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Restaurant
Tips
By Cathy Hall
 I was all set to hang up
my oven mitt when my three
grown kids descended upon
me for the summer. A glitch,
as it were, in my plan of tastetesting
every restaurant in
my little corner of the world.
But sooner or later, those kids
will have to leave, right? And
then I’m putting to use all
the eating-out lessons I’ve
gleaned from my older-butwiser
parents.
Tipping. My dad is personally affronted whenever he goes to
a restaurant where the check
has the tip figured out for you, based on how generous you
want to be. My daughter, the
former-waitress, has explained
that this service is not to goad the
patron into giving a humongous
tip (as Dad contends) or the
restaurant’s way of calling you
a nitwit (also as Dad contends).
Maybe you are a cheap nitwit,
but that’s your own business.
The restaurant’s business
should be serving food, not
figuring out complicated math
percentages. So, Dad will do
his own figuring, thank you
very much (which usually includes figuring where he’ll
eat the next time).
Waiting. If Dad is going to wait
for food, it better be something
worth waiting for. Something
exotic, like yak’s tongue, or
something out-of-this-world,
like alien eyeball soup. Life is
too short to be sitting around,
waiting for a meat and two. So
if Dad orders the special of the
day, say chicken, green beans
and squash, he expects that
food to arrive pronto. Unless
the chicken comes all the way
from Venus. He’d probably wait about 20 minutes for that.
Does it come with the meal?
My mom always wants to
know exactly what comes
with the meal. She won’t order
anything extra, you see, but if
an appetizer or salad or dessert
comes with the meal, she dang
sure won’t leave ‘til she gets
all that’s coming to her. Once,
she and dad were sitting in a
restaurant when a car barreled
through the establishment’s
front window.
"Oh, my Lord,” I said. “What did you do?”
“I finished my peach
cobbler,” she replied. “It came
with the meal, you know.”
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Cathy Hall is a freelance
writer who loves to get
published. Read her blog at
cathychall.blogspot.com
if you want to find out
where she meets Fame and
Fortune along the way.
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