Waiters' Wine Pouring Custom Sparks Plenty of Whining

Polemicist Christopher Hitchens is calling on diners to collectively resist the “barbaric” way servers automatically refill diners’ wine glasses when they’ve got a bottle on the table. To Hitchens it’s a crisis not just because it’s clearly part of their conspiracy to inflate the bill (the faster the table kills one bottle, the sooner they order another) but also because they interrupt his anecdotes with their incessant reaching and pouring and serving.

Hitchens’s call to arms appeared in Slate last week and has incited plenty more griping about the custom. The Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni chimed in today and Tuesday about what he cleverly calls “up-selling in the drag of solicitousness.” And he doesn’t mind the intrusion as much as the “indiscriminate assumptions servers make” when they refill wine glasses without asking – and sometimes they do it so quickly and discreetly there isn’t time to say no.

But Hannah Howard, who works for Serious Eats and at a local wine bar, says Hitchens has only himself to blame for not communicating. If someone at the table doesn’t want more wine, a simple “No thanks” will do the trick, because “waiters are not mind-readers. Words are wonderful things.” Sometimes commenters are too; here's the winner from Howard's post: "20 bucks says that Hitchens pretends he left his wallet inside the restaurant once he and his friends leave, so that he can rush back in and down everyone's wine."

Photo courtesy edEx.

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By John Del Signore in Food on June 5, 2008 1:40 PM

Comments [rss]

wandererofsorts

I've served wine and have been served. For me having to pour my own glass at the table is a hassle. Hannah Howard has it right. It has long been tradition for servers to pour when the glass is empty. It is trained as 'good service.' While it may bring the check up or encourage the diners to have another bottle, no one is forcing anything down anyone's throat. If anything, say a diner gets a nice bottle of wine and wants to let it sit at the table a while, don't drink it. Let the bottle open up itself. The waiter won't pour and the wine will only taste better. Oh yeah, Hitchens can go fuck himself.

MFer

C. Hitchen can't fucking write a lick. "Bombast on blubbery" But he's right on this. And he is also right that God is an asshole. So there. Bite me, God. Ha ha. I still stand. And I'll still get into heaven. God is funny that way.

Sommelier

"Polemicist"? Five dollar word for a kvetcher. Doing it with Hitchen's English accent and his inebriated scowl brings it up to $15... still cheaper than a $20 whore.

Art Stewel

"Give Falwell an enema and you could bury him in a matchbook."

-Chris Hitchens on Jerry Falwell

JenChungsBaby

Another reason I like beer.

GOP

what a douche

sonyactivision

Hitch is just angry that his server doesn't fill his glass all the way before draining the bottle into his dining companions' glasses. NY servers should refuse alcohol to this boorish cunt.