I always understood that it was a bit guauche to take plates away while others were still eating? Though lots of restaurants do this, of course. I would never do that to dinner guests at home -- would seem like rushing people and pressuring them to finish quickly.
I'm not going to go as far as (the other) Chris and say it never happens over here, but it's definitely highly unusual.
No, I agree it does happen once in a blue moon, but the usual customer reaction is to say, "Can you wait till we've finished?" and halve the tip. Usually a sign of poor management all round.
I can't remember it ever happening to me in the UK. Sometimes they'll whip the plates away as soon as they can, which always feels a bit unwelcoming, but "as soon as they can" means "the second the last person finishes eating".
I always understood that it was a bit guauche to take plates away while others were still eating?
It implies lack of respect for the palette.
You can't halve a tip here without exploiting somebody. Anyway, if you put your utensils down so that the knife/fork/plate combo looks like a clock at 4:20, somebody will take your plate. If you put them across the top, they won't.
I think it's been conventional here even in quite nice restaurants for a while. As I may have mentioned here before, I eat like a (reasonably inconspicuously) starved wolf -- any food within reach disappears at alarming speed. Back when I was a summer associate, so sixteen years ago, the summer was largely about being taken to very nice restaurants. And on one occasion, I had a mildly embarrassing interaction where the lawyer who was hosting asked why I wasn't eating anything -- I had finished my food and my plate had been cleared quickly enough that he hadn't realized I'd been served at all. I don't remember the specific restaurant, but given the circumstances it would have been maybe not world class fancy, but not a big notch down from that level.
You could have probably gotten them to pay for another entree.
Yes, this has been the American style for as long as I can remember. I don't feel rushed or put upon -- who wants an empty plate sitting in front of them? Not me, and I'm usually the first one done.
The wife, of course, insists on the European style, which is inefficient and unpleasant.
Well, it's 20 years since I ate in a restaurant in the US, but I don't remember it happening like that then. It sounds like I wouldn't enjoy the experience now. I don't like the appearance of being rushed and I don't like waiters standing over me while I'm eating. Whatever happened to taking your time to enjoy your meal?
They don't stand over you or rush you. But if they come to the table for some other reason and a plate is empty, they take it.
If we're talking high end restaurants let me take this opportunity to complain about the douchebag with the giant phallic pepper mill. I get that it's about the rich having servants to do everything short of wipe their asses, but damn if that guy doesn't annoy the fuck out of me. I want my own peppercock to season my food. But no, I must take what the pfefferschlongführer gives me. Fuck that guy.
About the plates I have no opinion.
At middle-priced U.S. restaurants, they're at your table anyway. The need to refill sodas/tea/water glasses continually. We're a thirsty people.
Yes, I saw the piece Drum links to to yesterday, and had the same reaction. My sense is that it's always been the norm here, and by no means just at high end restaurants. Though not exactly "snatching", pretty consistently only with a "can I take your plate?" first. (I do get slightly irritated when I'm not asked, only because there's a decent chance I'm still using my fork to pick at my other half's food.) I feel like I remember being puzzled by the practice as a kid and my parents telling me it's because people don't like to look at dirty plates (not that that made much sense to me at the time either).
But for what reason would they come to the table unless i. they are called over or ii. everybody's finished? I also deplore the universal habit of waiters wandering over to ask if I'm enjoying my meal. It's all I can do not to say, "Well, I was until you interrupted my conversation."
12 to 14. Really, the amount of non-alcoholic fluids consumed at dinner is the biggest different between the two continents.
Yeah, 12 gets it right. Most servers don't leave diners alone for long stretches, so clearing an obviously finished plate doesn't feel like someone swooping I or rushing me.
I suppose it would if it were completely against norm, but it isn't, so....
In the drought-stricken US, conspicuous public consumption of water is a way to demonstrate wealth and power. You know, like in Mad Max.
I don't think it's a restaurant issue so much as a "class and ideas about service in the US" issue - because isn't the whole point that you need to have waiters dancing attendance on you, providing as much "service" as possible even if it's useless or disruptive? And probably some lack of labor protection stuff in the background, as well - some jackass complains because the waiter didn't grovel enough, perhaps the waiter gets fired out of hand and this incentivizes extreme groveling for all other waiters. Plus tipping - folks don't tip in topless Europe, right? So less groveling, perhaps?
Admittedly, these days I really only go to the hippie diner and various Szechuan restaurants, and one clears ones own dishes at the former and absolutely has to have the giant dumpling steamers cleared away before the main dishes anyway at the latter.
Are you still working on that?
I'm not annoyed, just amused by the phrasing.
the giant dumpling steamers
Cabbage and pork will do that.
I don't think it's all groveling. Your just plain supposed to use more words when talking to service people in the U.S. than in the U.K. I haven't been there in twenty years, but I'm willing to bet that nobody in the U.K. ever hears "How are you folks today? My name is Brittany and I'll be taking care of you today."
11. I believe you'll find that at proper high end restaurants the pfefferschlong isn't a thing - again this may be a continental divide. I associate it with mid-range bistros, and even there it's falling out of fashion.
I don't know what the kids are calling themselves these days.
It is, and one that the world has been in need of. Thanks, togolosh.
I think the highest praise you could confer on a server in a high end restaurant in the UK would be that they are efficient and inconspicuous. So, to 22, you do hear that, but only in cheap and cheerful places.
"Pfefferschlongführer" is a bit much because who would make jokes about Hitler?
But for what reason would they come to the table unless i. they are called over or ii. everybody's finished?
I think it's also relatively unusual to call the waitstaff over, precisely because they make themselves available should you need anything. (But it's been a long time since I ate at any truly fancy restaurants, and even the $$$ ones are (annoyingly, sometimes!) informal in the SF region.)
29: "Britney" (variously spelled) is probably working at a high-end place (relative to the places I usually eat). "Jennifer" works at the cheap and cheerful place.
I think the highest praise you could confer on a server in a high end restaurant in the UK would be that they are efficient and inconspicuous.
