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Monday, December 8, 2008
Are You A Restaurant Klepto?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the hardest parts of being a dining critic — ask any of the people who dine with them regularly — is stealing the menu. I have friends who help me with this all the time. You know, I distract the waiter while they peel the menu from the jacket and stuff it into my purse. Sometimes we pretend to be tourists and just ask for a copy, especially if the menu is particularly large and unruly and difficult to snatch.
Why not just get the menu online? A. Online menus are totally unreliable. B. Lots of places don’t put their menus online; some don’t even have websites. This is often the case with ethnic restaurants. And I thought I had seen it all until last week when I was dining at Chateau de Saigon for a review (see it in the Go Guide on December 19) and spent the better part of the meal dismantling the menu so that I could steal it: Jeez Louise it was like, 20 pages long.
Others I know who shall remain nameless steal other things from restaurants: cream pitchers, napkins, even flatware. My sister and I are proud of the two beer glasses we managed to purge from the Berghoff in Chicago, especially now that it’s closed. Give us a break — we were 20 and 24. (And don’t preach to me about how costly this type of thing is for restaurants — I know it is. )
So, be honest: have you ever stolen anything from a restaurant while you were dining there? What? Why?
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