How not to feel humiliated when dining with a gorgeous guy

[foxy]

Tuesday I took a young friend of mine to a very upscale NYC restaurant. Now this friend of mine is a real head turner. He spends a lot of time at the gym and has crafted something approaching art. He also is very careful about his diet.

 

So we sat down and our most likely gay waiter handed over menus. Then began the ordering process. My friend started to order and then told the waiter how things were to be cooked, but he didn't want this, wanted that instead, on and on. The waiter kept running back and forth to the kitchen to see if the chef would accommodate all his requests (demands).

 

Now my friend was very nice about all this but he wanted everything his way. No room for discussion. It was all pretty complicated. I just picked something.

 

During the course of the meal the waiter kept scurrying back to the table to see if my young friend was happy. He told the waiter what was good and what needed improvement. The waiter promised to relate all this to the chef.

 

When the (enormous) bill arrived I sat there with my credit card in hand. The waiter, with his back to me, said he hoped my friend would come back and what a pleasure it was to serve him. Then the waiter turned to me, took my credit card with the bill and ran off. I don't think I was ever so invisible in my entire life and I thought the whole thing was very funny. Whoever said "youth is wasted on the young" was wrong.

 

The young know exactly what they're doing and I have the bill to prove it.

[KMEM]

The young know exactly what they're doing and I have the bill to prove it.

 

So do most clients.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[Guest PWIT]

I don't think I was ever so invisible in my entire life

 

a waiter who ignores me (if I am paying) is likely to experience the same from me come tip time.

[foxy]

The waiter got a very good tip from me. My friend enjoyed his lunch and I had a very good time with him. It all works out in the end.

[JoeyBryant]

Now my friend was very nice about all this but he wanted everything his way. No room for discussion. It was all pretty complicated. I just picked something.

 

The young know exactly what they're doing and I have the bill to prove it.

 

LOL, thats funny. I was going to ask if y'all went dutch before you mentioned it. Well atleast he made sure your money was well spent by ensuring the meal to be perfect right?

 

Me on the other hand, 2 places I tend to avoid being overly demanding at are restaurants and car repair shops! They always have 1 person trying to cater to several demands and it tends to overwhelm them if you start giving commands.

 

When I feel like being precise, I work on my own car and cook at home LOL. When time's on my side...that is :o

[Boston Guy]

LOL, thats funny. I was going to ask if y'all went dutch before you mentioned it. Well atleast he made sure your money was well spent by ensuring the meal to be perfect right?

 

Me on the other hand, 2 places I tend to avoid being overly demanding at are restaurants and car repair shops! They always have 1 person trying to cater to several demands and it tends to overwhelm them if you start giving commands.

 

When I feel like being precise, I work on my own car and cook at home LOL. When time's on my side...that is :o

 

I agree. Absent real health concerns, I think that being overly demanding in restaurants is not only tedious but a bit pretentious.

[+ azdr0710]

I agree. Absent real health concerns, I think that being overly demanding in restaurants is not only tedious but a bit pretentious.

 

very true, BG.....I have to wonder whether this young friend was trying to impress foxy.....or even himself....

 

I hope the waiter wasn't too put upon...I was a waiter during college and know what it's like....thanks for tipping him big, foxy....I hope it was all worth it, ultimately!

[foxy]

We all got what we wanted.

[RM]

I don't care how nice he looks, I'd never eat with him again. I endure enough eating with a friend who believes she is allergic to nuts and MSG. She takes a little card with her wherever she goes. Her husband says she's not allergic to either.

[JoeyBryant]

Usually if I see someone being overbearing at a restaraunt I think, maybe they don't eat out (or come here) very often, because after awhile it gets old...especially on a weekend. You just want to eat, not be Chef Ramsay from the sidelines.

 

But last weekend was unacceptable. Some seafood place burnt my conch fritters, and the rest were frozen. Then it took 30 minutes into dinner to get the baked potato to me.

 

I guess SA isn't known to have the best seafood

[Lookin]

The waiter got a very good tip from me. My friend enjoyed his lunch and I had a very good time with him. It all works out in the end.

And who knows, maybe even the chef had some fun getting his star diner's order just right. http://www.thesmilies.com/smilies/sad/sneeze.gif

[Boston Guy]

I think it's okay to ask about items off the menu, so long as the requests are simple and reasonable: "I'd enjoy something for dessert but these desserts are too rich for me today. Would you perhaps have a bit of fresh fruit in the kitchen?" or "I see that you have Puttanesca sauce available with ziti but the broiled swordfish special sounds good. Would it be possible to have a bit of the Puttanesca sauce with the swordfish?" Health concerns are obviously legit: "I'm very allergic to nuts. Are there any nuts in this dish?"

