Enforcing Alcohol Law: NYC Fine Dining Restaurants

[Pan]

[...]Why would you expect liquor inspectors to spend time patrolling fine-dining restaurants to stop sales of wine to minors accompanied by their parents (which no one thinks implicates any problem the law is intended to prevent), when the problems that the laws are directed at center on bars and nightclubs (which require constant and expensive supervision)?

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How about because they could get a lot of publicity for busting a high-end restaurant? I'm sure you can imagine the New York Post and Daily News headlines.

[BryanZ]

The steward says that he would have served us, as would any other fine dining restaurant he knows of, had we not revealed our true ages. Again, "don't ask, don't tell" is clearly the standard at upscale restaurants in this city.

If I, as a manager, owner and/or chef of my restaurant would have overheard this, I would have had a serious talk with my steward that would have possibly resulted in him loosing his job. I think there's no harm in asking, and if you get served (your ID never checked and so forth) it's the restaurant's fault if they get busted.

Again, the law is ridiculous. It should be changed back to 18 years, but as long as it isn't, don't get mad at servers or restaurants for not serving underagers. That being said, I agree some restaurants don't spend much time/resources in training their employees on how to deal with the situation. The server in Hawaii was doing the right thing, he just wasn't delicate about it. If the comps come and catch you drinking from your mother's glass, they probably won't care that the restaurant was correct before when they decided not to serve you. All they see is that there is a minor drinking, and management is responsible. Again, we don't know if they were being targeted by the authorities and feared a raid. Fact is, if the law says you should't drink, and for whatever reason the restaurant refuses to serve you (and don't even want you smelling the empty wine glasses on your table), then you should just deal with it. Now, if your issue is that the waiter, bartender and manager were rude and insulting (and you weren't), then you did the right thing.

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I completely agree with your statement. In the Hawaii instance, the waiter and management were incredibly rude in "upholding" the law in tone and action. They actually placed someone near our table to conspiculously watch us. I believe in tipping for service and I felt the service we received was inappropriate. We paid for what we had ordered and didn't feel the need to tip because the "service" actually made our night worse rather than better. The restaurant and server have a choice to uphold the law, and in doing so incredibly obtusely, lost out on increased revenue.

In contrast, the EMP situation was handled less poorly (though I won't say well because he could've been more subtle about it or at least carded me from the beginning to avoid the awkwardness of setting down a glass, getting the wine, fumbling for that glass hesitantly, and asking about my age, etc). We tipped adequately, though we would have tipped more for good wine service (ie nice recommendations, insightful comments, etc) if it had been offered.

As a lawyer myself, I have a certain philosophical investment in the concept of the rule of law.  When circumstances demonstrate that the law is not being applied equally, particularly in a manner that annoys those least empowered to demand change, I do think that a readjustment and redistribution of the annoyance caused by the law is in order. It may provide a stepping stone towards reforms that will benefit everybody. 

I sound like I'm taking a page from Grover Norquist and his "tax the poor so they'll hate taxation as much as the rich do" play book, and that somewhat disturbs me... but I think that booze law and tax law are different enough to justify taking that page... after all, taxation treats different people differently (and it should), whereas booze laws purport to treat everybody the same (and it should.)

The more people who get annoyed at the puritanical booze laws this country has enacted, the better it will be for people who love nice things to drink.  Think how much better everything would be if there were an actual free market in alcohol containing drinks.  Better selection, no distribution bottleneck issues, etc.  That sort of change will only happen if enough people are annoyed at the status quo, or if the status quo required some effort to maintain.

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I COMPLETELY agree in actuating democratic process to change many of the restrictive laws in this country that encroach on our civil liberties. Unfortunatley, however, this isn't always as feasible in practice as in theory (though I try to convince myself otherwise daily). Often times, I find myself having to rely on Sneakeater's stance that suggests that, before widespread legislative change can occur, some laws in certain circumstances will be enforced with less frequency, as their enforcement costs (in monetary and societal benefit terms) more than simply letting them go unenforced. The classic examples are driving slightly above the speed limit, engaging in sodomy in certain states in decades past, etc. For the millionth time, I have no problem with places upholding the law, as technically they are correct, but morally, philosophically, and economically these same laws are not always "right." Unfortunately, we can't talk too much about that here.

