Don’t.
Sunday is a truly unfortunate day to go out to eat...and mid-day (2:30 - 4:00 PM) is the worst of all times. We tried three different restaurants today. The first one was serving "brunch" and didn't want to hear about anything else. The second one was so jammed that diners waiting for tables were playing War and Go Fish on the hoods of their cars. The third one let us in...and then served us food so tasteless it might as well have been library paste (Cf. Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall").
We last tried Sunday dinner out a few years ago, in the Berkshires. The first restaurant made us wait 45 minutes for a table we’d reserved that morning. The second one seated us...and then told us the kitchen had just been closed by the Department of Health. The third one brought us menus...and was never heard from again.
We wound up at Burger King, at 11:30 PM. We raised a lot of eyebrows, pulling into the parking lot in a Mercedes S550. We raised even more by being dressed in our best: me in a charcoal suit and tie, my wife in her minks and diamonds. We waited 20 minutes for a completely pedestrian order – hamburgers, fries, and a shake each – and they got it wrong.
There’s a moral in there. somewhere.
These days we pretty much never eat out. I prefer my own cooking and my own kitchen. The one exception is sushi, I have a lot of confidence that Japanese kitchens are pristine plus sitting at the sushi bar, you can see your meal prepared right in front of you.
ReplyDeleteRead Boudrain's 'Restaurant Confidential" for some insights into this. Food service workers indulge in multiple vices to excess, and are typically not at their best on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteI've not tried eating in the afternoon, before, but we've had some memorably bad weekend meals.
ReplyDeleteI generally get a good meal, but I have a standard practice - order the easiest thing to prepare - grilled meat, baked potatoes, and - in good restaurants - vegetables. In the lesser venues, a tossed salad. Other than asking them to NOT use MSG-containing seasonings, that's it.
My husband, a former chef, is OFTEN quite unimpressed with the meal. He tends to get the cold potatoes, the over or under cooked meats, and the onions that he specifically asked them to omit.
In early afternoon, the wait staff is indifferent, you will have to remind them to bring you coffee, and they do generally NOT earn their tip.