Puck’s Lament

Peripatetic Los Angeles diners walk in the door expecting peak performance from whatever restaurant they’ve chosen to visit. Take, for example, a couple who wrote in to the Los Angeles Timesin response to the roundtable discussion. “Several times a year, we still like to go to an outstanding restaurant to experience the talents of an extraordinary chef. We’re even willing to plan a month in advance and pay ridiculous valet-parking fees. But we find that unless we are beautiful people or those with recognizable names, we are treated like nobodies and are made to feel unwelcome . . . With a few noteworthy exceptions, we find this to be universal.”

As an anonymous restaurant critic, I too am the unknown quantity in a restaurant, and I too have been denied prime-time reservations and seen others taken to terrific tables while I’ve waited long past my reservation time for a two-top behind the potted palm. But unlike the couple above, I do not assume that I am not considered important or desirable. In most cases, preferential treatment is not based on beauty or hipness or fame, but on customer loyalty and investment.

While it behooves a restaurant to greet every customer happily and provide service and food commensurate with its prices, it’s also true that Mr. and Mrs. Once-a-Year will spend around $200 in a fine restaurant over the course of a year, while Mr. and Mrs. Once-a-Week will be spending around $10,000. Add to this the fact that the latter folks’ faces are familiar, their preferences known, their loyalty and patronage a vital part of the restaurant. Ironically, in most cases, Mr. and Mrs. Once-a-Week are not beautiful or famous people at all; they might well be older, retired folks with a passion (and the funds) for fine food. They are loyal, repeat customers, and if the hostess smiles at them with more warmth than she bestows on strangers, if they land a terrific table, well, they’ve actually earned it.

I agree with Puck that the print media — and also the public at large — could cultivate a more in-depth, optimistic and committed approach to restaurants in Los Angeles. The results could only be mutually beneficial.

Restaurant critics have limited power. They can draw people to a restaurant for one meal. It’s up to the restaurant to bring first-time customers back. It’s also up to the customer to return. The next time you have a really good meal, think about going back for another. And another. Eventually, you too might become one of the “beautiful” people that garner especially warm smiles and secure great tables.