But I think you're being unfair.  After all, you did say...

I never go to dive bars, buy beer at lax "quickmarts," etc even though I could because I am absolutely petrified of getting arrested and having some stupid alcohol possession smear on my otherwise clean record. 

... yet you're asking restaurants to take the risk of getting an alcohol violation smear on their records (a very serious situation for a restuaurant) so that you can have a drink.

Is this not correct?

I'm just asking him if he doesn't see it the way I do, that he's asking the restaurant to break the law for his convenience and enjoyment, but that he wants the restaurant to take the risk, penalties, and consequences if they get caught indulging his request.

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I am asking them to take a risk*, I suppose, but I see nothing wrong with this. After all, they can deny me with the law on their side. But in return for the risk they gain the chance for a higher overall bill, a higher tip, repeat business, and happier customers. What we are discussing here is, after all, a matter of choice. The law is the law and if it happens to be enforced in a particular instance I'm not one to cause a huge scene. Only when I'm treated with disrespect is when I take things personally. Returning to the aspect of individual choice--one of the last bastions of uncorrupted good in modern free society--it is the server's/restaurateur's/proprietor's choice to uphold the law that SEEMS to be little enforced versus taking that aforementioned risk with the possibility of benefit. Again, I said that I know of bars, quickmarts, and liquor stores that would sell me alcohol but I CHOOSE not to purchase from them because I deem the risks too substantial. I assure you I've heard of many more instances where underage friends get arrested after walking out of a liquor store than I have of high-end restaurants being busted for serving underage patrons.

Although simplistic, let me offer this economically-derived example. When ordering wine in a high-end restaurant risk is deferred from me, a good thing from my perspective. To simplify, if alcohol is a good that I need to obtain, the chance of my getting carded at a high-end restaurant is much smaller than at a liquor or wine store. From the restaurant's perspective, the posibility of getting busted for serving me is perhaps less than my chance of getting busted trying to buy from a normal store (on the Jersey shore and in NC stores have been known to call the police on minors trying to buy alcohol underage, sometimes locking underage patrons inside the store via a remote locking system). Overall, risk on the aggregate is mitigated. Then again, the restaurant could just deny serving me and risk dealing with the customer service consequences of that.

*The risk on paper appears quite significant, as I do admit the punishments are severe. As Sneakeater points out, however, for the type of restaurant we are discussing the risk seems rather limited, otherwise EVERY other restaurant I've been to in NYC for the past four years wouldn't be doing it. If enforcement was widespread and severe, then restaurants of a high-calibre would have every incentive not to serve underage diners. That it's not means the restaurants have leeway to make a little more profit and with minimal risk to themselves and society. With just a bit of rational civil disobedience everyone wins.

[markk]

The restaurant and server have a choice to uphold the law...,

No, they have a legal obligation to uphold the law.

I am asking them to take a risk*, I suppose, but I see nothing wrong with this.  After all, they can deny me with the law on their side.  But in return for the risk they gain the chance for a higher overall bill, a higher tip, repeat business,

So in effect, you're trying to bribe them with monetary compensation to break the law.

I would lose respect for a person who knew what the law says and that he shouldn't break it, but who did so anyway for the potential of a higher bill or a bigger tip.

Now, I'm smiling as I write this, because I really don't want this to be taken as unkind, or to be taken personally, but I don't have an appropriate icon for it.

But aside from bribery, you're invoking an implication that's irrelevant to the law. The fact that you most probably can tell the difference between a Puligny-Montrachet and a Pouilly Fume doesn't negate the fact that both contain alcohol, which it is illegal for you to consume on a restaurant's premises if you're under the legal drinking age.

Or that the young'n at the next table out with his parents at a fine restaurant is looking to get a buzz from the alcohol in whatever wine he can get some of, even if it's a Côte Rôtie consumed with his raw oysters.

And I still maintain that if each and every person in America were allowed to break every law for which he could come up with a good rationzlization for not heeding, you'd find people waiting for you to exit a fancy and expensive restaurant to rob you at gunpoint as you went down a side street, because they'd claim that it's wrong for you to be able to spend as much on one dinner as they need to keep their family alive with food for a month. While I don't agree with every law on the books, I'm glad that we have a book with laws to begin with.

