What annoys diners and restaurant managers about each other? Tom Doorley, Restaurant Critic, reports
A Dublin restaurant was ordered to pay damages this week to a woman who fell while lunching with friends. After sitting down to lunch in Roly's Bistro, in Dublin's Ballsbridge, at 3 p.m., Priscilla Healy of Monkstown, Co Dublin, tripped over the flex of a vacuum cleaner as she made her way to the lavatory at 4.30 p.m. The distress caused by the accident attracted an award of €7,700.
Now, I don't want to sound flippant, but couldn't further discomfort, or irritation at least, have been caused by a staff member hoovering in the vicinity of the table while people were still lunching?
If a restaurant serves you lunch at 3 p.m., you shouldn't have to put up with hoovering an hour and a half later. You are the customer.
Late-night revellers are another matter, of course. Selfish diners who hog their table into the small hours are fair game for hoovering. And staff need to get to bed.
But how long is it reasonable for customers to occupy a restaurant table? Trends are changing.
We have become a nation of sophisticated diners who rarely linger after midnight and who are, according to the restaurateurs, generally very well-behaved.
"People have changed," says Henry O'Neill, chief executive of the Restaurants Association of Ireland. "And the attitude to drink has become much more mature. The days are long gone when it was acceptable to stagger out of a restaurant after midnight. And the long business lunch is gone too," he says. "The budget of 1985 put paid to that by abolishing tax relief on corporate entertaining. But it goes beyond that. Businesspeople want to appear business-like, and over-indulgence sends out all the wrong signals."
Talking to restaurant managers in Dublin, it seems that a further spur to our good behaviour in restaurants has been the smoking ban. "People who are inclined to linger tend to be smokers," says Declan Maxwell, restaurant manager at Chapter One in Parnell Square. "Now they head off home for a nightcap and a smoke." This is a mixed blessing for some restaurants. Shanahan's on the Green, for example, has found that its drink sales have flagged somewhat since the ban.
"We used to sell a lot of good cigars," says reservations manager Grainne O'Dwyer. "We're missing the revenue from that, of course, but the beverage take is down because people like to drink as they smoke."
You might imagine that nicotine-deprived diners would get tetchy and cause problems, but this does not seem to have happened, according to David Barry, of The Gotham Café. "We didn't have a single incident," he says. "Nobody has attempted to light up. And the ban in general has been a blessing; you don't have to worry about getting the proportion of smoking to non-smoking tables right."
Eleanor Walsh of Eden in Temple Bar agrees. "You can see that people are enjoying the food more," she says. "Even the smokers. If they're not smoking between courses they get more out of the meal."
So, do customers cause any problems? Virtually none of the restaurateurs to whom I put this question thought they do.
"I've only ever once had to ask a group to leave," says Walsh. "It was a group of men from the UK and between the finger-clicking and bottom-pinching I just felt that I couldn't ask my staff to tolerate that kind of behaviour. They were completely mortified when I challenged them and we shook hands as they left."
Similarly, Eric Robson of the Ely Wine Bar can think of only one case of having to get someone to leave. "It was pretty bad," he recalls. "We had to call the Garda and the guy made it a lot worse for himself when he tried to offer them money. He phoned the next day to apologise to us."
If you ask customers what drives them crazy about restaurants, many will single out limited table-time.
People don't like to be told that they can have a table at a particular time but that they will have to be gone within a certain period. Eden and Chapter One offer a pre-theatre sitting, and customers therefore have a specific reason for being finished and out by a certain time. Shanahan's, like many restaurants, tries to maximise table use.
"If you book for 8 p.m. or later then you have the table for the night," says Grainne O'Dwyer. "Later reservations book out well in advance so we have to utilise tables earlier in the evening. Generally we let a small party of two or three have a table for two hours and then they can move to the bar area. With larger tables we tend to allow two-and-a-half hours. We explain this very clearly when the reservation is made."
If a table is made available for a limited time, generally for an early sitting, customers have every right to feel aggrieved if the meal is badly paced.
"That's critical," says Barry. "We have to keep our side of the bargain. If the dessert and coffee arrive with five minutes to go that's not acceptable.
"Very, very rarely there's a problem with people objecting to having to leave by an agreed time," he adds. "And when they do, it always seems to be the companion and not the person who made the booking."