Rules For An Enjoyable Evening Out

1. If your city is not equipped with a Ritz Hotel with a bar, then you should probably stay at home.

2. The Henry Ford rule: you can wear any color shoes as long as they're black.

3. Men drink brandy, women drink champagne cocktail.

4. If there are salt shakers and pepper mills on the table, leave immediately.

5. When irritating waitstaff ask "How is everything?", the correct response is "adequate".

6. If everything is not adequate, then the correct response is "I feed my horses with superior slops than this muck that you have placed before me."

7. If you are dining in a sushi restaurant and everything is not adequate, then the correct response is: "What rotting and putrid stomach of beached whale carcass did you scrape this slimy filth out of? And why did you hire the stinking, dazed Jonah you found curled up beside it to be your head chef?

8. It is acceptable to beat the guilty with the heavy golden tip of your ebony cane liberally when admonishing lazy and inattentive waitstaff.

9. I usually tip somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent.

Comments

[PJS]

Lovlely. Let's go out sometime!

[stephenesque]

Absolutely ... although I am barred from many establishments for causing trouble.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Mr. Baldwin, are you of the opinion that it is the people who make the place or the place that makes the people?
I was just over at Otto's and the laments emanating about the untimely death of Fitz' are very odd. I was under the impression that Manhattan was the city that never slept. You know ginmills on ever corner, drinks available for ready money day and night. Yet it must have been the establishment that made Fitz' because the party could go on at the low boozer next door tomorrow night. These fellows (and ladies) must be too beaten back by being conservatives in the City. Unfortunate thing to witness in high drinking season.

[Otto]

Mrs. P.,
The place does not make the people, but it does attract them.

More than anything else, there were certain advantages at Fitzpatrick's arising from TNC's special liaison with the establishment. The Tuesdays crowd there felt a special dominion over the place that will not be had at just any other gin palace. This is no excuse not to seek out another place, of course.

By the way, shouldn't number 7 read, "If you are dining in a sushi restaurant, a terrible misunderstanding has obviously occurred; immediately cease dining and move toward the nearest exit"?

[stephenesque]

Technically, yes, number 7 should read that.
I was naturally assuming that the diner would be on diplomatic duty in Japan, where such strong language would be necessary.

[Mr. Peperium]

Otto: Yes, there is no excuse for not finding another establishment, and finding it with all convenient speed. One could stand on the corner of 85th and Second, heave 37 half bricks and break the windows of at least 37 establishments that would be grateful for the amassed custom resulting from one TNC get-together.

We're all fine, sturdy, upstanding, gainfully employed adult humans. We can do this.

As far as the dining-out tips go, I fear that I only meet Mr. S's expectations in the gratuity department. I'm used to eating where salt, pepper and even ketchup have been known to grace the table; where the waitstaff are so eager for validation that to tell them everything was "adequate" would probably lead to someone going postal with a fork; and where "Ritz" denotes a cracker hawked by Andy Griffith.

[DarkoV]

Re.# 4. If there are salt shakers and pepper mills on the table, leave immediately.:

What if there's a small bowl of sea salt and a mortar & pestle set, with peppercorns in the mortar? And your table position is below the salt?

[stephenesque]

Well, hopefully one has social climbed enough that one is no longer below the salt. But, you have a point, those sea salt bowls are a nice rustic/coastal touch - my post was mainly concerned with rules for ersatz urban eateries.