What minor restaurant peeve upsets you the most? —Chris R., St. Louis
What upsets me are the things that are easiest to remedy yet aren’t. Serving temperatures are at the top of that list.
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Proper service temps are especially relevant in a restaurant setting, where an entire staff gets paid to serve food at optimum temperatures. Yet I’m amazed at how often the adage “serve hot food hot and cold food cold” is ignored. Green salads should not be served anywhere near room temp, hot soup should not be tepid, sauces should not be allowed to congeal, butter should be spreadable, and frozen desserts should never be served so cold that an excised chunklet flies across the table.
An extension of this applies to wine. I generalize here, but in most restaurants, white wine is served too cold and red wine too warm; whites are stored along with the bottled beers (too cold), and reds are usually kept on top of the bar (too warm).
In any restaurant, a patron’s expectations go up with the cost of the entrée. So if a restaurant charges $70 for a filet and recommends a $22 glass of steak-appropriate cab to go with it, the wine better be served at cellar temperature. Not doing so disrespects the customer and the wine. The house goes to great lengths to assure the steak gets served at the proper temp, often not so the wine, inexplicably—and it represents the greater potential for profit. Properly temped wines taste better, which often translates into additional sales. (We won’t meander into the subject of cheap stemware here, but it’s a related and common problem.)
To alleviate this issue at home, I recommend using the “half-hour rule”: Chill red wines for 30 minutes before consumption, and remove whites from the fridge for the same amount of time. While not perfect, this approximates proper service temps for both (in the 60s for reds, 40s for whites). In a restaurant situation, those in the know will ask their server to adopt (or approximate) the same rule. Servers will typically comply, reasoning that guests who care that much about proper wine temps are also savvy enough to leave an above-average gratuity.
This article has been updated from a previous version.
Next week’s Ask George: “What minor customer peeve bothers you the most?”
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