I wonder if I have previously related in this space the time I, my father, sister, uncle, aunt, and at least two cousins all went to dinner at a swanky restaurant in Chicago where everyone's order was set down at the same time, like literally at the same time, by a server per diner, with a flourish? It was absurd.
32: at a high-end place the waitstaff is much more likely to be male. Fact.
34: obviously Hooters is an exception here.
33. Agreed. That isn't service, it's circus.
Now I'm wondering what a high end Hooters would involve.
34: That's true. But I've also noticed that the female waitstaff is likely to be younger than at the cheap places.
33: Are you willing to tell us which restaurant it was? I grew up outside Chicago and while I certainly never went anywhere that fancy (we'd go to the Berghoff very occasionally but that was about our limit) I'm still curious.
29: "Britney" (variously spelled) is probably working at a high-end place (relative to the places I usually eat). "Jennifer" works at the cheap and cheerful place.
Ooh nooo. Because there were Jennifers of every class in the era when people were being named Jennifer, and those people are all old enough to be quite experienced servers now.
I wonder if I have previously related in this space the time I, my father, sister, uncle, aunt, and at least two cousins all went to dinner at a swanky restaurant in Chicago where everyone's order was set down at the same time, like literally at the same time, by a server per diner, with a flourish? It was absurd.
I have had this experience! It was at a restaurant in/outside? Cortona.
I don't think I've ever been to a high end restaurant in the US or elsewhere, but this seems like the flip side of Americans remarking, sometimes complaining, about how waitstaff in Europe just disappears once you get your food.
||Ha. Looks like we can keep on masturbating to ACA subsidies in federal exchange states!|>
For someone who's supposed to be paying attention, I'm honestly pretty indifferent to service (not only at restaurants; I also don't care much about service at retail places. This is a divide between me and AB), so the niceties of what's "supposed" to happen are almost entirely lost on me, especially since they vary according to fanciness. That is, you don't just get different service at Chez Vendôme and Gab & Eat; specifically what's appropriate is different, and I don't see why I should keep track.
Around here, at least, I think there's a convergence. Frex, at even self-consciously fancy places servers now introduce themselves, even if they're not being bubbly and covered in flair. At this point, all I'm really hoping for from servers is that they don't overshare, and that if we're brief with them, they won't try to extend the interaction.
43: 6 to 3! The six are Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
Oh thank fucking Christ, it was enough of a hack case to lose 6-3.
6-3. The destroy Obamacare plate can be removed now.
Now I'm wondering what a high end Hooters would involve.
Natural but pert B/C-cups without bras beneath tailored blouses of thin material.
I'm struggling for a high end interpretation of wings, though.
NYT needs to up its game. Where are you people getting this?
40: I was trying for a generation-limited name.
42 makes a good point, and may also address why waitstaff are (slightly) less underpaid in Europe - they don't employ as many because they can work more tables.
Ripped from SCOTUSblog:
From the majority opinion: "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them."
33/39: This happens at Spiaggia. More obnoxious, the waiter recited the menu description of each dish. "Madam, your raviolone with English pea/ricotta filling and a lemon jus."
45. Somebody linked by Mike the Mad Biologist the other day predicted exactly that outcome.
Ooh, and it looks like they got there without Chevron, which is a very good thing. (The next Republican president won't be able to easily turn the subsidies off by regulation.) Not by saying the law is unambiguous, but by holding that Congress didn't assign the question to the IRS, which is the part of Chevron everyone always forgets.
46: Confirming once again that there are at least 3 batshit crazy motherfuckers on the Supreme Court.
On the OP, I think it is true that high end places leave a dirty plate in place longer, whereas lower end places clear ASAP, including to the point of asking to clear plates with a couple bites left (although that's usually only if you've not taken a bite in a bit). And I think the low end servers truly believe they're being attentive and thoughtful, not harassing (there may be pressure from management, but I get the impression that it's part of their internalized definition of good service, just like telling you their boyfriend's favorite dish).
If it's just me and AB, we're likely to finish closely enough together that a non-aggressive server will clear both at once. When we have the kids, it's hard to judge, because Iris will literally still be mid-meal 5 minutes after everyone else is completely done. I don't want a dirty plate in front of me for the length of time it takes her to finish a meal (and, indeed, we usually clear the table at home before she's done; Kai sometimes eats his dessert and goes to bed before she's done).
Don't you just love an angry Scalia dissent in the morning?
I learned of the result from the USSC website, and was delayed in saying anything by reading the fair housing act discrimination case. (Don't you just love an angry Thomas dissent in the morning?)
45, 56: Certainly there's no other plausible 6-3 lineup on this case, right? There are cases where one of the 4 liberals will peel off (mostly civil liberties and corporate rights cases), but not this one. And none of the 3 reactionaries would break ranks on the ACA even if the basis of the lawsuit was whether Obama's signature was legally binding.
The fact that the opinion immediately goes straight to death-spiral stuff makes me think that the people who predicted this based on "Roberts is more corporatist than movement-conservative" had basically the right instincts.
39: I'm willing in principle, but I don't remember!
I was just thinking this morning that the GOP were a bunch of idiots for even bringing this suit. I was worried about the outcome in terms of actual health care access, but I think it would have been a mess for the GOP if it had gone the other way.
I am very happy that at least our half glass continues to be half-full!!!
Now, of course, we can look forward to whatever disasters the TPP brings, but that won't take effect for a while at least.
65.2: At the Olive Garden, the waiter would have already refilled the glass.
Actually, a half full half glass would be a quarter full.
52 is really interesting; I wonder if it's true. Now that I think of the restaurant run by my FIL's old schoolmate, I want to say that there's no more than one server per dining room, each dining room holding... 40 people? Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's my strong impression. Lord knows it took a long time for them to come back around for something or other we needed, in a way it never would in the States (and I'd add that, per 44.1, I only noticed because it involved the children, so I had to keep assuaging their impatience).
66: I used to love the Olive Garden when I was little. I had my first ever cheesecake at the Olive Garden. In retrospect, it was clear that we'd go there because it was comparatively cheap, child-suitable and a faint echo of actual Chicago-area Italian food, since as soon as our finances improved and my brother and I were old enough to handle our pasta arrabbiata we switched over to nicer local places.
