Dining Tips
 

In 2004, the travel tips thread sparked some interesting ideas for us to consider. Might it be a good idea to start a thread specific to dining? If not, just let this thread pass into the abyss of threads unanswered. Here are my two:

Turn on the hot water before you use the restroom so it will be warm when you need to wash your hands.

When dining at a Mexican restaurant, throw trash and plates into empty chip baskets for your server to pick up so your table stays nice and clear.

Great idea.

When eating raw oysters in a restaurant, always sit at the oyster bar. Oysters are shucked ahead of time for the tables in most places. (Also, you may be given a few freebies if you strike a conversation with the shucker)

If you are sitting at the bar and are drinking beer, drink draft. On many occasions, even first visits, I have seem to haved paid for less beer than I have consumed. :)

Hopefully this is what you meant.

Great idea for a thread!

When eating at a restaurant that you think you might visit again make a point of speaking to the manager or owner (compliments are nice but even just "saying hello" is good). Over the years I have received all sorts of nice "extras" from complimentary drinks to dessert to wonderful dishes (tapas portion) made esp for me and whomever I am with "to taste", to gift certificates at Xmas time as a "thank you for being our customer" or in the case of Asian restaurants as Chinese New Year gift certificates "to bring the restaurant good luck" ( by giving something away I was told they will receive good luck in business for the coming year).

And even without the "extras" it is always nice to go to a restaurant where you are greeted warmly and made to feel truly welcomed. And some times you will meet the most interesting people that way.

A. If you're a non-smoker and are visiting a restaurant with a smoking section, don't just ask for "non-smoking," asked to be seated as far away from anyone smoking as possible. (In far too many restaurants, "non-smoking" tables are be right next to "smoking" tables or sections.)

B. Find the restaurants that the locals (or fellow FT'ers) are going to, which may not be the ones in the guidebooks or recommended by the Concierge.

experiment!
 

if you are trying a new restaurant, perhaps ethnic, that you haven't tried before, try going "off the menu." sometimes chefs are looking for an open minded patron to really show off, especially if they are not busy.

Always ask the name of the Maitre'd...helps when you call back for another reservation.

When you are out with a group and splitting the check, add your items up, then add 25% on top to cover the cost of tax and tip.

So if you ordered the $14 entree and $6 drink, take your $20 and divide by 4, add another $5, and $25 should cover the food, tax and gratuity.

This would be especially helpful at FT Do's, where it seems so often that whoever kindly offers to tally the check ends up with a huge shortage at the end of the night.

The 25% will never leave you short and might actually account for a few pennies overage on the total tab.

:)

I have to hand it to you that this is one of the most unusual "tips" I've ever read. Besides wasting water, I've found most restaurants are on a lower level (not a great distance for the water to travel) and have hot water running through the pipes so often for the kitchen that there's no lag time in getting warm water out of the tap in the lav. I can't even think of a public lav I've been in where I've had to wait for hot water. I do agree it's good to wash your hands though. :)


Other tips: Regular table salt doesn't do it for me, so I bring my own mini grinder filled with sea salt into a lot of mid-tier restaurants.

When you bring your own bottle of wine, the corkage is often waived if you share with the maitre'd or sommilier and also order a second bottle of their list.

If I've ordered a bottle of wine and can't drink it all, I bring the unfinished bottle home. I'm not really sure what legal restrictions are on this - and I'm sure they vary from state to state - but some restaurants I frequent recork the wine and put it in a bag without my even asking. At others, I just walk out with it. Carry it in your trunk - at least in California.

Ask a Supermarket
 

I've always followed this dining rule when visiting foreign or interstate cities. I visit a supermarket, be it inner city or suburban, and simply ask a staff member "where can I get a good meal?".

Why ? Simple. You don't get the $500 a steak restaurants that are in the tourist guides, and get honest opinions and information from locals.

Think about this - is your favourite restaurant in your town in the local tourist guide ? Mine certainly isn't.

Always ask your server if what you are thinking of ordering is any good. More then a few times I've been told not to order that, try this instead, and have never been let down.

My favorite is at a chinese place we go to, many items are on the menu because it's what americans want, but as the owner says, taste like cardboard. When they tell you not to order something, believe them.

