In praise of great restaurant service

Excuse me, miss. This is a free episode of my podcast, Wholesome, which is normally only available on Patreon. It's a thing I make with my friends. This one is available to you for free. If you want one of these every single week, you can sign up for as little as $5 a month at the link below. And where'd she go? apppropo of recent conversations on this pod. I've been thinking about how weird it is that we eat together but poop alone. I suppose it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. When food is fresh and clean enough to be eaten, it is microbiologically safe and everybody wants some. So you plop it right down in the middle of the village where everybody can grab a piece and your whole community is stronger for it. On the flip side, by the time your food has passed through your elementary canal, the solid matter that remains is microbiologically unsafe. I just love the direction this show is going. It's really going down the isn't it? It's a real rug pull for all our patrons. By the time you've passed your food, what remains is microbiologically unsafe and it's unuseful and undesirable. So, you go get rid of that on the edge of the village over there. Suppose it makes sense to poop alone, but that doesn't mean that it also makes sense to eat together. Eating is a deeply sensual experience that is also extremely gross upon close examination of the physical acts involved, much like sex. And we generally don't have sex in cafeterias. So why do we eat there around all those other people, all those strangers just like watching us eat? Well, here's a historical text that I think sheds some light on the situation, or at least it gives us an example of someone from a different historical context struggling with the same basic questions. In 1849, then middle-aged American author Caroline Matilda Kirkland published a diary of her holidays abroad. It was called Holidays Abroad or Europe from the West. And it would be easy to dismiss this text as a glorified lifestyle blog, but Kirkland was not just some rando. She maintained an influential literary salon in New York City, and her writing was admired by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe. Her European travel log is insightful and unsurprisingly funny. She was a humorist, among other things. And the book is also a useful text for historians of France, especially for the years immediately following the revolution of 1848, the establishment of the second French Republic, and the eventual rise of Napoleon's nephew to become Emperor Bony III. Caroline Kirkland's travel memoir is a richly observed firsthand outsider account of life in Paris in these delicate revolutionary times. And in her book, Kirkland offers a hilarious account of that time she did something real freaky in Paris. A real one time at band camp kind of situation. A thing my bridesmaids will make sly jokes about without fully tipping off my new husband as to what actually happened kind of thing. This one time in Paris, Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland through caution and basic propriety to the wind and she ate at a restaurant. One of the novelties of the lady traveler in Paris, she wrote for you see restaurants were a new thing in the world in 1849. Or at least restaurants of the kind that she experienced. the first examples of the modern international sit-down fullervice restaurant concept that we all know and love today. The kind of public place where you get a private table at a time of your choosing. You and your companions order different things, whatever each of you wants from the menu. A server brings you your food and keeps your cup filled and cleans up after you when you leave. Amazing. The very first establishments that were called restaurants are actually a little bit older than what I just described. They're from 18th century France, from the last decades of the old regime before the first revolution. Fancy shops started popping up in Paris that sold restorance. Bone broths that were said to restore your vitality without making you feel all heavy and bloated. Restorant. Restaurant. Yes. The very first restaurants were basically juice bars. a health food fad among the patricians based on the trendy and highly questionable medical belief from the time that animal protein is essential for human strength but that solid meat is too physically taxing for a gentleman to digest. bone broth. If you were an aristocrat in the old regime, or if you wanted to hang with the aristocrats, you could display how refined and how delicate and how gentle you were by slurping a restorative bone broth, especially if you did it in a restaurant, which was a public space for the slurping of bone broth. And I should say that I'm greatly indebted here to the work of Dr. Rebecca Spang, distinguished professor of history at Indiana University. Her book, The Invention of the Restaurant, Belongs on Any Chow Hounds Coffee Table. Anyway, public eating had existed in Western civilization before restaurants, but generally as an extension of the kind of like family style eating that people have done in their homes since time immemorial. A traveler could get a meal in a public house, a pub, or at an inn, but it would work like getting a meal in a private home. Dinner would be at a certain prescribed time, and there would probably only be one big pot of