[Sneakeater]

MarkK, that's way too simplistic. And to accuse BryanZ as engaging in "bribery" is absurd. He's just taking account of the way people -- including the people who enforce the law -- actually act.

I hate to use this graphic an example, but back when the Supreme Court upheld that sodomy law (a decision subsequently overruled), the New York Times published a map showing which states had sodomy laws and which didn't. My (now late) wife and I jokingly hung it on our bulletin board, saying we could refer to it when deciding where to vacation. That was a joke, as I said, and on occassion we found ourselves in states with sodomy laws. Are you saying we each had a legal obligation to deny each other acts that would be classified as sodomy? Are you saying you would have expected us to do so? Of course not. The idea that just because a law exists, you have an obligation to abide by it no matter what your reasoned judgment as to the consequences (and I'm talking about the consequences to others as well as yourself: I'm not advocating hurting other people because you think you can get away with it -- although I'm sure that people will try to twist this into precisely that) is, as I said, way too simplistic.

To say a restaurant has a "legal obligation" to "uphold" a law that they can be fairly sure will not be enforced against them, because they can fairly understand that everyone including the enforcing authorities has determined that their conduct doesn't implicate the law's concerns, is an empty statement. But don't trust me on this. Read Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr. Maybe "The Path of the Law." He'd be laughing his ass off at this thread.

Edited January 3, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[BryanZ]

The restaurant and server have a choice to uphold the law...,

No, they have a legal obligation to uphold the law.

A legal obligation doesn't imply that an action absolutely has to be done. There still exists the freedom of individual choice, and for this I am forever thankful. I have a deep respect for people who apply their own personal judgement to situations and are willing to deal with the consequences perscribed under the social contact into which they have entered, provided that this judgement is entirely rational and does not directly encroach on the civil liberties of others.

I am asking them to take a risk*, I suppose, but I see nothing wrong with this.  After all, they can deny me with the law on their side.  But in return for the risk they gain the chance for a higher overall bill, a higher tip, repeat business,

So in effect, you're trying to bribe them with monetary compensation to break the law.

I would lose respect for a person who knew what the law says and that he shouldn't break it, but who did so anyway for the potential of a higher bill or a bigger tip.

And I still maintain that if each and every person in America were allowed to break every law for which he could come up with a good rationzlization for not heeding, you'd find people waiting for you to exit a fancy and expensive restaurant to rob you at gunpoint as you went down a side street, because they'd claim that it's wrong for you to be able to spend as much on one dinner as they need to keep their family alive with food for a month. While I don't agree with every law on the books, I'm glad that we have a book with laws to begin with.

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Respect or not, this is what happens. If there is hypocrisy, the majority of it falls on the industry and the enforcement agents for not upholding the law. All I'm looking for is consistency. The EMP experience was not consistent with my past experiences, therefore I chose to note it

In regard to the book of laws, therein lies the key. We must maintain rule of law while also maintaining the distinct rights this country and society are founded on. For me, this includes the right to walk safely on the streets without fear of being hurt based on my beliefs, appearance, faith, where I choose to eat, who I'm with etc. I will gladly pay the state for this kind of protection. I understand that laws are present and I largely abide by them. I have no problem admiting, however, that I do not subscribe to those laws I deem irrational and in direct contrast to the true ideals our society is founded on.

I can write on this topic for much, much longer but won't for fear of violating the forum's posting guidelines. I hope that people will be able to individually expound on what I've noted so far to get a clearer picture of where I'm coming from.

Edited January 3, 2007 by BryanZ (log)

[Sneakeater]

To forestall discussion of my marital relations, here's another, less sensational and (I hope) more appropriate, example:

When I come to a corner when I'm walking, I cross if there are no cars coming. No matter what color the light is. Do I have a "legal obligation" to wait for a green light? I guess so. Would any rational person act differently? I doubt it.

Nor is this a matter of "getting away" with anything because I think I won't be caught. I do it in front of policemen. THEY DON'T CARE.

Now, if I were in a car, would I do the same thing? No. Because I understand the red light/green light laws are enforced differently against cars and pedestrians -- and rightfully so.

Is this "lawless"? No. It's living in reality.

Edited January 3, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[markk]

I don't agree with the things Bryan has said above, or the reasoning he's used, or the conclusions he's drawn.

