Are we being served? Hardly
THE shortest measurable incident of time used to be the infinitesimal gap between a traffic light turning green and the driver behind blowing his horn. This has been eclipsed by the micro-second it takes between having asked a restaurant if you could reserve a table for two this evening and the whip-crack response: ''We don't take bookings.''
The notion of restaurants without reservations, which not so long ago was considered an oddity, and perverse at that, has blossomed across this city to the point where it has almost become de rigueur to stand in line for at least an hour before being granted an audience with a place setting.
''Waiting for food? It's so Dickensian,'' noted one social commentator. At least Oliver Twist had it lucky: the food supply might have been exiguous, but at least he was fed on time.
Everyone has a wait-and-see story. One, from a colleague of mine, is enough of an object lesson to determine how self-centred and counter-productive this practice is. She recently turned up at a cafe-of-the-moment in Flinders Lane to meet two friends. Being well aware of the no-bookings policy, she arrived at 5.30pm - for dinner - but her friends were running late. Instead of being permitted to sit at a table and wait for them, she had to stand in line outside. Even when one friend arrived, they had to wait for the third before being allocated a table. Is a customer's word no longer good enough? Is this restaurant vanity gone mad?
My attitude to places that don't wish to take my booking because they don't take bookings is to take none of it: I go elsewhere, to establishments that don't mind your declaration of intent to visit them, perhaps in the company of others, and dine at an arranged time and be convivial and, at the end of the meal, replete. Why on earth would you subject your friends to queuing outside (winter is upon us, too) a place whose management has loftily declared itself mightier than its customers?
It might sound quirky, but I prefer to eat when I'm hungry, not at a time determined by restaurateurs too mean to invest in a booking ledger and a series of printed signs saying ''RESERVED''.
''Have you anything for vegetarians?'' a chef I know was once asked over the phone. ''Yes. Contempt,'' he replied, hanging up. A bit sharp, but it represents exactly my feelings on non-bookable restaurants. Revenge, traditionally served cold, has nothing on a potful of simmering contempt. Perhaps next time I ring a place that refuses to take bookings, I should charge them for the local call, as a sort of waste-of-time tax.
This is the stage, I suppose, at which indignant restaurant owners accuse me of not understanding the whys and wherefores of the business; that I should be sorry for them, because of those who book tables and don't turn up, thereby costing the establishment time and money and table space. To which I say: occupational hazards.
Whatever happened to the idea that diners are also known as guests? It follows therefore that guests should be treated as such, and not as applicants or, worse, gamblers who can seldom win over the house odds of successfully gaining a table.
The trouble, now the practice of reservation refusal is gaining currency, is that it has become fashionable to be stand-offish instead of welcoming (I count the halfway-house suggestion of a drink at the bar while waiting for a table as a means of management gaining revenue on the one hand and customer losing patience on the other). This is not restricted to Melbourne, but prevalent in London and, indeed, rife in Manhattan.
It is hardly surprising to see New York embracing the no-bookings policy so fervently. After all, the city gave birth to the precursor of dining quality control (of those who dine, as distinct from what is served) in the haughty personage of the trumped-up doorman, known as the maitre d', short for maitre d'hotel, or headwaiter.
This character, lurking behind his lectern and separated from the public by a silken red rope looped between two brass poles, is a sort of social sommelier whose job is to determine in an instant who is allowed in and who is to be kept out.
The maitre d' most feared in NYC, one Frank Pellegrino Snr, is notorious for rejecting customers who dare telephone him to book a table at Rao's restaurant. One such hapless request, I read, came from a desperate person who requested entry on the grounds he was a childhood friend of the beloved parish priest. Pellegrino, before hanging up, was heard to say, ''Good. But not good enough.''
We should be saying the same to Melbourne restaurants that don't wish to value our custom.
Source: The Age, 2 June 2012
