WineLovers Discussion Group

I agree that the very best restaurants should know those things, but in my experience they would have sommeliers to do that work, not the regular servers.

I sort of agree with you about glassware, though, in that there are some very good restaurants with horrible glassware.

Bill Spohn wrote:I'm interested in the take on this that says to tip a full (20%) no matter what the service was like. I don't understand that. If the service sucks, to me that should reflect in tip.

If you have an experience where there was bad service and all you do in response is tip less than 20%, and you have done nothing to address the issue, it just makes you look like an a-hole. You have just labeled yourself as stingy to that restaurant, and won't likely get any extra special treatment from them in the future. If you don't let a restaurant know what they can do to correct bad service (especially while it is happening, rather than after the fact), by either a note or a chat with the manager, it just makes you look bad for tipping poorly. There are a lot of goobers out there that tip like crap and get great service at restaurants. You don't want to be lumped in with that group.

Last Thursday members of my city Bdx group welcomed back Matt, one of founders. We ate at Rothmans, they gave us no corkage deal. I think we opened all of the bottles except the sticky, and did all the pouring. They were good about giving us stems (3 per person, and some asked for 4th) and we had good service. They also brought out little dessert glasses for the Vouvray Moelleux, don't think anyone used. Bill was roughly $725, since no corkage we figured 30% tip. Easier just to round up to $110 per person, which I guess works out to about 35%. No one objected. My part of the tip was less than $30. If we had tipped 20%, it would have been $16+. I'd rather spend an extra 13-14 bucks and be pretty certain that waitstaff is happy and that we are likely to be welcomed back. I'd guess the retail value of the wine we drank was at least $2,500,so if on a NYC list at least $5K, so seems like quibbling over $14 is a bit crazy.