I didn't have breakfast today and actually a slice of Olive Garden cheesecake would hit the spot nicely about now, unsuitable for mid-morning as it may be.
Maybe I'll go down to the in-building cafe and buy a celebratory cupcake.
Scalia: "Words no longer have meaning"
68/52 - I'm equally willing to think the causality runs the other direction: other labor market factors push up the effective wage floor, and as a result, restaurants hire fewer servers relative to diners, knowing that means less attentive service. I'm fine with that.
My usual bar operates on the lowest staff to customer ratio of any place I've seen lately. You can wait a while to get something when they are busy. Even at the most packed, there's never more than five people working. Maybe that's why it is illegal to bring children in.
Man, I hope they decide for same-sex marriage as well and then Scalia screams his dissent loud enough that he has a stroke.
69: I like the tiramisu. You can buy a whole pan of it.
(which are neither Cornish, nor game, nor, necessarily, hens. Perfect for Hooters.)
71: Nailed it. Now we just need a comparatively tasteful pun to name the thing.
||May I ask a question about something that seems kind of screwed up to me? I was reminded of it because of my yearning for a cupcake.
Last weekend I stopped by a hipster cupcake-centered cafe with a friend (it was hot and we wanted iced tea). They had a whole bunch of hipster cupcake varieties, all named for their contents or for whimsical qualities, except for two varieties of chocolate ones with chocolate frosting - one the "Michelle Obama" and one the "Claire Huxtable". The first had red, white and blue sprinkes and the second had a sort of nineties purple motif. Now, I know from tumblr that the Huxtables were having a moment a year or so ago, and I assume that this is just hipster nonsense....but that's kind of screwed up, right? It's not as though they have vanilla ones for Ruth Ginsberg and Roseanne or something - although that would be inappropriate too, but at least it would suggest that there was some kind of "let's name cupcakes for famous women of today and the nineties" theme going on.
I didn't say anything to the server, who was asian-american, because I felt like it probably wasn't her decision, I felt like the racial dynamic would be weird and I wondered if I was just behind the times and this is okay now or something. But I figured I'd email the place. (I'm pretty confident that the owners are not Black.)
Anyway - is that kind of creepy and racist? |>
72: But it's weird that the US, of all places, would oversupply labor. Maybe there was a previous equilibrium between the two states (few and inattentive vs. many and gregarious) and contingent reasons* pushed the US in the latter direction, despite labor costs, and now there's no way for restaurants to get to few and inattentive, even though their accountants would love them to.
*possibly as simple as the rise of TGI Fridays type places, which differentiated through gregarious servers. Others followed the trend, and Americans became accustomed to (over)attentive service
65 last. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. TPP (and TTIP and TiSA), with all their treachery and greed, remains unsubdued. The injury they have inflicted on the United States, Great Britain, and other countries, and their detestable cruelties, call for justice and retribution. We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad.
Yes, but they're made of wheat and sugar, and thus so far beyond redemption that nothing makes them worse. Oh, I suppose the people who eat them arrive by automobile.
78: I wouldn't think to much about it. Lots of places name various dishes after celebrities. Iced tea and lemonade will almost always be called an "Arnold Palmer" and iced tea and vodka a "John Daly".
78: Awkward and tone-deaf ("I'll name these darker-colored food items after people with darker skin!"), but I'd have to work really hard to round that up to racism. It's more a case of introducing the always-touchy subject of race into an area where it's not particularly relevant.
82: The thing is, something I learned as a young 'un was that especially if you're white you don't equate the people of color's complexions to food - that this is really rude and gross, and akin to book reviews that start "this novel by [Indian novelist] is as spicy and rich as the food of her native land". It was the "there are only these two chocolate/chocolate frosted cupcakes here, they are the only two named for people and both the people are black women, so it's like 'black women, aha, that's chocolate, right' bit that bothered me. It's not the naming thing - if it were, like, elderflower-infused einkorn flour cupcakes or something, I wouldn't notice.
78: I know several people who request their tea or coffee as either a Julie Andrews or a Whoopi Goldberg (white, none or black, none).
45, 56, 63: I recall Norm Ornstein going with that prediction. But as noted, not a stretch as the only conceivable 6-3 decision.
Possible outcomes:
1 6-3 config
2 5-4 configs
2 4-5 configs
1 3-6 config
3/9 ≈ 27% I guess, but 2/9 would actually be closer.
Associate Justice Scalia cements his role as Judicial Heckler-in-Chief
78: I know several people who request their tea or coffee as either a Julie Andrews or a Whoopi Goldberg (white, none or black, none).
:|
I don't understand how that parenthetical works.
I don't either. None/nun refers to sugar, maybe?
But it's weird that the US, of all places, would oversupply labor.
It's not the only area in service industries, though. Baggers and greeters are very rare here.
78: Weird enough to be offputting, and "Claire Huxtable", I think, indicates that whoever named the cupcakes was sort of aware that it looks at least questionable, so they'd probably be amenable to someone saying "Even if the cupcake naming is well meant, it still looks bad and should be changed."
(Mindreading-attempt explanation: "Claire Huxtable" isn't current enough that anyone going for 'Name two famous black women' would come up with her offhand. I would bet that the thought process of the cupcake namer was either consciously or subconsciously:
(1) Michelle Obama cupcake! Cute idea!
(2) Does that look kind of racially weird? But it's a cute idea! Maybe if she's not the only cupcake, and not the only black woman referenced?
(3) Okay, so who else. Keep it light, we're not doing Black History Month. But keep it respectful; we don't want this to look like we're putting anyone down or making fun of them. No sexy pop stars.
(4) Everyone loved Claire Huxtable, and she's super respectable -- she's a professional! and a good mom! That completely signals that being a cupcake is an affectionate tribute, not any kind of problematic thing. We win at being quirkily cute but totally cool about race.)
Whoever did has a tin ear, but I'd expect them to take commentary on how it turned out unfortunately pretty well.
