Sneakeater

IF ONLY.

IT'S NOT AN ACRONYM. THE WORD PRE-DATED THE ACRONYM BY LIKE CENTURIES.

Tip doesn't mean "to insure promptness." That's some catch phrase someone who didn't know what they were talking about came up with, which then caught on because it's easy to remember. It has nothing to do with the definition of a "tip."

I think the answer is that, like therese, I've almost never been comped a drink in a situation where I'd have reason to doubt it was authorized.

In other words, bribe at sleazy places, but don't at non-sleazy places. We're probably on the same page.

But as I said above, that's just another way of seating you according to your appearance. ← Ooookay. But I still wasnt interested in bribing the hostess to change things. And I wasn't above giving a lousy tip and being sure the server/ess and the manager knew just why. ← I hope it's obvious by now that I don't disagree with you in the least bit.

FWIW, I have never gone to Jarnac and been given a menu that was exactly the same as the online menu. I think it even says somewhere on their website that the daily menus differ from the online one.

The Orchard is a good little restaurant. (I hate that locution -- condescendingly calling things "good little" whatevers -- but in this case it fits.) I don't particularly like Peasant: it always seemed like nothing more than an OK Italian restaurant to me. While The Orchard isn't really great or anything, to me it has more appeal. As Noodlebot said above, the food could be characterized as "New American" with Mediterranian overtones. That sounds pretty generic -- "restaurant food", as I call it -- but here it's done with some flair. We split one of the highly-touted flatbreads to start. The one with short ribs and horseradish. I think it lived up to the hype. The topping was incredibly rich, the thin dry bread was toothsome, and the whole thing together was an excellent snack. I went on and had the lamb tenderloin which, as Frank Bruni explained, was pounded and spiced. It wasn't breathtakingly good meat -- how could it be, at these comparatively gentle prices? -- but the preparation was very flavorful. It came with a cheesy rissotto (or something like it) that was, if anything, a bit too rich. My dining companion's lobster empanadas were good, although not excellent. With food at this level (i.e., perfectly good but not really great in and of itself), the room really matters. I really like the room here. There's a beautiful bar up front -- too bad the neighborhood is stopping them from getting a liquor license -- and then through a doorway to the dining room. The dining room has inexpensive-seeming but very tasteful modern furnishings, and the whole room is suffused with a very attractive orangish light. Since Peasant is so dark you can't read the menu (forget that it isn't in English), this is a real step forward. But the point is, I really enjoyed being in that room. You want to spend time there. The lack of a liquor license is a problem -- and an opportunity. You can bring your own wine without a corkage fee (we now know from the Times that's illegal, but nobody's busting them yet). Of course, you won't know in advance what you'll be having, so you can only do the most general, predictive kind of pairings. But on the other hand, it's much cheaper than ordering off a restaurant wine list. (I thought, hmmmmm, Mediterranean influences, I'll bring a Balearic red and -- I know Galicia is on the Atlantic, but it's nearer to the Mediterranean than, say, the Loire Valley or Australia are -- an Alberino. Since you're paying unmarked-up retail for these wines, you can afford two bottles to accomodate possible dining choices. Even if they won't be perfectly tailored to what you order.) Will I go back? I wouldn't go out of my way, but it's nice enough if you're in the neighborhood and want something less prepossessing than THOR or WD-50 but more sedate than Schiller's or Freeman's.

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Seriously, I don't think bribes have to be induced by the recipient in order to be considered bribes. Say I go and offer some judge, out of the blue, $100,000 to decide a case my client's way. That's a bribe, whether or not he asked me for it.

To me, the "tip/bribe" distinction is that tips come after the service, and bribes come before.

The flip side of the Maitre d' "profiling" is that if I go somewhere where I or someone else in my party is underdressed (or behaving badly), it doesn't bother me in the least when we get stuck off to the side. I understand perfectly.

Now I'm going to go up into space, but I think this is different. In this case, you weren't trying to induce them to give you something that would have to be taken away from someone else. Service, unlike seating, isn't a zero-sum game. I can see how you'd think the tip is saying something along the lines of, this is a very special night for us -- you've already recognized it is -- and since you have, I'm giving you this money to thank you and make sure you keep doing so. But everyone else in the restaurant wasn't going to get worse service just because you secretly paid them off in hopes of getting better service. It's sort of like saying, "I'm going to be especially demanding tonight, and I'm tipping you in advance in recognition of the fact that I'm really expecting your best." When you bribe for a good table, you're paying them to give someone else a worse table. When you bribe to jump a line, you're paying them to make someone else wait longer. Both cases seem different from your anniversary tip. This is also why I think you miss the mark when you say that, since the payment for a good table is voluntary, the payor isn't the "victim" of bribery. Sure, you're right about the payor -- but that doesn't mean there isn't a victim. In this case, the victim is the other similarly-situated diner who got a worse table. (To repeat, this is different from your Per Se "anniversary" tip to ensure especially good service.) If they're auctioning off the tables, they should be upfront about it.

Gee, it's fun.

There are clubs where I'm known to management as a regular, and I get comped drinks all the time. It would never occur to me not to tip the waitress for bringing them to me. After all, it's the same work for her whether or not I pay for the drink. Is that even controversial? But what does that have to do with bribing the Maitre d' at a restaurant?

Aside from everything else, it's just as much work for the bartender to make you a free drink as it is for him or her to make you a drink you're charged for. Why wouldn't you tip?

Actually, I couldn't agree more.

What does it even mean to be "treated like royalty"? The last really expensive restaurant I went to was Gilt. I couldn't have been treated better (they even were very polite when my dining companion was 45 minutes late and thus held up our table). What would a bribe have accomplished? The last mid-priced restaurant I went to was The Orchard. The service was fine. Would I have notched it up to the level of service I got at Gilt if I slipped someone a fifty? I don't see how. What exactly are people buying here? (I keep getting the feeling they're not talking about what I would consider good restaurants, since I kind of feel like good service is part of the deal.)

But as I said above, that's just another way of seating you according to your appearance.

Also -- I've got to say it -- if there were some place where I thought I had to bribe the staff to ignore the fact that they don't like the way I dress or my or my companion's ethnicity (and of course there are such places), I just wouldn't go there.

See, I think the point is that Vegas, Atlantic City, and trendy clubs are sleazy places, and so they may require sleazy behavior. I don't think the same rules apply to dinner at Per Se.

In fact -- I hope this doesn't sound too ugly -- I'll bet this is why some of us think the bribery is sleazy. At this point in my life, at least in the kinds of places I like to go to, I can usually get good tables just by dressing well and acting confidently. It seems like people like all of us shouldn't have to resort to such expedients as greasing palms.

Clubs, perhaps. "Trendy" spots that for some reason think attracting PYTs in black dresses is the way to built a clientele, perhaps. But the best places are run by people who don't judge by appearances alone. And maybe people who don't dress to the nines and sashay about, have more important things on their mind. Ugly is as ugly does, Forrest. ← You're right about the trendy places. But I was thinking about something more than that. There are different ways to judge by appearance. For example, years ago, the first "nice" restaurant I ever went to, La Caravelle. Two awkward people in our mid-twenties, we were seated in Siberia. I don't blame them. I didn't make that comment to justify the practice of bribing the Maitre d', which I too find sleazy. I just wanted to counter k8memphis's implication that it's solopsistic or delusional to think your seating has something to do with the way you look (or comport yourself). It clearly does.

I think there's no question that at many places in New York people are seated according to their appearance.

I failed.