Back of the House: Quit Fronting

An Insider's Guide to Navigating the Fine Dining Restaurant World
by Meshelle Armstrong

“There are definite procedures to ensure a positive dining / restaurant experience. It all
begins with this idea: Prepare for good dining karma.”
- Restaurant Eve Service Manual

~
How to Give (and Get) ‘Good Phone’ • Part II

“. . .Brrriiiiinggg . . .”

“Good evening, thank you for calling Restaurant Eve. How may I help you?”

“Yes, I need a reservation for this Saturday night for a party of four.”

“Oh, my apologies sir, we are fully committed this Saturday, may I check another date for you.”

“Um, well, perhaps you should check again. This is Mr. Ralph, I am a good friend of Chef KethelArmstrong and my dinner companion is a notable blogger from Boston.”

The die was cast.

There are a few unwritten rules when it comes to acquiring a hard-to-get reservation.

Remember back when I said you might not always like what you hear?

Depending on your reservation habits, this might be that time.

An entire section of DON’Ts could easily come across as negative or snarky, especially since the hospitality industry is basically designed to be, well, hospitable.

You don’t go to a fine dining restaurant to have the waiters tell you how you should use your utensils or listen to the chef tell you how you should eat your food … So who am I to tell you what you shouldn’t do when you try to make a reservation?

Read on.

My day is far more pleasant when it’s spent assisting nice people who trust that I’m going to do my best to make their dining wishes happen. But sometimes it’s waaay easier to deal with a jackass.

Doling out the bad-news-blow to someone who took five minutes of my life away dispensing bombastic “But don’t you know who I am?!” drivel is on the spot fun. (“Oh, I do have one at 7:30 p.m. … oh no. I’m so sorry, I was mistaken, the 9 looked like a 7.”)

Especially, when Mr. “Jacques Haas” even had the nerve to swear a bit.

Now, it still troubles me when I can’t find a table for the genuine sort: new parents trying to squeeze in their anniversary dinner or that anxious but charming gentleman trying to plan his honey’s birthday. I know it sucks, been there.

Most of you—and I do mean most (somewhere in the 95 percent area)—will find the following what notto do instructions laughable. You’ll probably even have a “Nah-uh, people do that?!?” moment.

The other 5 percent—well, you know who you are.

DON’T lie.

Never, ever, ever.

Some people are so desperate in their quest to get a table that they tell loopy whoppers. I can’t tell you how many calls I get from “close, personal friends” of my husband, Cathal, who don’t know how to pronounce his first name. His name is Cathal (silent ‘t’) not Cathay, (he’s not a woman) Carl (“but isn’t that the American version?”), or my favorite, Chatall (which puts me in stitches because it somehow reminds me of the fabulous movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, whose plot is based on the journey of three drag queens).

Or, the most hilare is when they are “close, personal friends” of mine and they are talking . . . to me. Caught in the BS! But of course, I then have to pretend not to be me:

“Oh, I’m sure she would have been so upset to have missed you, but unfortunately 9:30 p.m. is still the only availability .”

And, here’s a good one: Saturday night tables filled with guests eating, chatting, proposing—you know, the usual—patrons spilling out of the bar, waiting for their reservations, and me at the desk (when it was my gig) chatting with guests and sending my hosts to far corners of the dining rooms for the in-house status reports.

Two gentlemen present themselves for a 7:30 p.m. reservation in the Tasting Room. Immediately I tune out all the chatter from the bar and dining rooms and focus all of my attention on the gentlemen and the booked-solid floor plan in front of me.

Something has gone very, very wrong.

We never ever have a Saturday 7:30 p.m. reservation for two in the Tasting Room (It just doesn’t work out—the table can never have a second seating, so it’s reserved for four).

Panic sets in when I cannot find a record of them or their reservation anywhere in the computer or in the “Black Book” (the actual book of written floor plans and timing—we have a double-entry system, sort of as a backup; it’s easy to spot errors this way).

Anyway, in these situations I always give guests the benefit of the doubt. I know that mistakes and miscommunications happen, and wherever the fault lies, it’s my job to make it right. I begin to explain the situation and invite the gentlemen to relax with a cocktail while I sort everything out.

Internally, my brain is in hyper drive: think, think, who’s on dessert? Who looks fine drinking at the bar and can I give their table to the two standing in front of me?

But I am cut off when the “gentlemen” in question proceed to throw down the Veruca Salt tantrum.

To drown out my apologies and offers of a solution, the “gentlemen” get louder. Guests in the bar start to notice that there is drama brewing, (you know how everyone loves drama) so soon we have an audience—dinner and a show, everybody!

The “gentlemen” notice the on-lookers and begin to really lay it on, dropping details about Restaurant Eve’s unprofessionalism and how they should have gone to the “other restaurant.”

Then they strike:

“Listen, we made this reservation last week with a young man who seemed pre-tee flaky over the phone. Maybe you should train your staff better, because this is just ridiculous.”

