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Friday, March 14, 2008
Server Semantics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Photo: Gavin Averill/Special to the AJC
AT RIGHT: Is a specials’ board the way to wiggle past verbalizing a dish’s price?
A local restaurateur, who asked to remain anonymous, recently forwarded a complaint he received to me.
The situation — short version — is that the restaurant offers daily specials, described at the table by the server, who left out the price. When the bill came, the diner was shocked at how much the dish cost. Mind you, it wasn’t a “market price” deal, which we all know is restaurant code for “costs way too much.” It was just a daily special, the ingredients gleaned from a local farm stand, the cost passed on to the customer accordingly.
Many higher end restaurants feel that verbalizing the price of each of the daily specials is tacky. And customers hesitate to ask because it feels embarrassing. But other than a blackboard, there is really no way for the customer to know the cost. It’s so easy for a server to just mention the price at the end of a dish’s description. I’d rather know than not know.
High-end steak houses, which serve everything a la carte, handle this verbal show down with great ease. It’s done so discreetly it’s painless.
Who thinks it’s tacky when a server verbalizes the price of an off-the-menu item?
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