Re: Learning to eat (in restaurants)
2018/05/08 10:06:03
(permalink)
While a more modern experience... at one point we took my partner's parents out to dinner to a relatively fancy restaurant: the Chef's Table at the New England Culinary Institute. It's not really all that fancy a restaurant, but since it's a training center for the school, they at least go through all the trappings of a really high end restaurant (full place settings, charger plates, amuse bouche, salt cellars, etc).
It was truly a fish-out-of-water experience for them (he's a retired steelworker), not knowing what most of the menu items were ("What's plaice?"), what utensil to use, where the salt shaker was, why some dude wanted to put pepper on their food, etc. They really enjoyed the meal, but it had more than its share of uncomfortable moments as well (and it was definitely a good experience for the students who have to learn how to deal with customers like that gracefully).
While the intent was to treat them to a really nice dinner without spending too much money (they'd faint dead at some of my restaurant bills I've had), I now try to aim a notch lower when treating them just so they aren't too uncomfortable.