stew to share, or if you were lucky, you might get a binary choice, steak or fish. I remember I had the lasagna. Rich people and organizations held banquetss all the time, you know, giant dinners to which you would invite lots and lots of people, strangers even. But it would work more like a catered dinner in a private home. You couldn't just swing by the banquet and grab a bite whenever you wanted. You would show up at 7 sharp when invited, and you would sit down at a big long table with people that you might not even know. And the servants or servers in this fancy aristocrat's home or this fancy guild hall or wherever you were having your big dinner, they would bring you slices of the communal roast. What made the very first restaurants different as public spaces for eating was not the fact that they sold bone broth. It was the entirely different style of service that went along with the bone broth. probably in part because bone broth is a product made in bulk in advance. It's always on tap, so diners could show up to the restaurant whenever they wanted, like a like an alcohol pub. And the vibe was more like a a health spa than a banquet. The host did not say, "Oh, come over to our long table and feast with us, brother. Grab your flag and a veil and a joint of venison, and we'll sing songs of battles won and comrades lost." No, the host at a restaurant would say, "Oh, you look so under the weather, miss your so and so. Come this way to a private booth where you can receive your medicine, your restorative broth. Choose from among our treatments on this little paper card." The whole bone broth spa concept did not survive the revolution of 1789, but the style of service did as an unlikely embodiment of revolutionary values. A restaurant became a place where any person, regardless of the class into which they were born. Any common Frenchman with at least a little money, could walk into a restaurant and be treated like a noble for an hour. You might not be able to afford any servants in your home, but walk into a restaurant and someone becomes your servant for the night. someone to wait on you, a server, a waiter. And a good waiter could make enough money that they too could pay for the experience of being waited upon by someone else. That's what an egalitarian developed economy looks like. Everybody scratching each other's backs until all are satisfied. This was the new thing that American author Caroline Kirkland wrote about with such fascination in the late 1840s. And you'll never guess which part of it really blew her socks off. There was an aspect of the experience of going to a restaurant that struck her as downright socially transgressive, naughty even. Here is what Kirkland wrote. Dining at a restaurant is one of the novelties of the lady traveler in Paris. And next here she's going to compare the experience to what I think was probably like a lunchroom that she knew back in the States called Thompson and Wellers, like an American proto restaurant, like a tea room or something. Okay. Quote, "Taking a sandwich or a plate of oysters at Thompson and Wellers, is a considerable feat. And some of our ladies at home roll up their eyes at the boldness which can venture thus far. But to sit down in a public room, and here she is describing like a proper sit-down restaurant in Paris, a public room. To sit down in a public room to a regular dinner of an hour's length or more is quite another affair. And it really requires some practice before one can refrain from casting sly glances around during the process to see whether anybody is looking. But these restaurant dinners are very pleasant things once you are used to them. The tuah fer proven for instance which is one of the best. You are seated at a table covered in dam mask fine enough for royalty with napkins to match all of an extreme purity and whiteness. Okay Karen go on. You have silver forks and spoons to as many plates as you can contrive to use in succession. Your food is all served in silver dishes, quite hot, and the cuisine is of the greatest delicacy as well as variety. The notion that different people could eat totally different things at the same meal was a novel luxury to people back then, and menus were often absurdly long to emphasize this aspect of the experience. It was it was restaurant as vending machine. You can get anything. But anyway, here's what seemed real freaky to Caroline Kirkland. All about you are immense mirrors, statuary, flowers, fruits in elegant baskets of china oraloo, and whatever luxury can devise to enhance the pleasure of the dining. And with all, though there may be 20 other parties dining at as many tables within sight, yet nobody looks at you or seems to know that you are there. One waiter takes you under his special care, and the different courses are served with the precision of clockwork, everything being as neat and elegant as possible. One feels at first as if it was a transgression, but after a whole this subsides into a feeling of agreeable abandon, unaloyed by any sense of naughtiness, and a dinner at a restaurant becomes one of the natural events of a Paris day. Hey baby, it's natural. It can't be wrong. What scandalized Caroline Kirkland about eating in a real restaurant for the first time was not the luxury or the indulgence. It was the fact that groups of socially unrelated people were taking their pleasure in the same