HALLIE EPHRON: I'm just back from a lovely week-plus in Key West where the food is SPECTACULAR! There's a reason why Lucy planted her Key Zest food reviewer Hayley Snow in Key West. The Shrimp! Fish Tacos! Grouper! Pie! Cuban coffee and Sandwich Cubano!! The restaurants! The food trucks!!
I could go on and on, waxing ecstatic.
However so many days in so many restaurants with great food reminded me of a few of my pet peeves about eating out.
Why oh why are the seats at restaurant tables invariably so low? (Or is it that the tabletops are so high??) When the table is level with my armpits, it feels like when I was a kid and had to stand on tippy toes to see what was on the table. Or like I'm trying to do the chicken dance while seated.
Restaurant seats are never adjustable, and I've yet to go to one that offers grownups a booster seat. Or a phone book. Or an extra seat cushion.
I know I'm shrinking, but not THAT much.
Maybe it's a plot to make us so uncomfortable that we won't overstay our welcome. Restaurants need tables to turn over. But really, someone needs to invent a booster seat for shorter (and really not very short) people.
And don't get me started on high top seating. Once you manage to climb on, feet dangling or on the foot rest, how are you supposed to skootch close enough to the table to get to your food? And what is the point of eating 12 inches higher?
Then there's noise. Something I'm much more sensitive to now that my hearing isn't what it used to be. The ambient noise in some restaurants swamps the voices of the people you're sitting with. Add a thumping sound system or visiting vocalist and I need two Tylenols for dessert.
Rereading this, I do sound like a grump. And truly I love eating out.
Because what's gotten better is quite a lot, too.
No one blinks when you order dishes to share, and takeout boxes come routinely at the end of the meal. Splitting the check isn't a problem. Usually. And of course, in Key West at least, nine times out of ten the food is great, and not anything I can fix for myself at home.
But I also like to see my food and hear my dining companions. Is that too much to ask?
Count me in, too, as one who is definitely not a fan of high tops . . . I simply don't get why there have to be tall tables at all . . . .
ReplyDeleteBut the food is almost always yummy, no one grumbles about take home boxes [or cups so that coffee still in the pot on the edge of the table doesn't get poured down the drain] . . . overall, I can think of more good things about eating out . . . .
It may be that sitting at a high top table is kind of like sitting at the counter . . . .
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