Originally Posted by
offerendum
I think high end restaurants have a feeling what guests like. Sometimes you can experience that 2 tables star a menu at the same time but in a different speed. I also was asked if I perfer my next course sooner or later. For me no proble, everyone should have the experience expected. For me it also depends on mood. There are evenings I enjoy my time at the restaurant and it could last for hours and sometimes (even if the food is good) I wish to have a faster meal.
Grace (the now-closed 3* restaurant in Chicago) explicitly told us they had someone watching and timing the pacing at which folks were eating to calibrate the timing by table. That said, I felt it was still too fast - just because we were eating our courses relatively quickly didn't mean that we immediately wanted the next one out. As such, that was a ~1h45m experience that felt way too rushed.