But then again, it's okay to disagree, and I think I'd like to refrain from debating the point with him past here. He certainly has been kind enough to answer the specific questions I posed, and I thank him for the lively discussion.

Let us see, indeed, how other people in the thread feel about this.

(And what do you know - there are smilies to the left, which I saw just now for the first time in two years of posting here!)

[Busboy]

This thread is simultaneously moving both further off topic and around in circles. Please recall that this is a restaurant and not a law or philosophy forum. Though sodomy and jaywalking are both compelling subjects, and a certain level of abstraction is fine, let's keep the discussion close to the spirit and content of the original posts.

Grazie.

[rich]

To forestall discussion of my marital relations, here's another, less sensational and (I hope) more appropriate, example:

When I come to a corner when I'm walking, I cross if thee are no cars coming.  No matter what color the light is.  Do I have a "legal obligation" to wait for a green light?  I guess so.  Would any rational person act differently?  I doubt it.

Nor is this a matter of "getting away" with anything because I think I won't be caught.  I do it in front of policemen.  THEY DON'T CARE.

Now, if I were in a car, would I do the same thing?  No.  Because I understand the red light/green light laws are enforced differently against cars and pedestrians -- and rightfully so.

Is this "lawless"?  No.  It's living in reality.

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The problem with your examples SE are who receives the penalty. In both cases (sodomy and traffic lights) if you break the law, you receive the penalty. You take the chance and don't argue if you get caught.

In this situation, the person getting the drink won't be in trouble, but a second party (the restaurant) pays for the crime.

That's why I did it in Virginia, the responsibility was mine. The restuarant provided nothing - I did it myself and took the risk. And that's why Ohio's law, which I cited earlier, makes the most sense.

[Sneakeater]

I understand that. But actually, in Bryan's case, it's the restaurant (not Bryan) that's breaking the law, and the restaurant that will sustain the penalty.

You might say that, in Bryan's case, the restaurant is breaking the law for the benefit of another, whereas I'm crossing the street to benefit only myself. But for several reasons (including that the restaurant is also receiving a benefit, inasmuch as it is selling the wine at a profit), I'm not sure that makes a difference.

Edited January 3, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[markk]

To forestall discussion of my marital relations, here's another, less sensational and (I hope) more appropriate, example:

When I come to a corner when I'm walking, I cross if there are no cars coming.  No matter what color the light is.  Do I have a "legal obligation" to wait for a green light?  I guess so.  Would any rational person act differently?  I doubt it.

Nor is this a matter of "getting away" with anything because I think I won't be caught.  I do it in front of policemen.  THEY DON'T CARE.

Now, if I were in a car, would I do the same thing?  No.  Because I understand the red light/green light laws are enforced differently against cars and pedestrians -- and rightfully so.

Is this "lawless"?  No.  It's living in reality.

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In some countries, such as Germany, when pedestrians come to a red light on a deserted street in the middle of the night, they wait for it to turn green.

Do I wait here? No. Unless I think that there's a likelihood that there's a care that could appear from somewhere I can't see coming.

But if I were out walking with a young kid, I would teach him to stop, stand on the curb, and wait for the light to turn green.

At what age can he make the judgement that just because a car isn't in sight, that doesn't mean that one won't come roaring around the corner and plow him down while he's crossing against the red light? I don't know. Better he learns to wait for the green.

At what age is it okay for a kid to drink alcohol? I don't know. Can a 17 year old kid have a glass of wine with his dinner if his parents approve? I'm sure that's fine.

How about a 16 year old? Well... many would say that's fine, and it probably is, too. A fifteen year old?...

But the mother of a 9 year old who extrapolates that it's okay to give her daughter a beer to calm her when she didn't get picked for something at school?

There are surely laws that govern only what you may do privately, in your own home, or alone on a street corner all by yourself, and yes, I break those all the time.

But I took the discussion to have come to the point that Bryan was asking somebody else to break a law for him. And I think that in that case, it's better to work to change the law than to ask somebody to break it for you, even if they did it once or twice before and didn't get caught.

[Sneakeater]

The problem with that response is that in this case, the decisionmaker is the waiter, not Bryan. It's not Bryan who's deciding whether to violate the law, it's the waiter.

Anyway, how do you decide how old a child is before you let him cross on the red? Do you go by the age of majority (21)? Or your own idea of the age of discretion?

