Unset Tables Equal Lower Standards

This restaurant above, in business for 60 years or more, still offers delicious food, excellent service and properly set tables!
This restaurant below, does not offer set tables…

What has the dining world come to when one arrives to what is advertised as a very nice restaurant, only to find no place settings, but utensils wrapped up in a napkin and set on the table next to menus? It used to be when I went into a nice restaurant, the table was already laid for me. I don’t mind taking the utensils out and setting the table for the restaurant, as this certainly keeps me in business. But how will children ever grow up knowing what a properly set table looks like, when they never see one while out to dine with their parents? – Above, a booth at a local restaurant which showed set tables on their website. I was, again, disappointed! 

Due to a very busy summer calendar teaching etiquette, I spent a lot of time in restaurants over the past 3 months feeling disappointed. I had some wonderful clients across the board, children and adults alike. I faced numerous challenges when teaching, which is always the case when dealing with people from so many walks of life. I truly enjoyed everyone I met this past summer. None of my clients were the reason for my disappointment. It was the restaurants that let me down. 

Normally, I’d be more likely to be critiquing the foods I had been served much more than the decor. The last year, however, has been exasperating! Judging by the current state of things, it seems that I will be setting my own tables in most all restaurants for the near future. I’m just hoping it’s not also for many years to come. 

Is this lazy? Why yes, it is. But it’s in the name of the restaurant, so you’ve been given fair warning. 

How did we get here? Is it laziness? Is it the fact that the restaurant business seems fairly slow these days and “the restaurants are afraid to set tables,” as one of my clients recently suggested? 

I realize that empty tables at lunch or dinner time don’t necessarily need to be set, as the restaurants’ staffs will just need to remove the utensils and wash them all again before the next day, if the restaurant doesn’t have a full crowd show up. That’s a possibility, I suppose. 

But wouldn’t it make matters worse if what were once considered very nice restaurants, are now considered places for “quick eats,” due to the lack of place settings? 

As good as the food may be, or as attractive as decor might be in a restaurant, if the tables aren’t set, but merely stocked with flatware wrapped up in napkins holding “do-it-yourself” sets, I’m reluctant to dine there again… A table like this gives “quick eats” vibes.

It certainly lowers my opinion of a restaurant if I arrive to unset tables. Come to think of it, the only restaurant I dined at which was consistently packed and running a wait list, was the restaurant which still has white table cloths, white cloth napkins and fully set places. Diners who arrived were looking for something special, and their expectations were met! That is why the establishment is consistently busy. It has never lowered its standards.

A favorite restaurant of mine underwent a change that shocked me a year ago. I was used to finding each place setting with not just a placemat, tumbler, a bread plate, napkin, knife, and fork (the most common set of place setting elements for a restaurant) but it offered each diner a smaller knife to use as a butter spreader, or possibly even a salad. There was also the very nice touch of a hammered metal napkin ring in the shape of a butterfly, to go with the restaurant’s name, Mariposa.

Last summer, when I brought my granddaughters there to lunch for my eldest granddaughter’s birthday, the places were no longer actually “set.” Disappointingly, there were new colored placemats, and, instead of colorful napkins to match the theme of the decor, there was what looked like a common dish towel with the utensils rolled up inside.

Gone were the chic looking modern touches previously found at their tables. Even the colorful or stylish menus which had changed every so often over the years, had been replaced with the boring and the bland.

These two photos, above and directly below are from my favorite place to lunch… the Mariposa Restaurant. These photos show place settings. The photos were taken about 3 years apart. 

 

This third photo at Mariposa was from last May…. It came as a real shock! What have things come to when tables in even nicer establishments simply have flatware plopped down in front of the diners, forcing the diners to set the tables themselves?

Until we stop settling for the boring, the bland, and relaxed standards in restaurants, the more tabletop misconceptions, utensil myths, and utensil mysteries are certainly ahead of us.  

Crisp, white tablecloth and white napkins, with place settings for each guest of the table’s party. The signal of fine dining to come!

I did get a reprieve last night when I went to a restaurant I had eaten at so often, 40 years ago. The place was packed. Diners looked happy to be there on a Saturday night. And there in the candlelit dining room were rows of table upon table with crisp, white tablecloths and white napkins, and plate settings set for each guest of a table’s party. Maybe I don’t have to relax my expectations because everyone else is relaxing their standards?  It certainly must be the sign of fine dining to come!

Contributor, and Site Editor, Maura J. Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, since 1990, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette. A writer, Graber has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows, and was an on-air contributor and correspondent for PBS in Southern California for 15 years. She is working on her 4th book on etiquette and antiques throughout history and was a historical etiquette consultant for Julian Fellowes’ newest period drama, The Gilded Age. Her popular books on antique flatware and etiquette history are available on Amazon

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia