Cookaholics Bulletin Board

We've been on the road a lot over the past 2 weeks necessitating many restaurants. Breakfast, lunch, or supper, almost every server came back about 5 minutes after delivering the main course to ask virtually the same question: "How's the food tasting?" No matter what the variation each one that asked used the word 'tasting' in the question.

It got to be almost a game for my wife & I and the last time, at the Fairmont in the Vancouver airport we actually started to laugh - quickly explaining to our server that it was not about him.

Is it just us

We are also in love with the servers that say, once we've indicated our selection, "Excellent choice!" To one server, I asked, "Is there a bad one?" In a whisper she responded, "They make me say it..." But that's another thread...

I was a server when I was younger and I must have missed that Memo. I don't think I ever asked "Hows the food tasting".

Exactly the point I didn't make - apparently! We've never heard it until lately; it was being on the road so much recently that brought it to the forefront.

P.S. We were both servers and I a dishwasher in our long ago youth.

We get "how are you finding your first bites?" here, and they must hover watching like a hawk because they tend to literally pop up to ask the question just as you get your mouth full with said first bite.

Yes, having been a server this is something that a server learns how to do quite well after only a few weeks of being on the job.

I guess this avoids being exposed to negative comments and/or having to send food back. They are also quite skilled at disappearing before you can swallow and make any comment at all! I can't blame this as a survival technique though. Customer service jobs of all kinds tend to expose you to all sorts of unpleasantness. People can be mean.

The point I was trying to make is that they are all using the same wording; I find that VERY bizarre. i appreciate an honest query but I really appreciate it when it isn't canned.

It is bizarre. I wonder if the management types all go to the same workshops. Maybe some focus group somewhere decided that "tasting" was the word of choice. Maybe "first bites" (which has popped up everywhere here) was seen as being a better Pegger thing (or simply from a different workshop offering).

According to several servers I know, this is a game, called "snarfing". The goal is to catch the maximum number of people at the table with their mouths full.

I'm sure "how is the food tasting" was in a corporate focus group somewhere. Some marketing-type decided that "how is everything" invited too many complaints/questions about the service or the prices, so "tasting" it is now. I do notice that really classy restaurants (Chapeau, Fifth Floor, etc.) do not do this. Neither, for that matter, do low-end establishments, but generally they don't have table service. Snarfing seems to be strictly a middle tier thing.

"Excellent choice" seems to be an epidemic now too, and I find it irritating as well. It's like I'm a toddler being congratulated on using the potty correctly. "Didums figure out how to order an entree? Oh yes, he did! Good diner! Smart diner!"

Myself, I sometimes stare a the server blankly until they go away. Bajezus, be an adult.

One of the great things I love about really classy restaurants is how few questions they ask you. The 20 questions a chain will drill you with drives me batty. F-Off and let me eat and socialize!!!

Oh, the Q that bugs me the most: Would you like more water? Now maybe in some super water starved area, that might be appropriate, but for the rest of us, for gods sake, just give me some more f-ing water. In a good restaurant, it is always magically full (as is the wine glass....) often without even noticing.