I have a question. In a restaurant, which thing is most important to you: food, service or ambiance? Let’s say, for the sake of j-science, that you can’t have all three. You can only have one, or maybe two. What would you be willing to sacrifice and still eat out?
I’m asking because on Wednesday, I went to Half Moon Bay with my friend, Jay. He’s a foodie. He wasn’t there for the sand and the waves, he wanted to visit a couple of restaurants, which we did. They were not spectacular. They did not have pretty ocean views or cool artwork or decent lighting or chairs. (Just kidding. They had lights.) Turns out they didn’t have great food either, but we didn’t know that when we decided to order something in each place.
Afterward, I was thinking about how, for Jay, it’s all about the food. But for me, it’s all about the ambiance, and maybe the service because crappy service can really screw with the whole ambiance thing. So I have been asking people the question in my exhaustive, j-sciencey, don’t-I-look-official-in-this-lab-coat way. I assumed everyone would say the food matters most because that answer actually makes the most sense to me, but not everyone has and so now, I’m curious. Tell me what you think.
In the meantime, here’s some stuff that made me smile this week…
This sign was in one of the restaurants we went to.
This was in the other.
And on Thursday, I met up with one of my favorite people in the world. She gave me this little notebook. It'll fit in my pocket. I love it, and I love that she knew I would. Big, big smile.
I’m liking the free puppy. That’s hysterical.
I wouldn’t care about the ambiance or service if the food was bad, so I guess that puts food as my first choice.
Now the other two choices are subjective. What do you mean by bad service? They don’t take your order for ages? They get the order wrong? They bring your order and that’s the last you see of them? You have to beg them for the check?
Same with ambiance. Do you mean the place is filthy? The tables wobble? There’s no view? The music is too loud, or wrong for the type restaurant? The place is so crowded you hear the intimate details of every conversation in the place?
Difficult, arent’ I? Just put me down for food. :-)
Oh, and that “Ketch of the Day” sign is very disturbing.
Jessica, me too.
Linda, Bad service is whatever you consider it to be. (I’m actually pretty forgiving.) And ambiance is all about the feel of the place – whatever makes you feel good or bad about a restaurant. Still, I think most people are going to agree with you.
I’m so not a foodie. Back when I was dating, I was always so disappointed if the date consisted of dinner. I’d be like yeah, okay, we ate, sustenance is good, but when do we get to the fun part?
As long as they have crayons and an activity sheet, I’m oblivious to all else. (Unless I only get a yellow.)
kid
The thing that matters most at a restaurant?? Soooo obvious, the COCKTAILS!
Bon Appetit!! (oh yeah, nailed the Julia Child accent!)
I agree with you: food, oddly enough, is less important to me than service and ambiance. I’d rather eat at a cafe that seems warm and friendly and serves mediocre food than at a top-notch restaurant where the “ambiance” requires me to wear heels and where the server will turn his nose up at me because I don’t know the appropriate wine pairing! Eating out for me is all about comfort. I can’t enjoy food if I’m uncomfortable.
Love the pictures from the restaurants! And that notebook is great… can understand why the giver is a favorite person! :-D
Since I eat out with a book as a companion a lot of the time, I tend to go to two or three places where they know me and management and wait staff take turns “visiting” my table. It’s like going into Cheers, but they yell “Karen!” instead of “Norm!”
What’s better than being served comfort food by friends?
[oh and a clean restroom] gotta have that part.
And I’m with kid…..a couple of crayons and a blank placemat? oh ho! here be dragons…and/or a pirate ship on fire….or a mermaid….depending on how long the food takes to get to the table.
:0)
Kid, I hate how the yellow crayon is always so hard to see.
Bobby, How could I have left that off the list? (Hard to imagine good cocktails and a bad ambiance…)
Christina, Exactly! I couldn’t have said it better.
Karen, They don’t even shout out my name when I eat at home. (I’m reasonably sure they do know it, though.)
I have to say the ambiance/setting is big–the food coud be medicore, the service bad…and I *think* I could still be happy.
For me it depends. Sometimes I am going to meet my friends for a meal and we know that we are going to sit there for a loonnnng time talking, so we will pick a place for the “ambiance”. One that won’t mind us ordering a meal and having it take us three hours to eat it.