If you are at a Chinese restaurant and want to eat what the Chinese or Asian customers eat try asking for the "Chinese Menu". A number of restaurants that I have been to have separate menus for their Chinese or Asian customers - usually they are hidden out of site. They usually (but not always) have both Chinese and English descriptions of the items.

New Yorker columnist Calvin Trillin would do something similar: he said that when traveling and unsure where to eat he would hail a taxi and ask the driver to imagine that he was about to leave town tomorrow and not return for ten years. If so, what place would the cabbie visit one last time, and what would he eat? After the cab driver named a restaurant and a dish, Trillin would simply say, "take me there." According to Trillin, he was rarely taken anyplace fancy but he almost always got an exceptional meal.

And if you haven't enjoyed Trillin's hilarious "Tummy Trilogy" of food-related books -- American Fried, Alice Let's Eat and Third Helpings -- get thee to a bookstore (or website) and find them.

Thanks for the tips! I have one that I read in Kitchen Confidential -- don't order a seafood omelete for Sunday brunch. It's usually just the leftover seafood from the weekend and may not be so fresh. That book actually has lots of dining tips, like when the best nights are to go out for sushi (NOT Mondays!).

This tip from Least Heat Moon's, "Blue Highways to America," has proven accurate as a law of nature in the 20 years since I read the book.

Moon says the quality of a mom-n-pop eatery can be judged by the number of calanders behind the registers. Your M&P, unlike chain resturants, exists in the network of favors given and taken among local businesses. The more calanders, the more the joint depends on repeat, local customers. Hence the better the eats.

This has served me well, not only in the blue higheays of the USA, but in other lands as well.

Seriously?

I'm bothered when people I'm dining with start stacking dishes at the table for the servers. And as a former server myself, it doesn't help the process at all.

I think this is rude and hope that no one I'm dining with does this when I'm at the table.

chica12--Good call on Kitchen Confidential. Wonderful book. Have not ordered a brunch, nor have I ordered seafood on a Monday since readling Bourdain's book. He is really a piece of work. However, I have read all of his books; fiction and non-fiction. The non-fiction works are better. Bourdain is brilliant! I would love to share a dinner-table conversation with him. Does any one remember tobacco-laced ice cream prepared by T. Kelleher?

Serious question: Why does it not help the server in an informal restaurant if the dishes are stacked at the end of the table (esp at a booth)? I would have assumed that it was a "nice " gesture. ( From the "old days" when properly brought up young people were taught "not to make extra work for the servants".)

Of course in a more formal restaurant one assumes that the bus people will remove the used dishes at just the right time and in the most aesthecitally pleasing manner and that for the guest to "stack" them on the table would be simply to destroy the beauty of the table and the dining pleasure of the other guests. I assume it is in that sense that you find it rude to the other people at the table and in the restaurant.

I was writing that under the assumption that the server takes empty chip baskets anyway. The issue of tipping is for another thread, but suffice it to say that servers who go beyond the norm don't do it for free when I'm responsible for the tip.

As a server, I used to have to pick through those "baskets" to pull out silverware, trash, etc. If folks stacked plates one on top of another, that meant I had to not only deal with scraping food off the top of the plate, but also touching their leftover food on the bottom as I separated the stacked dishes. I would prefer to properly clear the table and stack the dishes myself to get silverware and trash out as I stack them.

The original poster commented on using the chip basket. I've been at tables with several folks who assume that because they are done with the chips that others must be too... and start throwing trash in the empty basket which signals the server that we all must be done.

If I'm at a fast food or counter service place, it is totally a different story, but the scenario here was a Mexican restaurant and if I'm being waited on by a server, I don't need to do his/her job for him or her.

And yes, beyond that, it is an aesthetic thing... if the entire table is done eating, then all dishes should be cleared. If one person is done, it is rude of that person to signal to the others that they too should be done by pushing their plate away, stacking dishes, or other behaviors. Emily Post and Miss Manners both have a few statements on this.

(And on that manners topic... another pet peeve: I think it is rude to put your napkin in your dirty plate when you are done dining. And it is even ruder when you are dining at my house where you very well may be staining or ruining my nice cloth napkins. Your napkin belongs on your lap and if you are done eating, it can be folded neatly.)