I’ve never been more shocked at people’s behavior in restaurants than when dining at pricey spots in New York. I blamed the loud, bravado-bloated conversations (often between strangers at neighboring tables) and terrible rudeness to servers on extreme wealth mixed with a little too much wine. But as it turns out, the Big Apple’s rich drunks do a lot more than say awful things in restaurants. They also get sloshed enough to strip, have sex, and vomit while out to dinner, according to an enjoyable column by Frank Bruni in Wednesday’s New York Times.
The theory is that NYC’s fine diners drink like they’re at a frat party because unlike restaurant-goers in most other U.S. cities, they don’t have to worry about driving home afterward. That might be why, as one server-cum-memoirist puts it,
[M]ore people throw up in the dining room of Per Se than your average college bar.
I have a friend who yakked a few feet from the restroom of a fancy Parisian restaurant (I wish I could remember which one) when we were in college, but this article makes it seem like the young’uns aren’t the only ones who have trouble keeping their dinner down in chichi spots:
‘Happens all the time,’ said Joseph Bastianich, one of the principal owners of the Italian restaurants Del Posto, Babbo and Felidia, among others. His voice had the bored, blasé tone of someone stating the patently obvious.
It happens even outside the confines and privacy of the restrooms?
‘Oh, yeah, in the dining room, all over the table, on their dinner companions,’ Mr. Bastianich said. ‘You’ve never seen that?’
Um, no.
‘Well, you go out to restaurants a lot,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll run into it before you’re done. Hopefully, you won’t get splashed.’
Like Bruni, I’m skeptical that it really happens that often—has anyone here seen it? And what about under-the-table sex or blatant stripping? I’ve never come across either (and hope not to in the future), but the servers in this article have been through it all.
And in one case, the restaurant insider sounds just as horrible as the offending diner: Check out this gem of a quote from a former sommelier at Daniel, describing a woman who did a drunken striptease in the dining room:
She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive. If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on.
Someone really said that? Lord.
On today’s Washington Post chat with Tom Sietsema (link if it works here), somebody claimed to have been sitting next to a dinnertime vomiter at a nice restaurant in DC recently. Oddly, much of the remainder of the chat consisted of people venting about how TERRIBLY AWFUL it is to let a kid watch a dvd player with headphones, in a restaurant. Not as bad as vomit, IMHO.
trying again with the link
I wonder how much of this puking is from booze or from being overly gut stuffed. Having been uncomfortably full after a really nice special occasion dinner out, it wasn’t inconceivable to imagine throwing up somewhere untoward. Top that off with a bunch of booze and it’s not hard to imagine vomit-city.
The last vague anecdote is the one that kills me. Assuming I interpret it right. I mean, a lot of things can be described as pungent, but since vomit was specifically mentioned elsewhere, I can only guess it wasn’t that.
At first it was totally shocking to me. I’ve never been to that nice a restaurant in ny. I know i tend to get drunk when ive been to fairly nice places, so vomit and making out isn’t really that unfathomable when everything is taken up a level.
but pooping yourself, that’s something that i could never understand.
I love New York and I feel most of the people I’ve come across here are well behaved in restaurants. I’ve never seen anyone vomit in a restaurant..nor have I seen anyone having sex at a nearby table (I’ve run into a few people having sex in bathrooms, and that is kind of gross, but not as gross as doing it where people are actually eating). The kind of disturbing behavior that I do run into and find aggravating is much less exotic… For example- unless your young (under 9 or so years of age) child is incredibly- to the point of being morbidly well behaved- do not bring them with you to an expensive, adult restaurant and let them run around- even if it’s cute. I dined out a few weeks ago at a fairly pricey ($70 meal without wine), adult time type restaurant with friends only to have someone’s admittedly cute, but unleashed child run over to my table every few minutes and try to start a peekaboo conversation. I love kids- I’m a teacher (hell, I’m a special educator and I love my work!), but it is really disappointing to have a nice, expensive night out with adult friends continually interrupted by someone else’s energetic, bored, or tired child and this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME. Cell phones are obnoxious- while I do understand when people use them to keep in touch in case someone gets lost or is running late..etc..it is not cool to yell a complete conversation- beyond directions or emergency instructions to babysitter- into your phone. If an older child is brought to a restaurant, IPods, dvd players etc- are a terrible idea- they may entertain the child, but what kind of rearing is that? DVDs are fine for the car ride, but dining out is as much about appreciating an experience as it is about food. I wouldn’t watch a DVD in a restaurant even if I were sitting alone much less with my family or friends. If your child isn’t ready for this experience it may be the parent needs to spend some time developing dining skills in more family centered establishments and then gradually take them fancier places for shorter stints for… say desert and keep them under your care the entire time. Teach your children about dining privacy and personal space before taking them to adult settings…What ever happened to “stranger danger” anyway?
Dear Lord- the whole subject makes me want to stay home.
People in general don’t care to hear what you have to say- what makes you think they want to see what you’ve eaten???