Scalia does do projection well:
But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
"White, none" or Black, none" is a standard way to order coffee here if you're lucky enough to find a place that doesn't give everything cute names. E.g, if I'm making coffee at home for a tradesman: "How do you take it?" "White, none."
But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
I once sat next to a woman on an flight to SA who flirted with me quite blatantly, which I loved up until she asked the flight attendant for a cup of coffee "like I like my men: strong, sweet and white." I think it was her attempt to continue the flirtation, but it really turned me off.
Also arsenic, potassium cyanide and hydrochloric acid, but in most contexts these are assumed.
I'm desperately resisting the temptation to ask who the fuck Claire Huxtable is/was.
With milk/without = "white" or "black".
Sugar: measured in spoonfuls or lumps; if the number is zero, then "none".
Whoopi Goldberg and Julie Andrews are both most famous for playing nuns. Ms Goldberg is black and Ms Andrews white.
/standpipe
(Technically, of course, neither Whoopi Goldberg nor Julie Andrews actually played a nun. Maria was a postulant who had not yet taken vows; Deloris was hiding from the Mob in disguise. So I suppose that while Whoopi Goldberg did not play a nun, she played someone who was playing a nun.)
103: As an American, I'm appalled! Whatever happened to our global cultural hegemony?
The actress is Phylicia Rashad. Very very familiar to any American (over 20 or so? I'm not sure about reruns.) but not exactly current.
"most famous for" is also debatable.
Well, hang on then, it's not really true to say that Claire Huxtable is black. Phylicia Rashad is black. Claire Huxtable is a fictional character and is no more black than James Bond is white.
"most famous for" is also debatable.
In the UK I would think it's undeniable that Julie Andrews is most famous for "The Sound of Music" and Whoopi Goldberg for "Sister Act". I dunno, maybe there's a minority of diehard Next Generation fans who think of her primarily as Guinan. But "Sister Act" was a great success in the UK and has now spawned a successful West End musical.
The Huxtables were a big hipster deal on tumblr about a year or so ago, before the Bill Cosby situation blew up again. This is Minnesota and we're a bit behind the times, so I would expect that this is the origin of the cupcake. I mean, you could make a perfectly good Claire Huxtable cupcake decorated with a pattern from some of the very nineties dresses she wore - that would make perfect sense. I think a cupcake whose cake portion was tinted some kind of nineties color - elderflower purple, perhaps - would be an appropriate way to go. And surely Michelle Obama has made some food-related statement that could generate cupcake ideas. Plus if you used, like, some of that sheet fondant stuff instead of frosting you could get a very Michelle-Obama-mod-preppie sort of thing going.
110 is so insane it could be a Scalia dissent. Are you imagining a world in which The Cosby Show was rebooted and starred Will Forte and Zooey Deschanel or something?
I wonder if she has another signature role, though? I mean, she's been famous for a long time, and has done a million things, but IIRC that's the biggest movie that she anchored, plus there was a sequel and a Broadway musical, so lots of legs, pop culture-wise (plus the musical was in London before Broadway, so the Brits would notice). Wiki tells me it was one of the biggest grossing comedies of the early '90s and made somebody's top 100 comedies list.
I mean, I had the same reaction as 109, but I'm not certain I have a better contender.
What about Mary Poppins and Ghost, respectively?
Plus, Whoopi is on The View and was in The Color Purple. I don't really think of her tied to a particular role.
Or that morning women talk show? Just on this side of the puddle, I guess.
The Claire Huxtable cupcake is offensive on the other axis as well.
The other day, my paralegal and I were talking about privilege, in terms of things like speeding tickets and the like. I told her that I guessed that some of what she loses on brown skin grounds she makes up on pretty woman grounds. She told me that at her prior place of employ, some people called her Unicorn, or The Unicorn, and wouldn't tell her why for the longest time. Finally, she got someone to admit it: pretty Native women are 'rare as unicorns.' Oh nice, a "compliment" that insults her mom, cousins, friends, etc.
I'd guess that Phylicia Rashad fills a unicorn slot for certain people of a certain age (and in a way that black supermodels don't).
More Scalia hits:
We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.
The practice of law transformed forever, and not in the good buttsex way.
The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed ("penalty" means tax, "further [Medicaid] payments to the State" means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, "established by the State" means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence.
116: I reckon not. The Sound of Music is far better known and better liked than Mary Poppins in the UK, and Goldberg wasn't the lead in Ghost, she's just a supporting actor.
a world in which The Cosby Show was rebooted and starred Will Forte and Zooey Deschanel
I have to admit, a part of me is really interested setting up a proxy server to stream Hulu from that world.
I'm loving the idea of an all-white Cosby Show. I mean, I get that it would effectively be Ozzie and Harriet or whatever, but actually doing it as Cosby. Can't do it now, of course, but.
110: I don't think that works. Claire Huxtable is a character whose racial identity is a meaningful part of the fiction she's in. If she were any other ethnicity, the whole show would change. You could do cross-racial casting, but only in the sense you could cast Othello cross-racially.
James Bond, you could have said the same thing about him in the sixties and seventies -- the books and movies would have been fundamentally different if they were about a black British agent. However, he's lasted long enough that he's established as immortal, of indeterminate ethnicity (within white ethnicities so far, but he's skidded around the British Isles quite a bit), and not tightly bound to his original milieu. A black James Bond now could still be a recognizable James Bond, in a way that a white Claire Huxtable couldn't.
What was the UK sitcom Sanford and Son was based on? I know I never saw an episode, but I'm pretty sure there was one.
Are you imagining a world in which The Cosby Show was rebooted and starred Will Forte and Zooey Deschanel or something?
Patrick Stewart and Aishwarya Rai, actually, but close.
I have to admit, a part of me is really interested setting up a proxy server to stream Hulu from that world.
They live in a brownstown in Brooklyn Heights!
124: Could be an all-white Cosby show in which the perfect dad is also a serial rapist. Edgy!
119: Holy shit, that's awful. Why are people so terrible? What kind of waste of space would even think that was okay? In the workplace, no less!
