My Restaurant Pet Peeves - Part 3

It’s time for the third installment of my restaurant pet peeves blog series! In addition to general restaurant pet peeves and restaurant wine service pet peeves, there are also things servers do that sometimes really annoy me. I don’t ever expect perfection, but a minimum level of competence is highly desired. Let’s talk restaurant server pet peeves!  

Private dining during COVID at the Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels, MD circa 2020

95 percent of the time Laurie and I enjoy a dinner out on the town, we receive fantastic service from the restaurant staff – hosts/hostesses, servers, bartenders, and managers. It’s that other 5 percent of the time that I plan on talking about today. Bad service can really ruin the occasion, especially when the service is REALLY bad. The situation can be particularly egregious at fine dining establishments where you are paying a premium for everything, including refined and superb service. So, without further ado, here are my restaurant service pet peeves.

• Servers that disappear and go sinker on you. “Going Sinker” is a U.S. Navy term for a submarine that cuts off all communication to remain hidden underwater. I also use the term for servers who show up to greet you, and then disappear for what can sometimes seem like hours on end. Or, who don’t show up to greet you for an extended period of time. We recently had the latter occur at one of our favorite restaurants here in Lakewood Ranch. We were seated and given our menus by the host, and then patiently waited over 15 minutes for our server to arrive and take our drink order. I get it – servers can get busy at times, especially if they are assigned to serve a large group. But in those cases, the restaurant should make sure that another server is available to take care of customers waiting to be greeted when they are seated. We have also experienced times when the server simply disappears for extended periods of time. The worst experience we had with this was when we were at a restaurant in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. We waited over 20 minutes for our server to take our order, and once our main courses arrived, we didn’t see him again for over 45 minutes. I had to actually get up from the table to find someone to deliver our check. Soon after, our original server came back and apologized, explaining that they were short staffed that night so he was serving double duty as a dining room server AND the only bartender for the evening. That clearly wasn’t a good idea, but even so, if he would have told us that I would have definitely been more understanding and patient with the situation than I actually was that night. Good communication can make all the difference in those circumstances.

• Taking plates away before everyone is finished with their meals. This is something that never really bothered me, until I met Laurie and spent some time enjoying dinners out with her mom and dad when we would visit each other. It turns out that on those occasions, Mike (Laurie’s dad) and Linda (Laurie’s mom) were sticklers for proper behavior by both customers and servers while dining out. That meant you always took an interest in the server and learned their name and a bit about them. It meant you never scraped your fork or knife across your plate. And it also meant the server never took away someone’s plate until everyone in the party was finished with their meal. When this happened, Mike and Linda were always polite but also firm in requesting that the server refrain from removing plates while others were still enjoying their dinner. And they were right – removing plates before others in the party are done eating makes it feel like the restaurant is trying to rush you to finish, even if that’s not their intent.

• Surly servers. I get it – everyone has bad days where things go wrong, and it affects your mood. I don’t expect the servers in restaurants to be chipper and all smiles when they are working. But I do expect them to be pleasant and kind, instead of dismissive and rude. There have been a number of occasions where it was clear from the very start that our server was having a bad day and simply didn’t want to be there – in those cases, both Laurie and I adjusted our approach, didn’t try to engage and chat with them, and instead just let them be. We were fine as long as they weren’t purposefully rude, and the service was competent. When this happens, we usually don’t adjust our tip downward and just let it go. But I do draw the line with servers who act like I’m a burden to them, and they can’t wait to have me gone. In those instances where the server is actually surly, I respond with a lower tip (and the surlier the server, the lower the tip), usually no more than 10 percent. I don’t feel the need to reward bad service and even worse behavior!