 

But I always hope that my companions will act gracefully, whether we are at a simple restaurant or at the opera. Tediously dissecting menu items and requesting special treatment and preparation for each would fall outside my definition of acting graciously and would quickly exhaust my patience. If I were the host, I'd likely feel a responsibility to step in at some point and cut it off: "Come on, Jim, this isn't a market. Pick something and let's give the kitchen a chance to prove what they can do." After all, it's a meal, not a life-altering experience. I enjoy food a great deal and that includes cooking and entertaining, too. But expecting a restaurant to cater to multiple personal quirks is not reasonable or gracious.

[Epigonos]

I have a niece that I took out to lunch on a number of occasions. She always spent about twenty minutes reading the entire menu from beginning to end. It never mattered that she had a “general” idea of what she wanted. She simply had to read the entire menu. When she finally got around to ordering her selection she spent another fifteen or twenty minutes queering the waiter in great detail about her selection. If ordering a sandwich she wanted to know exactly what type and brand of bread was used. If there were vegetables on the sandwich she wanted to know whether or not they were organic. If there was mustard or mayonnaise on the sandwich she insisted on knowing what brand.

I quickly became weary of the whole routine and stopped asking her out to lunch. She eventually asked why we weren’t having lunch together any more. When I explained that at I found her menu reading and ordering questions a tedious bore she was shocked. She simply could not understand my comment. I still avoid going to a restaurant with her like the plague. In all other areas she is a most enjoyable meal companion and I enjoy her company. I now invite her to my home and cook myself. If she has questions about the ingredients I use I send her to the refrigerator to find out for herself -- she has managed to learned that it is simply too much trouble to investigate.

[foxy]

I think the point that my friend was firm but very nice through all this has been missed. The waiter wasn't upset at all and seemed to be having a good time making him happy.

I was actually pleased watching the whole scenario because so many restaurants will just throw something at you and waiters can be rude and ignore you. This was not the case. The waiter was doing a really good job making a patron happy. That's his job.

Also, there were no complaints from the kitchen. We are talking of making some substitutions. Even fast food restaurants will "make it your way"... or so they say.

 

This was lunch. It cost over $100 and the waiter got a 25% tip. I rest my case.

 

My tip came later.

[+ Lucky]

As I read it, foxy was telling a cute story about the attention his very cute date received, and demanded, at a fine restaurant. He didn't seem to be asking others to critique his date, but that's what happened. For myself, I just enjoyed the story and wondered if the date was as much a perfectionist in bed as he is at the restaurant. I want to hear part 2!

[Boston Guy]

Tuesday I took a young friend of mine to a very upscale NYC restaurant. Now this friend of mine is a real head turner. He spends a lot of time at the gym and has crafted something approaching art. He also is very careful about his diet.

 

So we sat down and our most likely gay waiter handed over menus. Then began the ordering process. My friend started to order and then told the waiter how things were to be cooked, but he didn't want this, wanted that instead, on and on. The waiter kept running back and forth to the kitchen to see if the chef would accommodate all his requests (demands).

 

Now my friend was very nice about all this but he wanted everything his way. No room for discussion. It was all pretty complicated. I just picked something.

 

During the course of the meal the waiter kept scurrying back to the table to see if my young friend was happy. He told the waiter what was good and what needed improvement. The waiter promised to relate all this to the chef.

 

When the (enormous) bill arrived I sat there with my credit card in hand. The waiter, with his back to me, said he hoped my friend would come back and what a pleasure it was to serve him. Then the waiter turned to me, took my credit card with the bill and ran off. I don't think I was ever so invisible in my entire life and I thought the whole thing was very funny. Whoever said "youth is wasted on the young" was wrong.

 

The young know exactly what they're doing and I have the bill to prove it.

 

I suppose that the part of your initial post that I bolded above is what I was reacting to. When ordering becomes a "process" that includes "demands" and requires the waiter to keep "running back and forth to the kitchen", it seems to me to already be beyond what would normally be reasonable. When someone wants "everything his way. No room for discussion" and it becomes "all pretty complicated", then I think that person has become tedious, at the very least.

 

You, however, sound like a very gracious host. You kept your cool and chose to enjoy the situation, even though you felt that "I don't think I was ever so invisible in my entire life...".