After the revolution, I plan to spend my days tracking down people who said stuff like this before the revolution and punching them in the face. I will have some kind of superhero costume and perhaps a special car or designated bicycle.
She told me that at her prior place of employ, some people called her Unicorn, or The Unicorn, and wouldn't tell her why for the longest time. Finally, she got someone to admit it: pretty Native women are 'rare as unicorns.'
Aghghghghghghghghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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chhchchc
cc
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brownstown s/b brownstone, obv. But maybe they call them brownstowns on Earth Prime.
119: Holy shit, that's awful. Why are people so terrible? What kind of waste of space would even think that was okay? In the workplace, no less!
After the revolution, I plan to spend my days tracking down people who said stuff like this before the revolution and punching them in the face. I will have some kind of superhero costume and perhaps a special car or designated bicycle.
120. According to the pedia thing there's no procedure for getting rid of a Justice who becomes unfit to serve but won't resign. This seems like a bit of a brain fart by the drafters.
Aishwarya Rai
Oh, I loved her as Shylock.
brownstown s/b brownstone, obv
Whitestone, surely, in this particular alternate universe.
120. According to the pedia thing there's no procedure for getting rid of a Justice who becomes unfit to serve but won't resign. This seems like a bit of a brain fart by the drafters.
136: There are no real rules around impeachment; if a Justice turned into a bipartisanly agreed-upon objective problem, I don't think it would be hard to impeach them for dementia.
It takes the approval of 3/4th of the states to change a wikipedia entry.
132 Secretary of the Coinage by day, masked avenger by night.
Kind of like how the Olympian gods had laundry-lists of responsibilities. I was very entertained when I found out that Apollo was in charge of not only the sun, medicine, poetry, and archery, but also mice.
Claire Huxtable is a character whose racial identity is a meaningful part of the fiction she's in. If she were any other ethnicity, the whole show would change.
Would it? In my (extremely poor) memory of the show there were very few references to race.
144: Don't know, but the same thing just happened to Frowner above.
135: I vote we set aside some money for your official Minister of Currency and Facepunching justice bicycle. Although if you're Minister of Currency you can fund it yourself.
146: Nah, there was a lot of race in the show. I could see how it might not pop out for you, but it would have been a really different show if you had to rewrite all that for a non-Black Claire.
143: Just think of the fanfiction that will be written about me!
144: I posted, got an error message and then reloaded the page only to find a whole new variety of double post.
I still think time-traveling Ron was the best idea ever.
149: I think I'd like one of those Surly touring bikes. I will pay for it with ding-and-dent currency leftover from the regular stuff.
153: Frowner/Time-Travelling Dumbledore. Also, I will need to have a sidekick with whom I am, officially, not involved but about whom the fans can postulate all kinds of tortured romance. I'm thinking China Mieville - he seems like a nice fellow and can probably keep up on a bike, plus he'd very likely enjoy punching wrongdoers. Undead Angela Carter would also be a possibility, for the repartee.
If you have Time-Traveling Dumbledore, you may as well have the bike fly.
146: Nah, there was a lot of race in the show. I could see how it might not pop out for you, but it would have been a really different show if you had to rewrite all that for a non-Black Claire.
Just imagine! All those cameos by elderly jazz musicians would have to be changed to Jerry Lee Lewis, Porter Wagoner, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Alpert...
She told me that at her prior place of employ, some people called her Unicorn, or The Unicorn, and wouldn't tell her why for the longest time. Finally, she got someone to admit it: pretty Native women are 'rare as unicorns.'
WTF.
I think I'd like one of those Surly touring bikes.
I didn't want bar-end shifters, so I ended up going with a Jamis Aurora, but I adore my touring bike - so much smoother dealing with shitty city roads, comfortable position, carries tons of stuff....
there was a lot of race in the show. I could see how it might not pop out for you
To a large extent, The Cosby Show dealt with race by not dealing with race. You could argue that the whole point of the show was to present an upper-middle-class black family as an utterly unremarkable thing.
I hadn't thought about a US/UK difference in plate-snatching before, but now that you mention it, yeah, I think it IS less of a thing here in the UK. I should have noticed the reduced mean level of after-meal anger since I moved. (Not actually true -- I hate the plate snatching, but I gave up getting mad about it long ago as it's clearly just how things are done in most of the US restaurants I can afford).
Then again, there is pint-snatching at the pub, which also annoys and is very much a thing here.
I do love that there is hardly any how-is-everything interrupting at UK restaurants b/c generally they don't give a shit.
161: Funny and not funny, but seriously, how long would it take any awake adult to notice something was wrong in that scenario?
I do love that there is hardly any how-is-everything interrupting at UK restaurants b/c generally they don't give a shit.
Depends how up market you go. I once heard Michel Roux say that he didn't make salt and pepper available to his customers because he seasoned everything correctly in the kitchen. That's one way of not giving a shit I suppose, but...
The best I can guess is that a lot of them were watching their kids and trying to corral groups of them into paying attention to the movie rather than destroying the theater? I mean, the titles would have been displayed and only one of those movies is animated...
I have never understood cupcakes. The proportion of cake to buttercream may be overall okay, but the distribution is wrong. Too tall wodge of cake with too tall wodge of buttercream on top. And how is it supposed to be eaten???? At a minimum you need a plate and fork, so the wrapper then becomes something you have to deal with on your plate using your fingers, those are now greasy ... it's all needlessly awkward.
Further to neb's Chicago experience are the restos where a whole team serves the table in precise hierarchical order, with women in age descending order going first. One of my summer law clerking stints coincided with the worst of morning sickness and a bumper crop of Italian truffles. I was the only woman clerk that summer and let me tell you not puking with a whole team of servers flourishingly unveiling truffle dishes right under your nose whilst everyone looks at you and the room spins is a white knuckle experience.
My great aunts rode the Merle Oberon-esque vogue for a certain type of high cheekbones exotic eyed beauty back in the 30's, right off the reservation and over the train tracks via serial marriage/divorces. Similar to Oberon, when I look at pictures of them in their primes their Native American ness is obvious and unmistakable but they seemed to have passed, at least sufficiently for the very small pool they swam in.