• Servers that don’t write down your order. I’m surprised how many times we get a server who takes our order without writing it down – it seems to happen more often lately, and I don’t like it. Why? Because more often than not, they either forget something or get something wrong with the order. I’m not sure whom they are trying to impress with this stunt, but it usually doesn’t end well. I’ve had salads delivered with the wrong dressing, steaks cooked to the wrong temperature, appetizers forgotten, and drink orders mixed up as well. I’m not saying these things don’t happen when the server writes down the order, but they do happen at a much lower rate than when the server takes the order “from memory”. So, in the future, I’d prefer that the server just writes the damn order down so they optimize the chances that they get things right!

• Not addressing and fixing mistakes properly and professionally. Sometimes things go wrong with a restaurant order – either the wrong dish or drink is delivered, or the dish isn’t prepared to your liking. For drink orders, this is an easy fix and is usually corrected promptly. But in some cases, the response by the server or manager can ruin the dinner. For example, there have been occasions where the server has delivered the main courses to Laurie and I and the dish wasn’t what one of us ordered. The usual response is for the server to apologize, to take the dish away, and then “refire” the correct dish. This usually ends up taking 10-15 minutes for the correct dish to come out. In the meantime, one of us sits watching the other one eat their meal – that’s entirely unacceptable. The correct response is to remove BOTH dishes, and either keep the one dish warm while the other is being prepared, or even better making both dishes again. I used to be overly polite about this situation, but now I tell them we want both main courses to be re-delivered at the same time. In another case, Laurie and I took her parents out for dinner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse in downtown D.C., which had just recently opened. I ordered a really nice bottle of Chardonnay to start off the evening right. When the server was refilling our water glasses, he accidently poured water into my wine glass, ruining the wine.  I called our main server over and explained what had happened. She proceeded to tell me I could order a wine from their wine-by-the-glass menu to replace it. Now, the bottle of wine I had ordered was at least 3 times the cost of any bottle they had available for their wine-by-the-glass menu, so that wasn’t going to work for me. After arguing with the server for a bit, I asked for the manager. He pushed back as well on my demand to have them deliver me a glass of the original wine I had ordered, which was a perfectly reasonable request given that they could easily serve the rest of the bottle as a special wine-by-the-glass selection and still make a killing on it. Eventually the manager gave in, but the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and we never went back. The moral of the story – servers and managers should bend over backwards to fix obvious mistakes and not try to nickel and dime their customers to death.

• Overly talkative and overly attentive servers. While I enjoy chatting with a server in a restaurant and getting to know them a bit, I don’t expect or want to become best friends with them. One thing that annoys me is when the server is overly talkative or overly attentive to the point where they become a nuisance. We’ve experienced times when the server decides to share their life story with us, or the current challenges they are facing in their lives. In other instances, we have servers that simply won’t leave us alone, checking on us every few minutes and constantly asking us how things are going and whether we need anything. I really appreciate attentive service but asking me once how I’m enjoying my meal is enough – you won’t get a different answer if you ask me the same question 5 minutes later. The best servers are the ones that deliver your dish and then circle back a couple of minutes later to check to ensure everything is to the customer’s liking. Then, they go away and let you enjoy your meal.

Laurie and I have enjoyed fine dining across the United States, and there are a few restaurants we have frequented that have always provided exemplar service, above and beyond our expectations, each time we have visited. Here’s our list of the best of the best restaurants in the United States from a service perspective:

• Fiola, the best Italian restaurant in Washington DC

• KOJO, a fantastic Asian-fusion restaurant in Sarasota FL

• Restaurant Gary Danko, a modern American tasting course restaurant in San Francisco

• NOLA, one of Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants in New Orleans, LA (now, unfortunately, closed)

• Hyde Park Steakhouse in Sarasota, FL

• Becco, the best Italian restaurant in New York City

• Press, a fantastic modern American steakhouse in Napa Valley (St. Helena)

• Flagstaff House, a beautiful restaurant set up in the mountains above Boulder, CO

• Sierra Mar, a wonderful restaurant sitting on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, CA.

For my next installment of my restaurant pet peeves blog series, we’ll talk about my food pet peeves! Until then, remember to be nice to your servers when you go out to eat, as long as they are nice to you!!