have large words in bold, followed by smaller type. Those are titles, used to denote categories of food. "Pasta," for example, will mean the dishes listed will contain glutinous, flour-based concoctions. This is important to remember in an Italian restaurant; If lamb shank is listed as an ingredient for an item in the pasta section, it will be pasta with lamb, and not the other way around.

     Tip #2:  If it seems too good to be true it probably is. If something costs half the going rate of other items on the menu, it's likely to be a smaller plate (this is assuming the guest has ignored the "appetizer" heading). Or, when the lamb pasta costs 10 bucks less than the lamb entree, it is again another clue that the dish is more pasta than meat (I can't begin to count how many people order that damn pasta thinking they've just gotten the best deal on the menu.)

     Tip #3:  Know restaurant "types." Is the place down-home style, with a bunch of fluffy, middle-aged people chugging diet cokes and eating fries? Or a trendy spot with suits and designer dresses slurping down oysters? This gives huge insight to the menu when a customer decides to skip reading the ingredients. In the first scenario, a burger will likely come dressed the old-fashioned way, with lettuce, tomato, mayo, etc. In the second case, one can expect the cow patty to be topped with something sautéed, a stinky cheese, and possibly served on brioche with an herb-spiked aioli.

     Tip #4:  Have a sense of adventure. Dining out is not an Indian Jones' movie; No poison darts will fly from the wall, or trapdoors suddenly open beneath anyone's chair if they order wrong. If the restaurant is busy, chances are the unexpected item will be good. Trying something new is fun, and the reason many people go out to begin with.

     Tip #5:  Don't ask the server, "What do you like?" Nine times out of ten the answer is disingenuous because a) all the food started tasting the same to server years ago b) the server spent the afternoon doing Yoga and making pumpkin granola and not eating ravioli in cream sauce  c) the server has heard that question too many times to make more than a standard effort. A better question, is "between these two dishes, what would you recommend?"  

     Tip #6:  If a customer is allergic to anything commonly used in restaurant food (onions, garlic, wine, citrus) they need to stay home tell the server! This is important, because most of our sauces contain at least trace amounts of these ingredients.  On the flip side of this, the fastest way to piss off the server is to cry wolf about an allergy. For example: a customer doesn't want garlic because they are avoiding scaring away their date with dragon breath, or they are on the gluten-free diet bandwagon because a friend told them they "might" have an allergy to gluten. When the term allergy is used falsely, the multi-step procedures we have in place‒ hand-typed instructions, a conversation with the kitchen, separate sauce preparations and pans‒has been an exercise in futility. Customers who pull this kind of garbage on a busy Friday night are self-centered asshats.

     Tip #7:  Finally, don't forget to have fun! This is a bit of a repeat of tip 4, but I can't emphasize it enough. Customers who ask good questions and are open to new experiences have more fun and make the server's job more enjoyable too!

"Special"

     I like giving specials to tables.

     Of course, by the 20th iteration of these babies, I'm a bit glazed over, glancing forlornly out the window at the darkened street, the sound of my voice in my own ears a muffled "wah, wah, wa, wa, wah," ala adult-speak in a Peanuts cartoon. I may, at this point, receive similarly disinterested looks by late-night guests, who are planning to order soup and salad anyways, but I am not deterred. Specials form an important part of my arsenal as a server:

     1) By convincing a table they may wither into frail agedness if they do not choose the healthy wild salmon option, at 27 dollars, vs. the butter-drenched noodles at 16 bucks, I can drastically raise my check averages

     2) I get to "do" something at my table, make eye contact with my guests, and establish myself as a friendly presence: "Hi, here I am," arms gesticulating. "I'm telling you about sexy food! Like me!" This amounts to better tip percentages, plus if the kitchen decides to do something silly like, say, lose their order, my table is much more likely to be gracious about it

     3) I liberally use foo-foo foodie lingo in describing glazes and preparations, and show off second-language skills by correctly pronouncing non-English terms. Again, my table won't as easily think I'm a total idiot and blame me for any hiccup in their dining experience

     Occasionally a guest will manage to derail me from my mission to grace their ears with talk of gremolata and braises. I'll approach a deuce‒it's almost always a two-top who does this‒ and begin to introduce myself.

     "Hello, may I-"

     "We are ready to order."

     OK.

     I have a few different options at this fork in the road. With seven or so tables behind me waiting, I can stop what I'm doing, give specials, and put myself behind with all the other things I have to do now. I've discovered that 99% of time these "Impatients," as I like to call them, do not order specials, as they are looking for a quick bite on a way to a movie, so I'm wasting my breath. My second option is to kindly let them know that I have other tables who have been waiting to order, but I could get them started with a beverage and be right back. "Control your tables, don't let them control you," is server knowledge 101.

     Or, the easiest option, and one I'll take if I'm far too busy, is order-follow-robot,  which is to say "OK" and take their order quickly, no questions asked, and no specials given; I get their order in ahead of the more relaxed diners and I don't have to deal with their pants being in a wedge later on when movie time approaches.

     Unfortunately, this short-cut method backfired on me recently. The moment of embarrassment came at the end of the meal, when I approached a couple of Impatients and presented dessert menus.

     "Do you have anything special?" the woman asked.

     "Well everything we have tonight is listed on the menu, but we make all of our desserts in house‒"

     "No, I mean your dinner specials. We heard someone talking about the specials at another table."

     I stared, unable to talk because the first five explanations that came to mind were not polite.

     "I'm sorry," I offered. Cutters. I got quadruple sat; you were last to sit down, yet you snuck your order in first.

     "Haha, busted," the guy actually said.

     "Can we hear them?"

     "Excuse me?" I said.

     "Yes, we'd like to hear them."

     I've been a server long enough that the angrier I get, the more stone-faced I become. A homeless person could have been taking a dump in the bushes outside the window in front of me at that moment and my face wouldn't have flinched. I had an incredibly busy station behind me, with tables that needed real things, not just something to fuck with me; Thinking they were cute and clever to mess with the server. I had no recourse, because I couldn't even put into words what had led them to be special-less that evening without further offending them.

     I stretched my face into something that may have resembled a cheerful look and gave them the damn specials. An over-the-top rendition, with no ingredient left out, a full account of how the chef was preparing and plating each dish. If I had to waste my life in this exercise they would have to suffer through it.

     Once this detailed account was finished, I dropped the dessert menus in front of each of them without another word. I barely said anything else beyond "thank you" when dropping off their check, as there was nothing to say. They tipped ten percent and surely left feeling that they'd shown their idiot server a thing or two.

     This uncomfortable incident stayed in my thoughts, leaving me to question my methodology. I mean, it is kind of fucked up that I categorize people so quickly, always looking for the fastest way between point A and B. Every table is unique, and I should be taking more time to get to know them. But, oh wait‒ My station size ranges from 6-8 tables inside, with additional tables on the patio when it's warm, and we almost always run a wait list on weekends. If I treated every stingy deuce as though they were extra "special," I'd be screwing myself, and the restaurant, ultimately.

     Nevertheless...the next day at work I didn't just sell specials‒ I practically humped the side of tabletops in my enthusiasm. "You want sexy food? I'll give you sexy food." I sure made a lot of customers happy that night.