To the OP, I learned somewhere that taking plates separately was improper but I agree that just about everywhere here does it. I personally prefer having the plates taken away when done. I don't at all like being rushed over a meal, but, assuming that a server takes your plate only when you're unambiguously done with it, and doesn't otherwise rush you (this is an art, but I think it's one that most decent places in the US have achieved and figured out), I'd rather linger and wait with everyone else without a dirty, empty plate that I'm not eating sitting in front of me.
Agree that labor costs are likely a big factor here. The tipping system alone probably leads to more waitstaff. I've also wondered how much of the US/UK's ability to catch up with or surpass France or Italy in terms of high end food has to do with the fact that costs per chef/sous-chef/waiter are generally lower in the US/UK than in continental Europe. I've read that French chefs blame -- probably somewhat unfairly but still -- the 35 hour work week for the declining quality of mid-range French restaurants. Low-wage labor creating high-end food is one of those wedge issues that is a problem for SWPL-dom.
Further to 33 and 167.2, at a fancy Cleveland restaurant in what must have been the mid-90's (my grandparents' 50th anniversary, large group), we all got served plates with cloches covering, then an army of waitstaff assembled and whisked away all the cloches at the same instant, two-handed.
I thought you were only supposed to remove cloches from the left.
And how is it supposed to be eaten????
Out of hand, thou philistine!
This probably falls under the category of Clever-Guy Ideas That Won't Work in Practice, but given that France has apparently had some trouble adapting the 35-hour workweek to the rhythms of daily life, maybe we need to reevaluate those rhythms some. Suppose: 30-hour workweek, standard business hours are maybe 7-7, divided into two shifts so everyone works 6 hours a day. Various lagniappes: rush-hour traffic/transit crowding is spread out; people can go to banks and doctors and so forth without taking time off work; couples can work alternate shifts to spend more time with children.
But it's too tall to eat out of hand! It's not like an apple where you can take bites from the top, middle and bottom without fatally undermining overall structural integrity.
Yes, I am truly a cupcake philistine it is true.
You can break off the bottom part and compost it, like with asparagus.
The Cupcake Philistines -- still available for a limited time as the name for your band.
173 Arrakis summer hours + Ramadan hours mean I'm down to a 25 hour workweek here.
Agree with dq on cupcakes. How the hell are you supposed to eat them without making a godawful mess?
Yes, the trouble there is of course more with the modern haute cupcake than cupcakes in general. (Though it can be done! It requires advanced skills, but etiquette calls for it nonetheless.) The m.h.c. also has just too damn much frosting.
But it's too tall to eat out of hand! It's not like an apple where you can take bites from the top, middle and bottom without fatally undermining overall structural integrity.
One has to be willing to be at least slightly messy. It's like eating ribs that way.
has just too damn much frosting.
For optimal deliciousness, that is, in addition to the structural challenge it poses.
Some would differ viewing cake as merely a frosting delivery system.
Using a fork allows one to create the proper ratio of buttercream to cake for each bite but calls up rankling reflections on why one wasn't just given a nice slice of layer cake instead.
there are those miniature ones that you can just pop in your mouth.
182: If you just take a hit straight from the aerosol can, you look needy.
I don't know why aerosol frosting is so shunned compared to widely accepted things like aerosol cheese or air freshener.
Using a fork allows one to create the proper ratio of buttercream to cake for each bite but calls up rankling reflections on why one wasn't just given a nice slice of layer cake instead.
Perhaps as a punishment for one's sins against etiquette!
Not if everybody else got a slice of layer cake and you got a cupcake.
Yeah, there's no problem eating a cupcake without utensils if it's a reasonably sized cupcake, it's just the weirdo huge ones that are a problem. But I agree that most currently existing cupcakes are way too big, and therefore shouldn't be eaten at all.
Do other people have this problem with sushi? My understanding is that a piece of sushi is supposed to be literally bite sized, because they really don't have the structural integrity to tidily gnaw them into bits. But most sushi I run into is way too big to eat in one bite, leaving me gnawing.
You eat extremely fast but with tiny bites?
Think of those army ants that can strip a cow to the bone in minutes.
I guess cow flesh has more structural integrity than rice smushed together.
Which explains why cows can move as a single entity and a bag of rice just sits there.
And yet a school of piranhas can move as one.
Locally, the big Cupcake Trend has subsided and been replaced by a Donut Trend. I'm not sure what's coming after donuts. Cinnamon Rolls?
This was more commercial and less fancy, but I was completely weirded out by Chicago in 1991-92, because there were flavored popcorn shops. Not one chain, but multiple different places where you could go and pick from a dozen flavors of popcorn. Never saw that anyplace else, before or since.
There's a place like that by my office.
190.2: That's a complaint my wife has, particularly at some sushi places. In town, there's some variation, from places that routinely roll small to those that are "a single bite" only in a dreamer's imagination.
I suspect it's an American deviation--let's make it bigger so they think they're getting their money's worth!
Also, there was a shop like that in my hometown. It didn't last long.
This is a problem with otherwise very good croissants made here. The tartine croissants are gross because too huge. Both unappetizing to eat that amount and also ratio of crust to innards thrown off.
everyone's order was set down at the same time, like literally at the same time, by a server per diner, with a flourish?
I have been to a few places where they did this because I had a weird habit in NYC of occasionally going somewhere laughably outside my budget, maybe twice a year. I want to say they did the synchronized serving thing at like Daniel, maybe? I can't remember where else.
I should go to a ridiculously out of budget place again sometime for the hell of it. There's one in the East Bay that's supposed to be good and probably some in the West Bay but who cares. I'm not counting Chez Panisse where we did indeed dine, and which was lovely.
Surely there are several ridiculously out of budget places in the east bay that are supposed to be good?
I mean Commis. I don't know the others. There are places that are a little steep like Boot & Shoe or Hopscotch, both of which I like a lot. I mean what I used to call mortgage dining. I don't know others of that kind here.
You can show up at boulevard nearly any time and get two seats at the bar. Excellent food and service, no shouting across a table at each other, your darling is close at hand indeed you can hold hands, and if the staff find you congenial they start sending you delicious tidbits.
