Just the other day I was reading Anthony Bourdain's Maxim column, The Art of The Meal and so much of it applies to your situation. Saturday nights are the absolute worst. While I don't completely agree with his opinion on asking for leftovers to be packaged up, I will say from my own experience as a server, you might just ask for a package to be brought out to you and you box up the food. Even in nicer restaurants, if they don't box up at the table, I'm extremely reluctant to let that plate be taken to the back to the kitchen. Sometimes bad things, even if unintentional, happen to food in those situations. Most servers don't take a lot of care in the process. I've never worked in a restaurant that had a good system set up for takeout or boxing up leftovers. If there isn't a utensil on the plate for scraping, half of the food slides out onto the counter, which hasn't been wiped down in 5 hours. Dirty hands pick up the food because you know the server didn't swing by the hand washing station. The server isn't going to have a new plate cooked because you aren't going to know your steak just bounced three times across the counter, onto the floor, or into the trash can. Your mileage may vary, there are considerate servers who would never, etc. I have a hard time with service issues. It's difficult for me not to be super critical when a server is doing a lousy job because I KNOW exactly what is going on. Anyway, there might be a hundred reasons why that restaurant might be having service issues. Making it look polished and effortless takes a lot of work, skill and commitment.