room as each other. It must have felt to her like being in a creepy swingers party or in a public bathroom with no stalls or dividers. These people are just having sex right there in that corner as though the rest of us are not standing here and I'm just supposed to pee while this is happening. There's no stall and I'm shy. That is how a restaurant felt to Mrs. Kirkland. There's a whole other family right over there having their own dinner as though we aren't right here having our dinner. And we'll acknowledge each other's existence. We we won't be like talking to each other. I tried sitting at their table and they were like, "Um, hi." It's an understandable reaction from someone who has previously understood dinner to be a household activity. Even when it occurred outside of the home, even at an inn or a pub or a tavern, dinner was still served family style. In a restaurant, in contrast, you have a public space that's divided into little semi-private zones where we can experience some of the intimacy and the conviviality of a traditional family meal. But it's all made more economically accessible via the magic of mass production, via economies of scale. We sacrifice some privacy by eating in a room with other parties. But if we can get over that weirdness, we can enjoy a relatively affordable meal cooked by someone else and with a ton of options to choose from. Who bridges these worlds for us? Who is the interface? Who mans the wall between the private bubble of your table and the public resource that is the kitchen? That, my friends, is your waiter, your server, the servant whom you have rented in a sort of time share agreement with the other diners around you. The server is endowed with the special authority to pass through that semi-permeable social membrane that surrounds your table. And thus this is a job for which extraordinary social skills are demanded or at least highly appreciated. My god, I do appreciate a great restaurant server. Somebody who is so in tune with your needs and your desires that they know exactly when to swoop in and fill your cup. and they know exactly when to just walk on by and leave you alone. There's something a little gross about it. You feel guilty, or at least I feel guilty, expecting such a one-sided relationship with a fellow sensient human where only my needs are the ones being fussed over. For a man especially, it can leave you feeling like a pathetic John paying someone to pretend to love you because obviously no one in their right mind would actually do that for free. But artful management of this weird feeling of guilt can itself become another pleasure of dining out. Heaping praise upon a deserving server is fun. Staying out of their hair and just letting them work if that's what they seem to want to do today is also fun because you know that you're better than that tonedeaf ass hat in the next table who won't stop trying to make the server laugh with dumb dad jokes. Leaving a great server a great big tip. That's fun if you're fortunate enough to have the means to do so. My favorite thing is leaving a gigantic tip for a server who didn't do so well that day because they obviously had something going on in their life. That feels really good to leave someone a money bomb on the table and just walk away. No reaction as it explodes behind you. Never look back. It's not cool if you make people gravel for it. There's no shame in a mutually beneficial exchange and restaurant service when it's working, when labor practices are fair and equitable, when it's good, it's real good. And that is what I am finding wholesome today. Excellent restaurant service. Today we serve the servers and wait upon the waiters and give them the praise they are due. Surely that is wholesome to everyone else at this table. Welcome to Wholesome. It's a podcast about three friends sharing the things that we like with each other. I'm Adam Pranica. I'm Adam Regusia. I'm Ben Harrison. Have you ever worked as a server goose? Myself? No. I've had a number of menial service jobs. I guess I was good enough at them to hold them all for a certain amount of time and thus that wheel never spun to restaurant server, but many other, you know, uh, retail service type jobs, low level. Yeah. Pranica, have you? I know Ben has. I Well, I was never a server. I was a buser. Oh, a buser. I'm so sorry. Yeah. I never rose to the hallowed rank of waiter. Pranica, did you inhabit those lofty heights ever? Yeah, I worked in all kinds of jobs where uh you deal with the public and some jobs where I serve them food, but I wasn't ever a tipped employee in the way you're describing. So, I think it's a little different when you work in a deli or uh or tear tickets at a movie theater or whatever. The Buzz Boy job that I had was at a restaurant that had a star and it was kind of unusual in terms of like the Michelin star restaurants of the world in that it was very pubby gastro pub kind of thing. Yeah, it was a gastro pub and I think it was kind of like the great gastro pub at the time, but it is very down at heels. Like the the waiters wore t-shirts and there were not white tablecloths on the tables or anything, but uh they took it really seriously and uh it was immediately clear to me that it took a a ton of knowledge, like deep knowledge of the menu and the wine list and what was available at the bar to to do that. Like I started that job going