Edited January 3, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[rich]

I understand that.  But actually, in Bryan's case, it's the restaurant (not Bryan) that's breaking the law, and the restaurant that will sustain the penalty.

You might say that, in Bryan's case, the restaurant is breaking the law for the benefit of another, whereas I'm crossing the street to benefit only myself.  But for several reasons (including that the restaurant is getting paid by Bryan or his mother), I'm not sure that makes a difference.

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Well, as a lawyer for the restaurant you could argue that the customer broke the law as well by ordering a drink, knowing she/he was under age.

It makes a difference because the customer is inviting an "innocent" party to break the law, yet the customer walks away and the establishment receives the penalty. I guess a good lawyer might even argue entrapment, but I don't think it would fly.

[Sneakeater]

I don't think it would fly, either.

[H. du Bois]

If you can bear with the jaywalking analogy one more time, I'll say that when I, a New Yorker, jaywalked in Tokyo (as I am accustomed to do here), I nearly gave my poor translator a heart attack. They don't do that there. I stopped. Why make my hosts uncomfortable?

Disregarding the law has to operate with absolute respect to place, and appropriateness. If the restaurant's proprietors aren't comfortable with having the law that they're being held accountable to disregarded, it's our obligation as customers to respect that.

[Megan Blocker]

And that's why Ohio's law, which I cited earlier, makes the most sense.

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I would have KILLED for this law last week...my cousin's 25th birthday and the night he got engaged, we tried to set up cocktails for about 10 people at either Flatiron or Pegu, but they wouldn't allow us to bring my 17-year-old cousin (the other cousin's little brother). So we ended up somewhere far less exciting. Very disappointing. Of course, these are bar/lounges, but the principle is the same, the result is still frustrating - he wasn't even going to drink.

All in all, it seems a very sensible law, and I would love to have it enacted here in NY. Perhaps we should start a letter-writing campaign?

[rich]

If you can bear with the jaywalking analogy one more time, I'll say that when I, a New Yorker, jaywalked in Tokyo (as I am accustomed to do here), I nearly gave my poor translator a heart attack.  They don't do that there.  I stopped.  Why make my hosts uncomfortable?

Disregarding the law has to operate with absolute respect to place, and appropriateness.  If the restaurant's proprietors aren't comfortable with having the law that they're being held accountable to disregarded, it's our obligation as customers to respect that.

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H. - are you saying the customer who knows they are under age, shouldn't ask for a drink? Or are you saying the under age customer should ask and accept the restaurant's decision?

[Sneakeater]

If you can bear with the jaywalking analogy one more time, I'll say that when I, a New Yorker, jaywalked in Tokyo (as I am accustomed to do here), I nearly gave my poor translator a heart attack.  They don't do that there.  I stopped.  Why make my hosts uncomfortable?

Disregarding the law has to operate with absolute respect to place, and appropriateness.  If the restaurant's proprietors aren't comfortable with having the law that they're being held accountable to disregarded, it's our obligation as customers to respect that.

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I think you make an important point. This is why I've maintained throughout the thread that people who don't work in New York might be missing the importance of local custom.

Whenever my brother-in-law would visit from the Midwest and we'd all take a walk together, he used to wait for the light to change, even when no cars were coming. It used to drive my wife and me crazy. Where he lived, that's the way they did it.

Edited January 3, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[BryanZ]

If you can bear with the jaywalking analogy one more time, I'll say that when I, a New Yorker, jaywalked in Tokyo (as I am accustomed to do here), I nearly gave my poor translator a heart attack.  They don't do that there.  I stopped.  Why make my hosts uncomfortable?

Disregarding the law has to operate with absolute respect to place, and appropriateness.  If the restaurant's proprietors aren't comfortable with having the law that they're being held accountable to disregarded, it's our obligation as customers to respect that.

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Totally, and as I said, I totally understand the decision. Customers also have the right to not return or leave or tip less or what have you. None these things happened because I still love the restaurant and actually "blame" the server and the inconsistency in the industry in general for any uncomfortableness I may have felt more than the restaurant itself. All I wanted to note was that this was strange and a first for me in NYC.

Everything else we've discussed (philosophically, semantically, societally etc) has been amazingly interesting and fun to participate in but not directly associated with the situation I encountered. And I'm cool with that because this is all engrossing stuff.

