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What Makes A Great Restaurant? Not The Food, Obviously

January 5, 2010

What Makes A Great Restaurant?Dan Majestic writes: It’s not the food that makes a restaurant great, a wise man said once, it’s the atmosphere.Yep, the secret of a great restaurant, ladies and gents, is in the vibe of the place. Who cares about the food if the surroundings are great and the booze flows freely and easily? Restaurants can’t do great food anyway, simply because they could never compete with home cooking. It’s as simple as that. It’s like a prostitute can never substitute a real relationship. It just doesn’t work, you see, even if the comparison might shock you in this particular case.

The atmosphere tops the list of requirements when it comes to eating out, strange as it may sound If you offer relatively good cooking in a place that has no proper vibe in it, you’re looking at down spiralling and closure, at one point or another. If you’re not some TV chef, that is, who’s got all the free publicity on the box and gets away with crappy dishes, just because people are too stupid to see through his gimmicks and forgive him for not bothering too much about the atmosphere.
And speaking of TV chefs: most of them suck big time. Especially the ones who get it into their tiny brains that they are some geniuses who can behave like thugs and lowlifes. Lowlifes can never learn to cook properly. Just like they can never learn to make love, drive and cut other people’s hair. Not to mention many other things as well. They’re lowlifes. The best they can do is find themselves an agent, also a lowlife, who will use every rule in the book of bended rules, to push them upwards, where they’ll float like shit in water for while, before sinking. And that would be it.

But I digress. A really good restaurant has to have a great vibe. And a great vibe means many things, with food coming if not at the very bottom of the list then in its middle spot somewhere.

So where do I start? Well, an eatery has to have great service and the waiters should not look like some dodgy illegal immigrants, who have a shower once a month and don’t understand most of what you ask them. They should be slick, these waiters, and they should be making the customers feel welcome. And the size of the place is important. It should not be too small, looking like a peep-show cabin, and it should not be too big, resembling some warehouse or a railway station. The tables should never be too close to each other, otherwise people would have a feeling that they are eating out with a dozen other customers. There is a certain distance that makes all the difference.

The colours should be just the right ones, to create a good atmosphere. No bizarre yellow or brown shades and no white walls that remind everyone of hospitals and public toilets. And the lighting should be just the right level, not too bright, like in some operating surgery, and not too dim, like in seedy joint with heavily made up hostesses who want to look the right deal for a two hundred an hour.

And don’t forget the noise levels. If you get a lot of people inside a confined place, the noise is bound to be high. And people in restaurants want to hear each other, so you’d better see to it the noise is absorbed by things like paintings and carpets on the walls and possible partitions between the tables. The background music should never be overwhelming and should not have rap or hip-hop or garage or some other rubbish playing. Show some respect to people who pay extortionate prices for your average cooking. Give them R&B, jazz or even classics that create a good mood.

People go to restaurants to chill out, relax and enjoy themselves. They don’t go there to eat. Eating is what they do at home.

– End –

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One Response to “What Makes A Great Restaurant? Not The Food, Obviously”

  1. Damian on January 24th, 2010 10:05 pm

    BOOMBOX PLAGUE

    Here’s how to end the noisy boombox plague:
    Ask some poor wretch if he’d like to have a ten- or twenty-dollar bill. If his answer is Yes, tell him about your noisy boombox neighbor and then say:
    “The money is yours if you can figure out something so I won’t have to hear that guy’s boombox again. Don’t kill him or beat him up. But do whatever you have to do to silence that Hollywoodized lowlife!”
    Believe me, this is VERY effective. Heard of the VAB’s? They’re the “Vigilantes Against Boomboxes.” Or you can start your own vigilante group.
    Reactions, anyone?

    [from Karl's Kastle in Mitchell County, Kansas]

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