like, "Okay, well like I love food and wine and beer, so surely I'll be a buser for like a month or something." And then they'll be like, "Okay, Ben, uh, enough around. You can you can get a shift behind the bar or something like that." And no, like like my training was in huge part about memorizing the menu, memorizing how things were prepared, memorizing which wines went with things. And I was a buser. I just needed like they needed me to be able to answer like basic questions about the menu with confidence that I rapidly found that I was way in over my head. Like and I I like as much as I like food and and from a pretty young age fancied myself someone who thought very seriously about it. I didn't know this menu and I didn't know this wine list, you know, like, right, there were things on the menu that were completely new to me and I needed to be trained up on that specific thing. And it gave me like a whole new respect for the ability of someone to come over to the table and, you know, hear the like six things that your party is thinking about getting and maybe whittle it down to five or recommend a seventh thing if that's not going to be enough or whatever. like it's a really tricky job and um I think I would be bad at it frankly. Well, I think this is why even at very good places sometimes in fact quite often front of house staff makes a lot more money than the back of house staff which seems wrong at first when you consider that the server needs to know almost as much about the food as the cook does and has to have all of these soft skills, you know, right? It's really a heavy lift. I I know that all three of us are big appreciators of great restaurant servers. I wonder if we should maybe just start things off by going around the horn, maybe sharing a favorite experience, like a a favorite server or just an an awesome thing that you like to look for when you when you are on the the receiving end of one of these wonderful relationships. Yeah. I mean, I I think that a thing that I sometimes go into a restaurant stressed about is like, are am I going to be oversold? Are they going to trick me into buying more than I actually need? And I feel like I'm in such good hands so much of the time because I will have a list of of may and I I will find myself in dialogue with a server who is like, "No, that's too much food." Like, "You only need three of those or whatever." Like that's because the best servers make it into a partnership like where they're invested in your happiness and your satisfaction with your order as much as they are. It it it works for everyone involved. And everyone knows that the way you make Ben Harrison happy in a restaurant is you hold him down and protect him from himself. That's very true. I mean like the economics 101 version of a server is like extract as many orders from your client as possible so that the tip at the other end of the interaction is as high as possible because it is just a function machine. It's just a percentage of the total that is paid and so like you have zero incentive to discourage them from getting the third entree or whatever. But I think a good server understands that it's not a pure function machine and like there's a long game involved here. Like a a restaurant that is really fun to be in and takes really good care of you is a place that you're going to go back to. And we should acknowledge that like those kinds of lesser friction social and economic interactions are enabled by people being paid well by being paid fairly enough that they don't have to try to ek every single cent out of you. Yeah. I mean like the Europe restaurant example is is really interesting because the the tip element of the interaction is so much less of a thing if it's a thing at all and the standard of service is very different in Europe. uh I mean it's different from from country to country and and also restaurant to restaurant but in the US like I think that we are very efficiency-minded like the when you watch Gordon Ramsay uh tear a restaurant or a new It's almost always because the food is taking too long to come out which is like in France like who gives a We're going to be here for 3 hours. Like take as long as you want, make it good, you know? I mean, I have personal anxiety about getting off of a table so that the restaurant can put another couple of butts in seats and and make more money. And it's like it's a different vibe here. I um I I told a story on my YouTube channel some time ago about um going to a Brazilian steakhouse for my birthday. And I remember this. Oh, yeah. And so I, as you may recall, I I sort of we kind of got in and got out and because I thought that that is that's what you do. That is how I contribute to the experience is by, you know, turning the table so that they can make some more money off the next guy. Yeah. And when I asked for the check, like they brought the manager over to make sure that I wasn't unhappy, that I wasn't just there for like that was that we weren't going to stay for more hours of the meat train, you know, at a Brazilian steakhouse. And I was like, "No, it's delicious. I just I'm very full. I've had I always get all of the meat at first and then I eat it all." Right? And after I published that, I got so many emails from Brazilians just being like, "God, they must have been so pissed slash hurt." Like, cuz this is supposed to take three