 

Actually, there's a further lesson here for escorts. When dining out with a client, I do not think that an escort's role is to cause great attention to be focused on himself. I do understand that some young escorts develop rather inflated senses of self, especially after a period of being fawned on by clients. Nevertheless, a good escort will continually refocus attention on the client and away from themselves. No client who is dining with an escort should ever find themselves feeling invisible. So not only do I think that your escort acted in a manner that I would consider tedious at the very least, he failed to think about your position in the restaurant, too. Frankly, he sounds a bit of a boor, regardless of how much of a head turner he happens to be.

 

But, as I said above, you seem to have been extremely gracious throughout. My hat's off to you: at least one of the two people at the table had good manners.

 

BG

[+ Lucky]

As I read the story, the date was drop-dead gorgeous and knew how to use that with a gay waiter. And ain't it the truth that we all give a hot guy more attention than an ugly guy? The waiter didn't mind the demands because it gave him more opportunity to absorb the pheromones of the sexy customer. I've done it myself more than a few times- that is, treated someone better so as to get closer to his pheromones!

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Forever_Tel_Aviv_at_TLV_nightclub_in_Israel_2.jpg/180px-Forever_Tel_Aviv_at_TLV_nightclub_in_Israel_2.jpg http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/magnify-clip.png

The male Axilla (more commonly known as the armpit) has been hypothesized to be a source of human pheromones.

[Boston Guy]

Lucky,

 

I think that you're probably exactly right.

 

But the fact remains that the escort was both (a) a guest of someone else, who was paying for lunch; and (b) an escort with a client. I think that both call for a different standard of behavior, even if one could somehow argue that making excessive demands in a restaurant can be excused if the demanding one is attractive enough.

 

BG

[Cooper]

Good looks and money = more attention...

 

As I read the story, the date was drop-dead gorgeous and knew how to use that with a gay waiter. And ain't it the truth that we all give a hot guy more attention than an ugly guy?

 

Nice story Foxy.... I agree with Lucky that your date was a good looking guy who was receiving special attention from the "star struck" waiter. The running back and forth into the kitchen might indicate that the waiter was new and didn't realize that these menu substitutions were available and often requested.

 

Lucky, you do realize that us "ugly guys" also receive a lot of attention from the "ddg" escorts/dancers. Go to any male strip club and spread around some money and you'll get all the attention you could possibly want.

[+ Lucky]

Cooper's pheromones:

http://www.jpgwallpaper.com/image_cache/102_preview.png

 

Lucky's pheromones:

 

http://theunquietlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/pennies.jpg

[Lookin]

My comment had more to do with the possible reaction of the chef who would have been unaware of His Nibs' beauty, charm and, presumably, pheromones. All (s)he would have known for sure was that someone was making it rather complicated to get the dish out the door.

 

Somewhere I read that it isn't unknown for kitchen staff to add a little something "extra" to the plate of a demanding diner. I've tried to be that much more affable ever since.

 

Of course I couldn't be happier for Foxy who had not only the full frontal view of his gorgeous companion, but also a series of rear shots of a very accomodating waiter. To say nothing of a fine meal free of any secluded chazerai.

[jackcali]

Many, many years ago (I was in high school) I had a summer job as a busboy's assistant (not even a busboy, lol) in an upscale restaurant in Manhattan. A particularly difficult customer could count on the chef to do something disgusting with his food. I've seen a steak thrown (not dropped) on the floor before being served and once saw a saucier spit into his saucepan before plating. Since then, I've always been on my best behavior in restaurants and, before I send something back to the kitchen, which I've only done twice in twenty years of eating three to five dinners a week in restaurants, I make sure my complaint is completely reasonable.

[foxy]

The Duchess of Windsor was famous for her pillows that had sayings embroidered on them. I read once that she had one that said "Never Complain, Never Explain" and this from a rather difficult woman who always got what she wanted.

 

I also know waiters who wouldn't eat in restaurants because they knew what went on in the kitchen.

 

I always check the bathroom first in a restaurant. If it isn't clean you can imagine what the kitchen might be like.

 

Even Julia Child has dropped things on the floor and put them right back in the pan. Just turn up the heat and hope it kills the the bugs. Bon Appetite!

[Guest alanm]

I think the point that my friend was firm but very nice through all this has been missed. The waiter wasn't upset at all and seemed to be having a good time making him happy.

 

A good waiter would give the appearance of not being upset and having a good time making your friend happy. I wonder what he really thought.

[foxy]

He had a hard on.