The Waiting Game

Last month in this column, I explained al fresco dining etiquette and why restaurateurs sometimes enforce confusing outdoor seating protocol. This month—at a server friend’s urging—I’m going to break down indoor seating norms, as a service to both the dining public and the servers who serve them. Let’s dig in.

The first rule to remember is that if you’re visiting a restaurant that employs a host, you should always sit wherever the host seats you. The host is the restaurant’s quarterback who reads the room and seats you at a table where you’ll get the fastest service. It’s in no one’s best interest—neither yours nor the employees’—if the host overwhelms a server by seating multiple tables in one section at the same time. Naturally, if you really dislike the table they’ve chosen, speak up. A good host will accommodate you.

Likewise, this norm prevents one- and two-tops from taking up empty seats at a four-top… which brings me to rule number two: Please don’t be a one- or two-top who walks into a restaurant and takes a seat at four-top or a big booth. If I walk into a smallish, completely empty restaurant and am told to have a seat wherever I wish, it might seem that stretching out at a four-top to read the Mercury while waiting for my food won’t hurt anyone—and often, it won’t. But if I do so 20 minutes before happy hour begins, hogging that table and its three empty seats will end up hurting the server (fewer guests, fewer tips), the restaurant owner (marginally less business), and other guests (no place to sit).

And now we come to rule number three: If your host seats you at a two-top during a busy brunch shift, don’t promptly get up and swap your seats for a nearby four-top booth. Watching this norm get violated is especially maddening when these two-tops camp out for the morning reading the newspaper and relaxing with their free coffee refills when there’s an hour-long wait for that very same table. Changing places after being seated is a major no-no.

If you’ve ever sat, like I have, in a booth at Diane’s Restaurant on Foster, you’ve no doubt been treated to the no-bullshit placards glued to the wall over every booth in the joint. They read (rightly): “NO BOOTH SERVICE BETWEEN 11:30 AND 1:00 TO ONE PERSON OR JUST COFFEE.” (All caps theirs.) Not taking up more space than one needs should be a no-brainer, but the signs above each table are a blunt reminder that it’s not—which is why I love Diane’s. They don’t play.

In fact, if I’m flying solo, the best place to take a seat is at the bar—provided there is one. But there’s a norm to follow here, too: When possible, I always leave at least two stools between myself and the guest nearest me in order to make room for the couple or pair of friends that will belly up a few minutes from now.

Indeed, a good rule of thumb for solo diners is to always take the last seat at either end of the bar. It’s a lesson I cling to, having learned it the hard (read, embarrassing) way while visiting a tiny shoebox of a sushi bar in San Francisco several years ago. When my companion and I walked in, we were the only ones in the place and sat ourselves in the middle of the eight-seat bar (there were no tables). The chef wasn’t having it. “No,” he told us. “You move down to the end of the bar.” We weren’t going to argue with him. After all, who tangles with a sushi chef? So, we did as directed and, sure enough, the bar filled up just as he predicted. Thing is, I committed another blunder: I didn’t order anything because I was having a very serious stomach crisis and was only there because my companion really craved sushi.

The chef glared at me with murder in his eyes. I couldn’t blame him, and still don’t. I walked into his restaurant and violated his only norms: Sitting wherever I pleased and, worse, not ordering a damn thing. I should’ve known better. It still sticks with me.

Diane’s way is the correct way: The customer isn’t always right. That time I sure wasn’t. But we can always try to be.