hours. Yeah. Pranica, what is your archetypal restaurant server? Who who who's the angel that you want to see when you walk in there? I think there's really two kinds. And I think you said this in your uh in your very extensive monologue. Sorry, they're getting more extensive. I'll work on that. That one of the things that you appreciate is like the decorum. And I think when out of town friends come to visit me in LA, one of the places I like to take them is Muso and Frank because it is on the one hand like the institutionalized class of dark wood and suits and suit sleeves with stripes for every decade of service on the on the servers there. And it's it seems like on the outside it would be wildly formal, but once you're on the inside you realize that all of the servers are keeping it light and fun for that reason. Like they're kind of cutting against its own grain. Yeah. And like the last time we were we were there celebrating a friend's birthday, she was blown away by the server because it wasn't just that you ordered a steak. You're like, "I will have this kind of steak." And the server, as if on a script, was like, "Yes, I will get you this cut of steak cooked over a charcoal grill to perfect doneness, served with the side of scalloped potatoes." And and on and on. And this happened around the entire table. Everyone made an order and he would parrot it back to them in Muso and Frank speak. And I can understand how this would sound annoying or stupid to some people, but the formality of it, especially on the occasion of a friend's birthday, was just such a delight. And try as you might to break the spell of that or the script of it in the way you described earlier about like doing dad joke None of us were doing that, but we were trying to have a conversation about like, is this enough food in the way that Ben described earlier or or whatever. Trying in whatever way we could to get out of the scripted format of server and and customer conversation. He just wouldn't do it. And it was kind of a miracle that way. In a way that I've grown to appreciate, in a way that makes dinners there really special whenever I go. The other kind that I also really like is the format breaker where you are permitted to cut through the And this often happens when you're a regular at a place. This is my favorite kind of restaurant relationship where you're at the corner of the bar because that's always your seat and you're always served by the same person and it's never how are you today? I am fine. how are you? It's a it's like a what's up relationship. Can I get you the thing you always get? It's all good. Like there's a chasm between those two types of servers. And in the middle, I totally forget about those experiences and never think of them at all. Like it is always for me ever one or the other. And absent those two qualities, I'm like, "Cool, that was a fine experience, but like I'm not coming here for whatever type of server arrangement this is." And I really I really do appreciate, you know, the opposites at both poles there. I hadn't thought about it in these terms until you said that Adam, but it it makes knowing the historical context for the origin of restaurants in France. There's like an analogy you could make between um political communication uh you know like formal political communication versus populism where you know part of the reason why you know relationships of power have have historically used formal language and you know there's a way that the government writes to you and there's a way that you write back and all that kind of part of the reason you people think that it's like it's all hoy toy. They're trying to make you feel small and stupid. No, they're trying to treat you equally. They're trying to treat you fairly. this is the way that we talk to everyone. And so anyone regardless of social class comes into this restaurant, we're going to talk to them the exact same way we're going to talk to you as though you are a gentleman. Right? If you are a stranger in a strange land, and by that I mean a person going to a restaurant you you've never been to before. You want to feel like you're in good hands. And I think that is a way that that can be conveyed. Mhm. Yeah. The restaurant I worked in, the employee handbook had a like a pretty out phraseology for this, but it it was kind of true because a lot of very famous people did come into the restaurant and said, "Treat all of the celebrities like regular customers and all of the regular customers like celebrities." And I found that that that really worked like when I was like helping at a table where I was like genuinely starruck by somebody that was there. That was like something to to keep in mind. Like I this person does not want their spot blown up. They want to just be in here and enjoy a normal restaurant meal like everybody else, you know? Hell yeah. That's a good couple of rules for life. Yeah, agreed. I mean, I think that um the like negative experiences I've had in restaurants have mostly been feeling weird about the way someone else was acting at the staff, you know, like I think that there are people that take that, you know, time share of servants for an hour thing too far and want their relationship with their servants to be incredibly doineering and they want everyone to be like submitting to their will. And dudes who are not there for the food, they're there