Berkeley has a few places that are stupidly expensive for what you get. Um, that one on the corner of Shattuck and the street with Berkeley Rep on it.
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I'm not sure if the ||'s are necessary at this point, but I'm still going with them. This is a truly magnificent discussion thread. This man is clearly a moral monster, on the scale of Hitler or people who recline their airplane seats when flying in economy class.
The part that's really awesome is if you look at the picture it's clear that the parking spaces are wide enough that he really wouldn't have been running any serious risk by parking in only one of them, and that the truck involved was not taking up two spaces (that thing on its left doesn't look like a space to me at least).
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Years ago a friend invented the category of the $20 Pork Chop Restaurant which, with inflation, I think we can call the $30 Pork Chop Restaurant. That place in Berkeley is like a $35 Tiny Piece of Fish Restaurant. And the cocktails aren't that great. Ptui, I spit on that place. (I mean it's fine, just...)
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Doff your bowler and immediately stop masturbating to Patrick Macnee.
The Avengers, was second only to Star Trek as my favorite TV show when I was a kid.
(Both well into syndication by that point)
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211: Worthwhile Canadian asshole.
213. Fuck.
203. Yeah, there's a place near us that does almond croissants which are to die for, provided you can share them with one, or maybe two other people. Because they are monstrously big.
if you put your utensils down so that the knife/fork/plate combo looks like a clock at 4:20
420 was what made me eat so fast in the first place.
213 reprised. Jesus he was 93, I had no idea.
219 Nor did I. Also didn't know he'd become an American citizen and lived (and died) in California.
211: You know the difference between a BMW and a cactus? With a cactus the pricks are on the outside.
I used to have a BMW and they are great cars, but there's an above average number of douchebags driving them.
I guess to be fair to BMW owners most of the other people commenting on that thread think he's a douchebag as well. I really liked the bit where he says something about unwritten rules and gets a link to the Ottawa parking rules, where it turns out it was not so much 'unwritten' as 'clearly written rule with a corresponding fine'.
211: Unfit to live in civilized society. Needs reeducation.
Um, that one on the corner of Shattuck and the street with Berkeley Rep on it.
I like that place!
I don't think I've ever had an actual full meal there, though.
211 is a really fun thread to read.
190/201: When it first appeared in the 19th century, nigiri sushi was actually two or three tines larger than it is now and was eaten with the fingers. At that point it was a fast food, the Edo equivalent of the Big Mac. Pieces started to become smaller in the early 20th century, but it wasn't standardized to its present size until after WW2, when the Occupation forces issued an edict that sushi shops must make at least 10 pieces of sushi with each cup of rice as part of strict rationing regulations.
So there's no shame to picking it up in your fingers rather than with chopsticks, or to eating it in two bites, though in Japan at least it's usually small enough to pop each piece in your mouth all at once.
the Edo equivalent of the Big Mac
Now I feel better about the place near my office that puts what looks like French dressing on the top.
My new accomplishment is to be able to eat pan fried noodles with chopsticks. Maybe some day I can work up to regular noodles that aren't fried into a easier to grab chunk.
33 et seq.: Very late to the game on this, but Boston institution Legal Seafood used to (maybe still does) explicitly say they will serve your food when it is finished cooking, and not keep it under a heat lamp to pretend your party's all got done at the same time.
Of course they also used to make you pay in advance, too.
The riposte from the hoitiest of haute is that in a properly run kitchen all the dishes for the party are ready at the same time.
But they don't need to be put down at the exact same time. It's ok if one person is served thirty seconds after another.
I mean certainly you should all be served "at the same time", but not by a synchronized server team.
Depends on size of service team, style of that front of house, etc. Drama usually better served (ha!) by consecutive service to each diner. It's basically dancing.
The last time I was a waiter, the kitchen manager always played Steely Dan during clean-up. That's not even possible to dance to.
78: Just because they run a cupcake shop, don't assume that they are nice people.
237 -- if they're not neo-Nazis, they are the moral equivalents of neo-Nazis.
Which is the same as flying the Confederate flag.
I don't even understand how anybody can sell a salad without fries on it now that people know fries are an option.
237, just before I left Pittsburgh there was a furor about the young and hip eatery "Peace, Love and Tiny Little Donuts" actually being run by a Quiverfull-esque family.
Topically, nobody has taken my empty plate yet. I even ate the tomato.
241: Just the one in the Strip. The one in Oakland is good. They have a sign that says so.
Plate gone, even though another guy is still eating.
But they cost a 1.00 or 1.25 for a small donut.
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Does the ILO really spell its name "The International Labour Organization"? That's an odd mix of UK/US spelling.
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246: 'Organization' is Oxford spelling, not just US.
It is rather disconcerting when the SCOTUSblog twitter account responds to the nutsos, until i figure out what's going on. But entertaining!
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I am eating some really good bread right now; thought you might want to know.
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48.3: ortolan! Can't think of a pun.
All the plates at once is Russian service, isn't it? Or was in the last Gilded Age? Vs French style which has a lot of staff but not actually one per diner and English style which likes a lot is dishes in the table for each remove. I think there's a Trollope with minor gentry getting Russian service tragically wrong and Lady Glencora, tragically, doing it right.
I just heard on the radio that Mr Macnee was a nudist.
199 - flavoured popcorn seems reasonable. There's a place in town here that sells flavoured sweetcorn which just seems bizarre. They are clearly doing ok though, because they've gone from a tiny stall to a large kiosk.
E.g, if I'm making coffee at home for a tradesman: "How do you take it?" "White, none."
Surely, "white, three sugars".
Tbh, I would always say milk, no sugar, rather than none. And when I hear Whoopi Goldberg I think Ghost.
Clearing plates away willy-nilly sounds terribly uncouth. Just sit with an empty plate for a bit - we're not two year olds, pushing our empty plate across the table. Also, having a plate means you can easily steal food from the slow eater, or even swap plates with them.
other labor market factors push up the effective wage floor, and as a result, restaurants hire fewer servers relative to diners, knowing that means less attentive service. I'm fine with that.
