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Per Se Diners Throw Up Their Very Expensive Food, "A Lot"
By
Garth Johnston
Published Jan 9, 2012
Modified Jan 9, 2012
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Jan 9, 2012
Modified Jan 9, 2012
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Does the Time Warner Center need a vomitorium? Because if the Confessions of a Per Se Waiter in this week's New York is to be believed, diners at our city's über-expensive restaurant throw up their dinners "a lot."
But don't take our word for it, here's the waiter's own words:
You have people who throw up—they throw up a lot. There was one woman—it was a VIP tasting menu, I remember this: She just threw up on the table, in the middle of an extended tasting menu. They cleaned it up, and she “boot-and-rallied.” She finished the meal.
On the one hand, gross. But on the other? We have to admit: we've done it. Long ago we had to attend an absurdly expensive, multi-course "vintage" meal at one of our city's top restaurants as part of a series of purposely insane dinners we were covering for work. The dinner was amazing and bonkers and kept going and going and going. After the eighth course (of 13, if memory serves) we went outside to catch our breath and after one deep intake of cool night air, well, whatdayaknow, out up came dinner. Luckily we made it to the curb first. But we, too, "boot-and-rallied" and finished the meal. So we can understand! And yet...
Beyond the apparent propensity for high-end diners to see their dinner twice, the confession has a few other interesting details about the life of a waiter in a top-notch restaurant, including the fact that captains can, on a really great night, make many thousands of dollars in one sitting, that there is a list of banned diners, that sex in the Per Se bathroom is frowned on (but happens "quite a lot"), that you probably don't have to worry about spit in your food in New York high-end restaurants ("Honestly, people wouldn’t do that to the food.") and, also, "Before the DOH inspections, every high-end restaurant has four or five in-house inspections, and then everyone has their own set of fire drills—you put on hats and gloves when the inspector comes, you hide things away." Interesting!
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