for the submission. Yeah. And uh you know like I was I think lucky enough in my in my brief time in in the biz not to really experience that but I've experienced it plenty of times thirdand like sitting at one table over and like just wanting to crawl out of my skin as somebody uh bossed the staff around and sent stuff back and just made made a pig of themsel because they needed to feel powerful for whatever reason. Yeah. I sometimes feel like my relationships with servers is like a bit of a submission off. It's like it's like it's like Ned Flanders in that Simpsons episode where he said he said I'm meek but I could be meer. Yeah. Because I think like a thing I try to do is signal like I'm not going to be a problem. Yeah. Exactly. That's that's all you want to convey is I'm not going to be your problem today. Yeah. Like I'm going to be one of your easy tables and it is more fun for me if I feel like the surfer is not like is not like taking a big deep breath in the service area before coming out to to check on my food. And that's like like one of our rules on the greatest generation. No bits on tips. Like don't put your server in an uncomfortable position of having to laugh at something because of the power differential in the relationship. And it is fun and nice to have someone go off and fetch something for you. You don't have to be a dick about it, you know. Well said. I think that's why the great experiences in restaurants feel very like conspiratorial. Like we're in this experience together. Yeah. We're all wanting this to be a good time. So there is no you do for me. It's it's we do for we. Yeah. You and I, Adam, were in a restaurant in Las Vegas last year and you noticed a special seltzer machine that they had behind the bar and we were talking about it just to each other. And one of the bartenders overheard and made us some seltzers just to like throw us some some freebies. And it was like it was one of those things where it's like I guess this probably technically doesn't really cost the restaurant anything. But it was so nice that this thing that was just between us, we were just talking about, oh, that's a cool machine. Maybe we'll order something that involves that later was received and processed by the staff in a way that was like, "Oh, these guys are really excited about this thing. Like, let's share in that excitement and and do a nice thing for them." You know, they didn't I I think that like at this point we were sitting at the bar. We didn't even they they might not have even necessarily known that we were waiting for a table and a bunch of other people. Uh but they they just made it a cool thing and it's it's a very memorable moment from a a memorably pleasant night at a restaurant because it was just that thing of anticipating your needs before you've even articulated them to yourself. And that's like some of the best service stuff there is. Praise. As an aside, if you see a seltzer water machine that makes microbubbles straight from Japan, of which there are only eight in the country, definitely get a glass or a highball with that seltzer water. It's really special. Indeed. And I think that that was the thing that I like hadn't really wrapped my head around when I first got that job was like, oh, like these people know what this restaurant can do. Yeah. So, like having that really fine grained understanding of the menu, like what your options are with the various dishes, uh what your options are not and how to talk about that. Like, no, we don't make any alterations on the burger. Like that's a pretty firm line that the kitchen holds. Whatever your like opinion about that kind of decision a restaurant makes is, a server is empowered to think about what their clientele might or might not need by having that kind of knowledge by like really knowing the menu up and down and really, you know, like, oh yeah, like I mean, if you're getting the kidney pie, like you're going to want like a really big fat red wine to go with it. And we have three really good options, but I think this one that's at the middle price point is kind of the banger. I have my own soda water memory from a particularly great restaurant server experience when Lauren and I were young and we had just moved to Boston, Massachusetts. We got there shortly before our our wedding anniversary and we decided to have dinner at Number Nine Park, which was a restaurant on the Boston Common that I don't think is there anymore because the chef um she kind of got me to um and her empire empire crumbled because apparently she was a gigantic dick to work for. But anyways, but number nine Park was a killer restaurant and we did not have like we lacked the money and the social standing to be there. like we were visibly stretching by being there, right? And we like got a reservation at like 5 when they opened and so there's nobody there and it's we just looked like did number nine park have a blue plate special and I think I ordered some like shellfish appetizer that when I was trying to extract it, I like splattered juice all over myself in this very uncou and I was like, "Oh, okay. This is this is this is that's a thing that happened and I'm just going to have to live with the shame of that for the rest of this meal. And then our server who she looked like she was a few years older than us, not many, but a few years older than us and like a duck in