This theory is consistent with my experience with restaurants in Alaska, which I recently learned is one of the few states that don't exempt restaurants from minimum wage laws. Service is notably slower than in other places I've lived, more or less universally regardless of the type of restaurant. (The food is also more expensive, even beyond the extent to which everything is more expensive here.) I'm also fine with this.
262 last makes an important point; this part of the pleasure of eating with friends would be impossible in US culture.
Asilon, you don't know our builder, a guy who brings his own grounds and brews his fresh coffee on site.
Service à la Russe is courses in sequence, which is the method used by Escoffier. All courses at once is à la francaise. In strictly proper service, dishes are brought to the table but each dinner serves themselves from the platter.
Because it would be inappropriate to suggest to a guest how much to eat of any given dish - they should choose that themselves.
What if the first guy takes all the drumsticks?
(a) there should be enough food served that that is not possible and (b) what kind of heathens are you dining with, Moby?
I'm just saying that if you let everybody pick their own portions, the broccoli doesn't get eaten.
I always say that there's a programmer in California who had to leave his BMW dirty so you could eat that.
What about when you get given the main bit of the meal on the plate (is it serve from the right, clear from the left, or vice versa?), and then all the other bits are in the middle to help yourself? Does that have a name?
Serve from the left, clear from the right.
Surely proper service is silver service, in which the wait staff bring round the food on platters and serve you individually? Then if one person hogs all the wings, the waiter can just bring out another platter. And the staff get to eat the left-over broccoli later.
273 before seeing 271. Yes, serve from the left, clear from the right. (Done that, one summer of grad-student poverty.)
I'm just saying that if you let everybody pick their own portions, the broccoli doesn't get eaten.
It does if I'm there!
There's a burger place near me that names its burgers after people. There was a Charles and Di one that had an English muffin. Stupid shit like that.
262 last makes an important point; this part of the pleasure of eating with friends would be impossible in US culture.
I know we're a bunch of savages over here, but we nevertheless manage to muddle through and experience those pleasures somehow. For one thing, when the server asks to take your plate, you can always say no; actual swooping without asking is not the norm. And it is in fact possible to steal food from the slow eater without having an empty plate in front of you--you just have to do it one bite at a time (which, if you've scarfed down your own meal so quickly, maybe not breaking off a plate-sized portion of the slow eater's meal isn't such a hardship?). And while you can't technically swap plates, you can still take the slow-eater's plate, which is functionally equivalent to swapping it for an empty plate.
48.3: ortolan! Can't think of a pun.
Given the suggested dress code, you could call the chain Sous Vide.
The Washington Post supports me in comments!
Tyler Cowen supports you in the Washington Post. Need I say more?
I suppose I could blame the McDonald's breakfast on traveling with the family, but really I do that often enough when I'm on my own.
I liked Egg McMuffins when I was a kid, but the last time I had one, I was horrified at the rubbery english muffin.
My wife and MIL use a bread knife to halve fork-split English muffins, which, aside from flagrantly disregarding the efforts of Thomas the Fork-Splitter, means that the whole glory of a well-toasted muffin - the crags that descend from well-browned tip to mellow-gold valley - is leveled heartlessly. I try not to let them near the children's muffins, lest they be corrupted.
I think Chris Y is envisioning waiters aggressively grabbing your plate within seconds of any break in wolfing down food. That's not how it works. No one (usually) takes your plate unless you're unambiguously done, and (except at bad restaurants) waiters have actually gotten very good at figuring out how to do so unobtrusively. You can linger all you want, or swap plates or whatever, the only thing you miss is lingering over an empty, dirty plate of food you're not eating.
284: Yes, usually server usually comes over and says something like, "Can I clear anything away for anyone?"
Anyone I'm not currently dating who attempts to steal food from my plate while I'm still eating is going to get their hand stabbed with my fork. And even then.
Still I eat like LB so not likely to be a problem. Also not currently dating. I'll just go sit in a corner and gnaw at some crusts now.
285: Right. When I trained to be a server, I was expressly taught to clear plates. Look for signs (napkin on plate; silverware at 4 o'clock) and then ask, "Still working on it, or can I get that plate out of your way?" I should add: this was at a BBQ joint, so the peril of leaving your plate in front of you was potentially BBQ-saucing your sleeve.
As for the side issue of whether US servers hover incessantly, you have some customers who want a friendly, chatty server; you have some customers who want to be left alone as much as possible. It's pretty easy to pick up on who's who, starting from the initial interaction.
273. Now there is an article with issues. "pooo" forsooth!
and then ask, "Still working on it
"Working on it? It's a lasagna, not an annual audit. The chef works on it. I eat it. I may even enjoy it. But it's not work."
Yes, "working on that" is a very oft-derided phrase.
283: I love the Egg McMuffin. It's important not to think of it as food but rather as a delivery system for the highly refined petroleum byproduct called "American Cheese Food Product." Anything with "food" in its name isn't. Also anything called "product" should be viewed with suspicion. But they are still delicious.
I developed a taste for the most plastic-y version of American cheese when I was about 12 and my family had to rely on food banks and USDA distributed cheese. My sister and I loved the stuff, but my parents would barely touch it.
Anyone I'm not currently dating who attempts to steal food from my plate while I'm still eating is going to get their hand stabbed with my fork.
I always save the best bit for last, assembling the choicest bits of the meal so that the last bite is all the best parts of each dish. My ex loved to steal food from my plate, which meant she often nabbed the best bite. I did not stab her, though she deserved a good forking from time to time.
293 Me too! When I was a kid my mother used to do that to me. I blame my attitudes toward food - wolfing down my meals and problems with portion control to this.
294: But you could not do anything about it because nobody wants to be a motherforker.
It's important not to think of it as food but rather as a delivery system for the highly refined petroleum byproduct called "American Cheese Food Product."
Wait, Egg McMuffins have a cheese slice in them? For the love of god why?
To make them better.
Defensive Americans are ever so amusing.
211 Looks like that thread/forum is now locked. I was just about to link it for someone on the twitters.