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 . . . .
DeleteHallie, you have hit on my pet peeve for sure. Why are restaurant seats so low compared to the table height? Now I'll answer it. More diners are very tall these days, and they are perfectly comfortable at the table. Other diners are so hefty, that a normal distance between chair and table wouldn't provide adequate space for their thighs to fit. However, it does leave me wishing for my grandma's copy of the Manhattan phone directory, which was provided for me at her NYC apartment until I was 5 and switched to the Bronx.
ReplyDeleteI do love to dine out and don't really mind the high tops.
Living in a rural area, I eat out only once or twice a year. I am tall so I've never noticed anything with tables. I do dislike high noise levels -- I ate lunch for nearly forty years in a school dining room that was quieter than many of today's restaurants -- which makes me wonder if I am losing some of my hearing or if I've just been accustomed to being able to tell noisy dinners to quiet down, please. However my biggest takeaway is that I am always thrilled to have someone else cooking dinner and doing the dishes! (Selden)
ReplyDeleteI am short and often feel the need for a booster seat in restaurants. Sometimes I roll up my coat and sit on it. I have noticed that most places with high top tables will ask if you are willing to sit at them so they must realize there are people who don’t like them. Climbing up and down and scooting those chairs in is a problem, but if the stool doesn’t have a back on it, I am definitely out.
ReplyDeleteSomething they do here in Florida, Ocala at least, is almost always ask you if you want another drink (not alcohol) to go. I’ve never experienced that before.