water, an old pro, someone who is who rules this restaurant, you know, absolute professional. like she comes over with one of those beautiful like glass bottles of uh seltzer water with the little pop top on top, you know, and some white cloth napkins. And she says, "I see we had a little splash over here." And I'll never forget the like the incredibly kind way she said that as though it was like a fun thing that had happened and not a mortifying thing that had happened. It was like I see we got a little splash over here. And then like a patient wife when the love making ends too early. Exactly. So patient. She like dabbed some soda water on the napkin and took the liberty of like trying to do a little bit of the work at least on the shirt, not the pants, right? And I remember thinking that it was kind of like Jesus washing the feet of the prostitutes or whatever. Like she was so obviously so far I believe he called them sex workers. Sex workers. I'm sorry. She was so obviously socially above me in that even though she was working for me. No, no, no, no. That was her place, right? She was socially above me in every way in that interaction, but ritually she lowered herself to like wash my feet. Real power bottom move. There's a real power bottom move. Is that a kind of excellent weight or a power bottom? I think that when you notice it, you notice it all the time. The way a surfer makes themsel part of your group by using that Wii terminology. How are we liking everything? Yeah. What are we thinking about for mains? I think we had a little splash over here. Nope. Don't like that. Oh, no. Nope. That's the tension in the system though. It's like yes, we are all in this together, but also that is not the case. So, like the server that sits down at your table with you to to do the order. I don't like that. I can't get with that. It's very hard to describe and also very clear when it works and when it doesn't. this sort of thing, which is why the greats are uncommon to encounter. You know, the greats intrinsically know this, instinctively know this in a way that someone just starting out probably wouldn't or or someone who doesn't grasp that couldn't possibly understand. Yeah. Uh, as a great man said, when you start coming with the customers, it's time to quit. Your dad was great. I don't know. I think I appreciate that and I I mean, you know, I don't go to restaurants as much these days as I did in my 20s and 30s, but I think the the millure I was in in Brooklyn, where the word millu is pronounced thusly in the early to mid 2000s, there was almost exclusively restaurants where servers came and sat at your table and wrote your order out on the, you know, butcher paper on the table. It's big principle like sitting down, you know, doing the Riker maneuver around a backwards chair to rap with you energy, you know? Yeah. But like I think in New York space is at such a premium that like it felt cool to like even have the space for that sometimes. So I I don't know. I I have a fondness for it. I I've definitely seen it done badly, but I like being like welcomed into the club in that way. Personally, I would like to shout out one of my favorite restaurant service practices, regional restaurant service practices that I did not know, had never even heard of until I moved to the southeastern United States where it is tremendously common, and tell me if you've experienced this, tell me if they have this out west. is very common at a restaurant in the southeast to be offered a free to-go version of your soft drink upon leaving the restaurant. A to- go Coke. Huh. Even if it's not a Coke, because that's how they say it down here. And I got to say, boy, do I love me a to- go Coke. I've I've not encountered this. I think that Yeah, those like those little like regional differences, they're fewer and fewer, but like they're They they're still out there. Like the thing that always blew me away in New York was when you went to a Mexican restaurant, you you had to like pay for chips. Like chips would be a menu item. I was like, "What the fuck?" Like chips are free. Having grown up in California, like when you go to a Mexican restaurant, you sit down and chips are there. You know, in Soviet Russia, chip buys you. And it's like u I mean like typically there's free bread at you know the kind of restaurant that would have bread but yeah like uh like if you want chips and salsa that's like seven bucks was a thing that I really hated about east coast life. Like like I'd rather live in New York than LA. But uh that's one thing that I'll take over New York any day of the week is the way a Mexican restaurant operates. Well, when the rent is too damn high. Yeah. Someone's got to pay for it. I always wonder about that because like putting some bread on the table, putting some chips on the table has got to cut down on how much you can make on a given customer cuz like I mean when I go to a family Mexican restaurant, like I'm eating 1,200 calories worth of chips before the server is even at the table to take my order, you know? I'm just like just build it into the cost of the entre. You could double it. You could charge me double what I would pay for alikart bread and roll it into the cost of my entree. Call it free bread and I will be tantalized by it. When it's free, it's better. That's all that matters. Paying $22 for two chicken enchiladas. The cost is absorbed