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Can I get this out of your way; did you save room for desert?

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SW_PA_Couple

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Travel by automobile puts us in contact with franchise restaurants. The food and the ways it is prepared sometimes approach the flavor and nutritional value of a family or privately-owned restaurant. But the presentation is almost invariably awful, sometimes approaching frightful.

 

When, exactly, did waiters and waitresses learn how to say, "Can I take this out of your way?" Once upon a day, when men were real men, and women were real women, and fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri, a diner placed his fork upside-down onto his her her plate, whether or not food still covered its surface, and the unspoken message was received and correctly interpreted by the wait staff that it was time to take the plate away. And what the bloody hell do wait staff mean when they give you the back-handed insult, "Did you save room for desert?" The answer in my mind is, "Hell, no. I'm a pig and I scarfed that swill so fast I could in no way stuff anything else into my pie hole." I would think that a simple, "would you like to see our desert menu" would do.

 

It all came to a head today while in a just-off-the-highway Applebee's near Fairmont, West Virginia. The waitress would zoom by the table vocalizing, "Is everything OK?" She was moving so fast that the Doppler effect made her speech almost intelligible. There was certainly no chance to give a reply. This was far beyond the usual "trick" of asking while the diners' mouths were full. So I gave something a try. My reply was, "It tastes like shit" loud enough for ten tables to hear but not loud enough for her as she had already shifted into Warp 3 velocity. I know that answering rudeness with rudeness is not right, but I none-the-less gave in to the impulse.

 

Final thought. When, exactly, did waiters and waitresses become "servers". I've noticed. In Great Britain, matrons are still matrons and stewards are still stewards. Heaven help them that they not become infected with our political correctness nor our inept ways of serving food.

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Personally, I trust very few restaurants to properly present a desirable meal. The few I trust tend to be out of our regular budget, and I guess it works out ok for special occasions. My wife and I are mostly "foodies" - she's for real and I am reasonably adept at faking it. When she wears her chef's jacket to the restaurants, we get lots of smiles and special attention. I just sit back and enjoy (while trying to avoid saying something stupid).

 

I think franchises are a special case. The original menu is typically prepared by someone who cares and knows what they're doing. The accountants then work their magic on the menu items followed by final prep and presentation by folks that don't know and don't care (generally speaking). The result is marginally copacetic sustenance. Their profit depends on "patron throughput", so their decor, their communication, and even the comfort of their chairs are carefully designed to get your money then get you out to make room for the next victim. Hardly the environment to savor the sensuosities of a carefully orchestrated culinary masterpiece.

 

Interestingly they are illl-prepared to compete with the home chef with a passion for the story a plate of food represents. They simply compete against each other and rely on the effectiveness of their marketing geeks.

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"Once upon a day, when men were real men, and women were real women, and fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri"

 

LOVIN' the Hitchhikers reference!!

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And worse than the service is the food, canned, frozen and processed. It is exceedingly difficult to find a good meal made with fresh ingredients, even at some higher end restaurants.

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