Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Snow Job
Friday, March 23, 2007

Okay, enough with the Bruni bashing. Here Frank Bruni has a thoughtful blog about why we should call to cancel our reservations at restaurants when it snows.

This blog has on many occasions been a forum for me — and for readers who submit comments — to vent about the hoops restaurants make us jump through, the rules to which they subject us, the hauteur and aloofness they project. And some of the most spirited discussions on this blog have been about the cumbersome aspects of making reservations at restaurants: the interminable busy signals, the demand that diners call back to confirm, etc.

So let’s take a second and acknowledge a way in which diners regularly abuse restaurants. On rainy nights, on snowy nights, on nights when the weather turns horrid all of a sudden, many diners hunker down at home, decide not to go out — and don’t bother to call the restaurants at which they have reservations and announce their changes of plans.

My conversation with the hostess on Friday was informed by, and merely confirmed, that fact, which I knew because restaurateurs over time had told me that the rate of no-show’s spikes whenever the weather tanks. Even before I reached the restaurant, as I leapt over corner snow banks with characteristic clumsiness (there was no point in my past when I or anyone who observed me saw ballet or gymnastics in my future), I thought: it’s a no-show night. And then I got to the restaurant and thought: yes, it’s a no-show night.

The lack of showing is understandable. The failure to call isn’t.

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM
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