into the enchiladas bin. Well, yeah, sure. But to my point, in New York, it's not. And I don't like that. Yeah. Just to tie it all up, appreciating great service and great servers when they help you. Is it wholesome? Absolutely. I think because it's about being in the moment. Everyone's got to eat. Everyone's got to eat multiple times a day. How often do you eat a forgettable meal over the sink staring out in the middle distance? Like there are a million moments in a person's life that fall away from memory, but the idea of sharing a meal with someone that you like, being helped out by someone who really gives a and noting that moment appreciating it, does it get any more wholesome than that? Maybe not. I love the stewardship of the hang that a great server can perform. It's it it very much is a performance and it's like it's sort of interactive storytelling almost like they're your your dungeon master but unlike a DM they're trying to keep you out of peril and well executed is just so great and even just like competently executed uh is something I really appreciate. It's it's really tough work. Like I think a lot of people underestimate how much a a good server both has to know and has to do. Like they're on their feet their whole shift. They have so many tables to keep track of and check in on and make sure, you know, things are happening for them at the pace that they want things to happen for them. It's something I really really appreciate. And uh yeah, I I look forward to a time in my life when I'm flush enough with cash to leave the the Adam Regusia explosion behind me in slow motion. Tip real real quick story about that before we go. I think I I mentioned to you guys I had this great trip about a year ago where I went to the research triangle of North Carolina for a an aquarium conference and I ate alone at different steakouses around Raleigh like every night of the week and I went to this like kind of hip suburban place in like a 70s neighborhood and man just the thing that I got going with my bartender/wait waitress there was like so killer. She was just like not pushing anything on me, but she could tell that I was there to go all out. And so whenever I was thinking about like, you know, dipping into the ammo another time, she made sure to like be there with the belt to feed it into the minigun, you know, and and like and like she get some. Hell yeah. And I was like I remember I saw there was like a I'd been there for a long time and had a lot of drinks and then I I saw like there was like a martini like a smoky martini that was served in under like a beaker with a bunch of smoke in it. One of those gimmicky things. And I was just like, "Can I have the smoky martini?" And she was just like, "Yeah, you can." And she was like, "You have a giant ice cube in your mouth, don't you?" No, I was just happy to see her. Um, and uh, and anyway, so she just takes real good care of me. I'm having a lovely night. I leave her a enormous tip. I decide, hey, I'm just going to have a I'm going to walk, you know, an evening constitution. Walk this off because I don't think I was I could drive. So, I was like, I'm going to go take a long walk, right? So, I just walk around this kind of charming 1970s neighborhood outside of Raleigh for a while. Have a lovely evening. But to to end things where they began, the natural consequence of all of my consumption was welling up inside me and I needed to deposit it somewhere. I wasn't going to make it back to the hotel, right? So, I was like, "Okay, well, the car is at the restaurant. I'll just swing by into the restaurant and I'll use the bathroom, right?" Which was already really hard for me because it's like they might not know that I ate there already. And so, they're going to think that I'm just going in the back. Am I a weird guy just going in the back to use the bathroom? And I'm like, "Oh, I don't want to do that." But I I really don't have any other options right now. So, I just walk I just like power walk through the restaurant. The bar the bar where I ate is sort of in the back and I sort of power walk past the bar and I'm like, "Nobody see me. Nobody see me. Nobody's seen me. Nobody's see me. Nobody's seen me." And then there's the the the bartender waiter who's just like, "Oh, hey, thank you so much." So, not only was it super awkward because I really had had to drop some kids at the pool, like it was also awkward because like I I was violating my rule. You never look back at the explosion ever. Cool guys don't look at explosions. Cannot look at the explosions. Okay, you walk away and let it happen behind you. And so, because I had another explosion to deal with, I had to violate my rule. It was just it was just it was the worst. One of my greatest moments of shame was walking to that. I've had many shameful walks to bathrooms and that might have topped it. Yeah. I was like, "You're welcome. I really have to use your bathroom." But if you're out there, you were awesome. Well, this has been an episode of Wholesome. We really appreciate that uh you supported it. We also really appreciate Carter who supports at the most wholesome level. Thank you to Wendy Pretty, our producer and editor, for all her hard work on this show. For Adam Regusi and Adam Pranaga, I've been Ben Harrison. And if you liked this, I hope you will talk to some friends of yours about some stuff that you like.