[Pan]

The problem with that response is that in this case, the decisionmaker is the waiter, not Bryan.  It's not Bryan who's deciding whether to violate the law, it's the waiter.

Anyway, how do you decide how old a child is before you let him cross on the red?  Do you go by the age of majority (21)?  Or your own idea of the age of discretion?

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The age of majority is not 21 and has not been 21 for some time. It's 18.

[H. du Bois]

Disregarding the law has to operate with absolute respect to place, and appropriateness.  If the restaurant's proprietors aren't comfortable with having the law that they're being held accountable to disregarded, it's our obligation as customers to respect that.

H. - are you saying the customer who knows they are under age, shouldn't ask for a drink? Or are you saying the under age customer should ask and accept the restaurant's decision?

Don't know. I never tried to order a drink when I was underage (as stated earlier in this thread, the drinking age was 18 when I was young), but I wouldn't have assumed that I'd be served if I had. At the same time, I believe that if parents want to serve their son or daughter wine with dinner, that's certainly their prerogative, and not the nanny state's (to borrow a splendid expression from the English). Where it gets sticky to me is the at home versus out at a restaurant scenario. What may be the custom in one's home/culture/state/city etc. may not fly in another, and I think we have to adjust our expectations to that.

[TRK]

I have a very weird story to add to this discussion. I had a friend visiting from England. We were in our mid-twenties at the time, so were of legal drinking age, but young enough that it wasn't absurd to wonder. We went to dinner, not intending to have a drink, and she left her passport at home. She ordered the tequila prawns, and the waiter asked for her ID. We were surprised but explained the situation (from another country, no driver's license, passport at home). He refused to bring her a dish cooked with alcohol in the sauce without proof of age. We ate elsewhere.

That seems like a crappy waiter abusing his authority to me, because I can't imagine even the most zealous cop enforcing that law (no wine reductions for anybody under 21, for instance). I don't know the law in NYC, but in Oregon, where I used to live, many pub/restaurants got fined regularly in undercover sting operations. They would send in underage kids to order alcohol, then fine the restaurant for serving them. If NY's law is the same as Oregon's, it isn't just the minor who is breaking it, but the restaurant owner as well. I would understand a policy of not serving minors under those conditions. However, if the general practice is to ignore the law, and the server went beyond the policy of the restaurant, I would be pretty upset.

[Dave H]

[...]Why would you expect liquor inspectors to spend time patrolling fine-dining restaurants to stop sales of wine to minors accompanied by their parents (which no one thinks implicates any problem the law is intended to prevent), when the problems that the laws are directed at center on bars and nightclubs (which require constant and expensive supervision)?

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How about because they could get a lot of publicity for busting a high-end restaurant? I'm sure you can imagine the New York Post and Daily News headlines.

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Yes, and it would be extraordinarily negative publicity. Whoever was responsible for the decision to send an undercover, underage cop, and a second officer posing as his mother, into EMP, spend $300 of taxpayer money for a couple tasting menus and a bottle of wine, and then shut down a New York Times three star restaurant for serving alcohol to an accompanied 20-year old, would be pilloried in the press and most likely forced to resign.

There are two related points here. The first is that it is much more feasible for the police or ABC to go after bars or clubs than fine-dining restaurants, because an undercover officer can catch a violation with no outlay of money or, at worst, a small cover charge in the first two cases, but it takes an expensive dinner order in the last case.

The second is that, potentially unlike the case of minors getting drunk at a bar or club, the situation of a minor having wine with dinner accompanied by his parent would be universally considered by elite NYC opinion to be a totally victimless crime, and thus public support for pursuing these sorts of infractions would be near zero. (To address a point made earlier, this is in marked contrast to Spitzer's investigations of various corporate and financial market malfeasance.)

Of course this would be little comfort for Danny Meyer and EMP, which would still be guilty of a violation, but all of this explains why the danger that the authorities would break with precedent and start going after fine-dining restaurants is extremely unlikely.

[Busboy]

[...]Why would you expect liquor inspectors to spend time patrolling fine-dining restaurants to stop sales of wine to minors accompanied by their parents (which no one thinks implicates any problem the law is intended to prevent), when the problems that the laws are directed at center on bars and nightclubs (which require constant and expensive supervision)?