Sometimes it is ALL about the food. And it doesn’t even matter that there is no waitstaff.
And sometimes a grumpy/unattentive waiter can all but ruin a nice meal.
So . . . . I am saying that it depends!
Your friend Jay might like one of my cakes I blogged about. If looks and presentation are important then forget it.
Ambiance to me is sitting at an outdoor cafe on State Street in Santa Barbara, in which case you could serve me compost and I’d love it.
It depends. I like to hang out and write in strange places. If that’s the case I definitely look for setting. So the place can be a total dive and it’s the best!
I’m also a fan of road trips, so then I look for a nice waitstaff because that usually means a clean kitchen. A clean kitchen indicates that I won’t die 30 miles down the road.
I guess I’ll be in trouble when I’m on a road trip and looking to write…
Tina, Me too!
Terre, What events are all about the food? Do you mean like when you go to a highly recommended restaurant? Someone says, “You HAVE to try the fish tails at Herb’s. They are to die for.” And you go. Then, of course, it would be all about the fishtails. ;-)
Tricia, Off to check out your cakes post. (Outdoor cafe on State Street in Santa Barbara AND compost? Wow! Heaven!)
Lake, I’ve never written in a dive. I think I should try that. Stay tuned.
Sometimes if you are craving something specific and you know that the ambiance is going to be not-to-your-liking (let’s say it is lunch hour or kids night), but you just “have” to have whatever . . . . that is when it could be ALL about the food. Or yeah, like you said, sometimes the food is why you go to a place even though the rest of it might get less that three stars.
Can’t wait for “dive writing!” Yay! Should be Jinteresting. (yes, I just made up a new word!)
I also tweeted our blogs (together in one tweet). I thought it was funny enough to share here:
“Not appropriate to howl while doing Tai chi http://bit.ly/GaUts and http://bit.ly/2PNA7v “
Terre, you know I LOVE j-words! And yay, a super tweet! You rock my twitter world, girlfriend!
Hmmmm, that’s a hard one. I would also consider myself a foodie, but for me, food, service and ambiance all go together. I love to cook, not so much because I only like good food, but because I love everything that goes with it – the creative process, the presentation, the look on the people’s face when they take their first bite… it is a total experience that I take in whenever I go out.
So, to your question…, i’m going back and forth, but I’d have to say ambiance… partially, because the character of a place can intially seem unappealing, but when you understand it, you can meld right into its flow – like the Falafel Drive-In in San Jose (shameless plug, I know). Rarely do people eat inside, and there is almost no ambiance, yet, in that there is total ambiance. The food is fast, the people are “attentive” (that is to say, they get you through the line as quickly as possible), but in that it has a personality all its own… oh, yeah, and the food is killer.
Personally, I develop expectations of places before I ever walk through the door. If the food doesn’t match the expectation, the foodie in me takes over, and I demand perfection. I will walk out with my plate hardly touched, than to scarf down an expensive meal that I don’t like. It’s almost like a message to the chef, the maitre d’, to the owner, that I may have paid for it, but I would never recommend it. Similarly, if the service is horrible, it casts a bad taste on the food. People need to like the job they’re in, especially if there is an expectation of a tip. I am a generous tipper, but there have been times that I refuse to tip because the service is so bad. I can deal with bad food (to a point), I can deal with a lack of ambiance, but I cannot deal with bad service. Maybe it’s because I run a service organization, and require the best of my team. Who knows. My dander gets at an all time high when the service is bad. To me it is akin to people who sacrifice everything to be famous, then get mad for people who want to take pictures with them. How dare they! they chose that profession. similarly with restaurant service, whether 5 star or hot dog stand, you hace chosen to serve people that want what you have… you need to give it all you have.
Now I imagine people following me around with a tip calculator to see if I really am a good tipper… :-)
Oops, sorry, I answered the question backward… ambiance is not the most important, it is the thing I can live with the least (hopefully that came across in my answer… i’m such a goofball at 11pm :-) )
TPJ, I love that you find a certain admirable ambiance in the absence of what most people would define as ambiance. That’s very Zen of you! (You’re a Zen goofball, which is what I’ve suspected about you all along.)