Originally Posted by rlbmorton

I don't know what you mean about misguided about service in europe -- I've traveled there quite extensively covering almost all of Spain, France, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia, Denmark, Austria, and Italy. In general, I find that servers are very quick to bring you a first drink and take your order, but after that trying to find a server for a second drink or the check --when you want it-- is often difficult. I like to linger over my meal and drinks, but when I want a second drink or some additional food or just something like additional water, I like for a server to come by and ask rather than having to sometimes physically get up from the table to find them. I guess your view is that I eat and drink too fast compared to europeans, but most of the time I'm eating and drinking with europeans and I don't notice any difference. Really high end restaurants of course tend to give excellent service regardless of where you go. I am talking about middle and low end bars and restaurants.

I agree that a server should not bring the check until you ask for it and as when I'm not in europe, I'm mostly in nyc, I am used to not having checks brought to me until I ask for them which is the norm in most of the places I go to in nyc. I too dislike this aspect of American restaurants outside of nyc. As I say above, I like to linger over my meal and enjoy the evening, when I go out unless I'm going to the theater, I plan on making the meal my main evening event. I also dislike servers who can't remember what you order and ask who had the chicken? I mean how difficult is that to write it down? And American servers are terrible at that.

It may be that if tipping was more the norm in Europe that they still wouldn't come by to ask about second drinks and if you need anything else as often as I would like, who knows?

I just got back from Japan, btw, and there the service is so wonderful and without tipping, just fantastic.