Never Mind

Will you ever wait in a restaurant?  I don’t mean for a few minutes as they freshen your table or get rid of the dawdlers still lingering there.  I mean would you, do you, hang around a long time in anticipation of a meal?

You can firmly put me in the “No Way, Jose” Club.  I have never found a dinner that I thought worth waiting for.  If a place honors my reservation, I’m there.  If they won’t- bye bye now- as my friend Ricky Z. would say.

I must confess that I stick to a system that always helped me get seated right away in my restaurant of choice.

First of all, I only frequent a very small number of dining establishments.  No foodie I- that’s for sure.  I like to stick with what I know, and thus I get “preferred customer” status due to loyalty.  I believe in a generous tipping policy, too.  This system works like a charm but it does have its drawbacks.

For example:  Bill was crazy about Gene and Georgetti’s.  (For the uninitiated, this old-time Chicago steak house is our equivalent of Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn.)  He loved the bartender- and the drink he poured.  He loved the “man’s club” atmosphere, and the fact that it was expensive and that it was tough to get a good table there.  It made him feel like a power player to be accepted at this venerable establishment and so we dined there a couple of times a week for twenty years.

I loved Pete, our waiter, and the fact that Bill was happy there.  But I didn’t love the menu all that much, and soon it didn’t matter whether I ever loved it or not.  If you eat at a place that many times a week and they never change the food, sooner or later you are going to burn out.

(Author’s note:  They have, at long last, added on some new menu items at G&G.  But from 1975 until 1996 they had not altered one thing.  Trust me on this.)

Joe felt my pain.  He even started buying me baking potatoes- only cottage fries were on the carte back then- when he knew that I couldn’t face another order of them.

Still G&G served a great purpose.  Bill revelled in the joint.  After a hard day’s work, he became expansive and happy under their ministrations- and their vodkas on the rocks with a twist.  It was a home-away-from-home for him and the surprise party I threw him was a real humdinger.

(For years a great photograph of me at that party- surrounded by a tan-coated chorus line of all the waiters- had pride of place at the bar.  But don’t bother looking for it.  When Bill gave me the boot I bet that picture went straight into the recycling bin.)

The other drawback to my system of always eating in the same three places is that it doesn’t transfer too well out of town.  I could never be a regular at 21 or Chasen’s or Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami, no matter what.

So sometimes my system crashed and we would just have to suck it up and wait.

Even if we had a reservation.

One place, above all others, stands out as a major reservation policy violator.  It was Alberto’s in Rancho Mirage, California.

They were famous, or should I say, infamous, for taking your reservation and then ignoring it-and you- and you waited and waited and got hungrier and hungrier, and checked with the girl on the reservations desk, and hovered purposefully by the podium, and looked pointedly at your watch, and stalked menacingly back from the bar, and glared at the hostess and…

Well, you get the idea.  And we still wouldn’t get our promised eight o’clock table.  And soon Bill would pull the plug and we’d leave-  all the while swearing never to darken their door again.

But year after Palm Springs year, we’d give Alberto’s a reprieve and go through the drill from the top.

A dinner reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Ross could yield the smile, the table, and the Chicken Papagallo. The other half of the the time we’d get the shrug, the “Would you like to have a drink at the bar?” and then… we’d be out the door.  At least fifty per cent of the time it was cannelloni alla casa.  The other half it was enchiladas suizas at Las Casuelas Terraza or sand dabs at Sorretino’s.

You never knew which it was going to be when you had a reservation at Alberto’s.

One night we even got a floor show.  A man, who, like us I think, had been through this aggravating waiting game on many, many occasions, flipped out.  He actually took the hostess’ reservation book, tore it up right in front of us and stormed out.

We looked on in shock and awe.  And that led us to a frank exchange of views about their refusal to honor their reservations policy with their owner/hostess.

“I have to be honest with you,” she sighed.  “We don’t like twos in here.  We don’t have that many tables, and we usually like to accommodate parties of four.  People around here go out in groups and we hate to give up a whole table for a party of two.  And large parties always linger.”

Well, it made sense- in a way.  But Bill and I weren’t going to hook up with another couple just for the sake of the chicken.

When I came back to Winnetka, I was anxious to share this primal reservation book scene with my buddy, Henry X.  (If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet, please read my post “X” December 20, 2012)

Henry was the perfect person to tell because, as an old Palm Springs hand, he was well-acquainted with Alberto’s- and all its quirks.  He also had a healthy respect for the dinner table, and the doctrines of promptness and fair play.  I knew that his sense of honor would extend to honoring restaurant reservations.

And he was loyal.  I was certain that I would find him a most sympathetic listener.  If he was your friend, he always took your side of an issue.

(Well, at least most of the time.  We did have to agree to disagree about my faxing the kids at their summer camp in Maine.  Henry was a Luddite when it came to letters from home.  The fact that the camp ripped them hot off the fax machine and put them into envelopes and placed them daily on the child’s bed moved him not one whit.  He needed that postage stamp to make it kosher.)

I called Henry first thing when we got back and told him the aforementioned Alberto’s saga.  I expected pity and some tut-tutting.  I got a different reaction.

Henry went berserk.  No lie.

“That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard!” he fumed.  “I am calling the Better Business Bureau and the ACLU and and the Anti-Defamation League and anyone else I can think of!  I am going to close that place down!”

I love when my stories go over big but this seemed a little extreme- even for a right-fighter like Henry.

“Um, Henry, I don’t think you have to do that.  After all, the hostess was just being honest with us.  It’s just a dinner after all.”

“No.  I am reporting this to the Desert Sun and anyone who will listen.  Outrageous.  Inexcusable.  And this discrimination is against the law, of course.”

Things were getting out of hand.

“Henry, really, you’re over-reacting.  Just forget I even told you about it.  Bill and I will probably never eat there again.  That’s all.”

“Eat there again?!  How can you be so blasé?  I’ve never heard anything like it in all my days.  Imagine a restaurant hostess who has the nerve to say ‘We don’t like Jews in here.’  I am shutting them down!”

Ah.  Did I happen to mention that Henry was a teensy bit deaf at this point in his life?

“Jews?  Who said Jews?  I said ‘two’s.’  She said she didn’t like two’s in there.  Not Jews, Henry.  Two’s.”

See post title.