Totally OT - Pub Food

[DerbyBorn]

A nice thing about a holiday is being served properly even in an inexpensive restaurant. Why do we put up with having to queue at the bar with our table number in the UK? I am sure that if they had a roving waiter with one of those electronic things that transmits the order to the kitchen they would sell more food as people would be more inclined to order extras. Nothing worse than getting to the head of the queue at the bar and then having to go back and ask "Is that with peas or beans?" I hate it after a meal when grandson decides a sweet would be nice and I have to go back to the bar and repeat the process. If there was a waiter we might all have a sweet every time and another round of drinks.????. (Gripe over)

[philipuk]

ver)

That's what you get for eating at a pub pretending to be a restaurant, alon g with microwaved food more often than not. There are plenty of inexpensive restaurants with table service, there are plenty of pubs with restaurant s ections with table service. Take your business elsewhere if you don't like the level of service offered. Don't forget to tip your waiter if he has don e his job well.

Philip

[Davey]

Yup. We have two pubs in our village, one of which has always had a waitress-service restaurant included, the other is a spit-and-sawdust pub, in which the owner now serves food in the evenings in the lounge. He is often the waiter. Both places take your order at your table. I don't even know of a place locally such as is described by DerbyBorn. Must be a provincial, or big city, thing.

[News]

In message , DerbyBorn writes

Is it not down to prices? There are pubs that serve food, and restaurants. Yes, there are pubs with restaurants, but the restaurant is not the pub.

Personally, I like pubs that serve food, and don't mind ordering at the bar, but don't go at busy times. We tend to eat relatively early.

[Mike Barnes]

Ha! It sounds like you haven't been to one of those places in Italy where you have to pay the cashier without the benefit of a menu or the ability to see or point to what you want, then take the receipt to another counter where the food is displayed so that you can place your order and hand over the receipt. They're a nightmare for anyone without reasonably good Italian.

[Tim Watts]

Well - you could go to a proper pub and not some chain like the Snail and Cabbage :)

One pub I know is run by super friendly folk who do table service. Great food, good beer and civilised company (and that does not mean middle class - it's an everyman sort of pub, but devoid of dickheads.

[Tim Watts]

Italy? That sounds like something from the Soviet era!

[Charles Hope]

I first met the concept in Geneva in 1958 - and then saw it again in Italy earlier this year.

[Charles Hope]

I don't think they had one of those there. It's a good way of minimising theft.

[Bob Eager]

Did you ever go to Foyles in Charing Cross Road up to a few years ago? That was run in the same sort of way.

They paid their junior staff peanuts, and on one occasion they had a meeting to discuss unionisation. They weren't allowed to have it on the premises so they went somewhere else. Management photographed everyone who attended. Staff never lasted more than six months.

Because of all this, they never trusted the staff. So, to buy a book:

1) Browse shelves and choose book. In the technical aisles this wasn't always easy due to the Byzantine 'organisation'. 2) Take book to assistant. 3) Assistant writes out a 'chit' stating the amount due. 4) Take chit to cashier at other end of the floor, and pay (cashiers were scarce but presumably a bit more trusted). 5) Take stamped chit back to assistant and collect book.

[Huge]

[27 lines snipped]

Stuff used to be "organised" by publisher, IIRC, rather than topic. I haven't been there for a few years, since I (i) don't work in London any more & (ii) as a result my dentist isn't opposite Foyles any longer.

[Nightjar]

On 09/07/2015 21:54, Bob Eager wrote: ...

It did, however, sometimes result in finding a fascinating book that you would never have actually looked for.

They were probably locked inside the cubicle.

[Bob Eager]

That was it...I'd forgotten.

I don't go as often as I used to. I believe it has now 'modernised' a bit. But I used to go in Blackwells instead, where I happened upon the reprint of the famous 'Lions' book (which then went out of print again).

[spuorgelgoog]

Even worse is holding on to your ticket and listening for the barperson to shout "number 42" then going up to the pass to surrender your ticket and collect your order.

Then find someone's pinched your table and you have to eat your pizza standing up.

But that was student life ...

Owain

[Tim Streater]

Trouble with the restaurants with table service is that too many of them aren't cheap (especially the puds), and they substitute tasty food with presentation. Whereas within some limits I doan, in fact, give a f*ck how its presented.

[Charles Hope]

and Foyles itself has moved down the road into modern premises.

[Tim Streater]

You sure you're not thinking of Yugoslavia? That's how it used to be there on the motorway through to Greece.

[Jonno]

Bob Eager scribbled

It was owned by a woman...

[Bob Eager]

Hardly fair. She was just rather nasty and autocratic. Apparently it's quite nice working at Body Shop HQ (my family live in the same town), and that was Anita Roddick (more or less until she died).

[Jethro_uk]

Like Harvesters do ?

What smartphones were invented for. Along with taking a photo of the specials board so you can decide at your table.

Well certainly somewhere like Wetherspoons, the price soothes most grumbles.