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How about because they could get a lot of publicity for busting a high-end restaurant? I'm sure you can imagine the New York Post and Daily News headlines.

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Yes, and it would be extraordinarily negative publicity. Whoever was responsible for the decision to send an undercover, underage cop, and a second officer posing as his mother, into EMP, spend $300 of taxpayer money for a couple tasting menus and a bottle of wine, and then shut down a New York Times three star restaurant for serving alcohol to an accompanied 20-year old, would be pilloried in the press and most likely forced to resign.

There are two related points here. The first is that it is much more feasible for the police or ABC to go after bars or clubs than fine-dining restaurants, because an undercover officer can catch a violation with no outlay of money or, at worst, a small cover charge in the first two cases, but it takes an expensive dinner order in the last case.

The second is that, potentially unlike the case of minors getting drunk at a bar or club, the situation of a minor having wine with dinner accompanied by his parent would be universally considered by elite NYC opinion to be a totally victimless crime, and thus public support for pursuing these sorts of infractions would be near zero. (To address a point made earlier, this is in marked contrast to Spitzer's investigations of various corporate and financial market malfeasance.)

Of course this would be little comfort for Danny Meyer and EMP, which would still be guilty of a violation, but all of this explains why the danger that the authorities would break with precedent and start going after fine-dining restaurants is extremely unlikely.

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Are you arguing that laws should be differently enforced based on how expensive an establishment is and, by extension, how privileged their clientel is? I'm sure that whatever "problem" drinking age laws are meant to prevent are more prevalent outside the hushed dining rooms of the four-star scene. But, were I the proprietor of (for example) some college-type joint and I knew that the laws were never enforced in upscale places, and that it was assumed by the Platimum Card Crowd that their kids didn't have to play by the rules, I'd be plenty pissed. And I'd call someone.

While I'm sure Bryan is a wonderful person (who takes cabs), it's almost as easy to get liquored up on good Burgundy and kill someone on the drive home (which is why the drinking age was raised) as it is to do it on Red Bull and vodka. People of wealth and taste screw up, too.

(BTW, I assume that an ABC official wanting to test an upscale restaurant would just have the kid(s) order a martini or something straight off and not go through the whole tasting menu.)

Back to the original question of the thread, my son just turned 18 and though he is not much of a drinker, I have noticed that, in nicer spots, the waiter will give me the questioning eye indicating that it's pretty much my call. And when I waited tables in a tux, we didn't much care who had a glass, not the way we did when I worked in the bars. The nicer you are dressed, the better you behave and the more money you spend, the more likely a server is to turn a blind eye. Also, avoid ordering drinks featuring sweetened juice or sour mix.

[Nathan]

I am a lawyer, but I do not practice in criminal or liquor license or restaurant-related law of any sort.

I do, however, live in NY (which is more germane than the foregoing).

a couple quick notes on comments that were made earlier in the thread:

a. the age of emancipation/majority, varies from state to state. in some it is 18, in others it is 21. there is no national standard.

b. underage drinking statutes and licensing issues vary dramatically from state to state (I think this has become clear in the thread).

c. in many states, there are statutes specifically protecting bars and restaurants from liability if someone gets drunk and kills or injures someone later. but not every state.

d. if a high-end restaurant in NY were to be given a citation for serving an under-age customer, it would be all over the press.

e. this, however, would never happen. yes, like it or not, it is partially a class issue, but it's also a simple one of location and logic. WD-50 is at a similar price point to EMP. but it is on the LES...thus I wouldn't be surprised if WD-50 were more circumspect on this issue than others...

Trader Joes cards me when I buy wine, my neighborhood WV liquor store most certainly doesn't.

put differently, liquor license enforcement (which has extensive press coverage here) in NY is very much nuisance-dictated. its entirely a matter of location and customer demographic. to take my neighborhood as an example...the only bar which even has someone carding at the door is Automatic Slim's (which has a young UES clientele)...the others don't even bother. on second thoughts, maybe I should rephrase my class comment above, it's more complex than that...since plenty of people hitting the LES or Morimoto have plenty of cash. its a combination of average age, class and rowdiness that attracts police attention in NY. None of these apply to EMP. (indeed, I imagine that it would be harder to apply constructive knowledge to EMP as a result -- but like I said, I do not practice in the area)