My insides begin to churn and my sympathy, gone.

Big fibbers.

We didn’t have a single male host at Restaurant Eve (at the time), and the servers are not permitted to answer the phones, so I know flaky reservations boy is either totally invented or employed at another restaurant, probably annoyed that his 7:30 p.m. two-top is late. But my gut serves me well, as when I inform them (in the slowest speech I can manage to really draw it out) that a 7:30 p.m. never existed and all hosts are female, they quieted down real quick (still a show, remember) and slinked off into the night, one whispering to the other, “See, now where do we go?”

The moral of this story: “Big fat liars, tried to embarrass us into giving them a table.” So don’t lie.

DON’T book a reservation you KNOW you can’t make

Here’s a tip for all of you spontaneous types: if you can be flexible, it’s worth calling on the day you’d like to dine. Generally restaurants call to confirm reservations at least a day in advance. On Thursday mornings I know we’ll have a few cancellations for the weekend, and if we can’t reach anyone on the wait-list we open those tables up for new callers.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to hitch one of those last-minute tables, but I do know I can count on those cancellations. It seems like one of the laws of the universe. Those cancellation calls even all sound the same, like the guests and I are reading from the same script:

“Hello Dr. Ralph, this is Restaurant Eve calling to confirm your 6 p.m. reservation for two this Saturday.”

“Oh, hello. Anything open up at, like 7:30 p.m.?”

“I’m very sorry, sir, but we are still fully committed at that time.”

“Then I’m just going to have to cancel.”—Click.

This is why reservations are so hard to get. Every time you book a reservation you have no intention of keeping, someone else can’t get a table. You know in your heart when you are resentfully making your“ugh, who eats at that hour” reservation, you aren’t going to keep it.

Go on, let it go. Leave it for someone who will.

DON’T name-drop yourself

This isn’t lying so much as overstating. Dropping a title without explanation as you try to imply that you are someone the host should know makes all of us roll the eyes to heaven.

When you start your conversation with, “This is Dr. Ralph and I need a table for four,” or “Congressman X wants a table on the 3rd,” the host starts racing through her mental Rolodex:

“Dr. Ralph? Is that Chef’s doctor? No… one of his cousins? Guy on T.V show? Crap!”

As you carry on a seemingly normal conversation, she starts furiously looking up guest records—“Dr. Ralph, Dr. Ralph, which Dr. Ralph? Fred? Thomas?”—until she realizes that the reason she doesn’t recognize your name is because this will be your first visit to the restaurant.

Hosts hate this because it makes them feel like you think they won’t do their jobs unless you’re a VIP. Or even worse, that you are trying to trick them by making yourself sound highfalutin.

There is no need to lean on your title.

Gucci, Pucci, Hoochie. As long as we have the table, you like to eat (and can pay), it’s all good.

To us, everyone is a VIP. Until proven otherwise.

Like in my daughter, Eve’s, class: everyone starts with an A. It’s what you do that can lose it.

So avoid earning yourself that un-VIP-able status. (Refer to the first DO in part one of this column.) It’s our job to make you feel special, to make you feel cared for. We will try every bit as hard to fit in a straightforward ‘Miss, or Mr.’ as we will a General.

And my personal bête noir: If you mention that you’re a frequent Yelp-er or Chowhound-er as a scare tactic to acquire a reservation or to gain special treatment you should be officially forced to carry the scarlet fork. It not only makes you sound like a real git but you give a bad name to some of the really good, committed to food and dining blogs out there, who call for reservations like everyone else. During dinner as we engage you, who you are and what food scene jazzes you will naturally emerge. And we’ll be thrilled that you’ve chosen us.

In the viral age, many have the “I eat – therefore I review” mentality, unfortunately the power of the slapdash keystroke has gone to some of their heads:

“It’s reeeally too bad you don’t have anything this Saturday—I was planning on reviewing you. Have you heard of fudiefan.com?”

Seriously, if this is your behavior on the phone, imagine what we have to fear when you actually arrive.

I’d rather give the table to the person who won’t write about us, and take my chances with the good ol’ word of mouth critique. I can’t speak for others but strong-arming me with a “are you sure you want to say ‘no’ to me” tactic won’t work.

To us, everyone is a critic.

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So there they are, a few unwritten reservation rules, written.

Whether or not you get that one available table is up to you.

But I promise you, if you mind the “don’ts” and practice the “do’s”, you will notice a significant upgrade in your reservation karma, and your personal ‘guests notes’ (notes given to you based on your history) will be flagged by hosts everywhere to read:

“(Insert your name) . . . a first-class diner.”

–Meshelle Armstrong, co-owner Restaurant Eve, Eamonn’s a Dublin Chipper, PX, The Majestic, Virtue Feed & Grain, Society Fair. *Thoughtfully guided by her darling and faithful ex-reservations manager, Kate Ahner*

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Original article published in Northern Virginia Magazine