An Unfortunate New Trend in Restaurant Service

When did restaurant managers and waiters decide that it was a good idea to replace the question, "Is everything to your satisfaction?" with, "Is everything tasting wonderful?"

First of all, I don’t really want you asking me directly about how the food tastes.  That’s way too intimate a question for our relationship; you’re figuratively prying open my mouth and inspecting my tongue.  Secondly, it discounts the ten other things that affect my experience at your restaurant.  (Yes, my water  glass is empty again.)  Finally, in all likelihood "everything" doesn’t taste "wonderful."  Good, hopefully, excellent, possibly, but you set yourself up for failure when you set the bar at wonderful.  Unless you’re serving me at Canlis, the Herbfarm, or a handful of less well-known restaurants, everything isn’t tasting wonderful, and the waiters in those establishments are old-school enough to ask the question appropriately.

3 responses to “An Unfortunate New Trend in Restaurant Service

  1. OMG!  i havent been attacked by that one yet. i feel…..repulsed! and my answer, for all the reasons you state, would be an emphatic NO…

  2. A common type of interaction in almost any restaurant is:
     

    staff: "How\’s the sandwich?\’
    me: "Pretty good."
    staff: "Excellent!"
     staff: "How\’s everything?\’
    me: "Fine."
    staff: "Wonderful!"
     
    Are they correcting me?  Upgrading my adjective?  Tremendously pleased to have reached the plateau of mediocrity?

  3. Apparently the NY Times is reading your blog, too…

     

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