Last week a friend of mine texted me asking about a strange interaction they had at a restaurant. “Have you experienced this thing where restaurants ask you for your phone number before they seat you, even if you’re just walking in?” they asked. I had, I said, explaining that they’re asking so they can enter your name into their reservation system to see any profile you’ve set up, and we bitched about how weird it was to walk into a new place, be asked for your number, and suddenly have the host know your name before you’ve even told them.
We were onto something. The very next day, The Atlantic published a great piece by Brett Martin about data collection at restaurants. Your phone number, he confirms, is used to look you up on Resy or OpenTable or whatever service they pay for, to see who you are, and to track your activity. Most restaurants say this is an innocent enough attempt to make sure they can see any allergies you’ve entered, or perhaps give you a little more attention if it’s your birthday or anniversary. But as Martin explains, this goes further than just making sure they remember you’re vegetarian. At Kingsway in New Orleans, he says the owner “knew, for instance, which bartenders had served me, the friend who had joined me, that I had complimented the cocktail list and enjoyed the crawfish dumplings.”
It feels strange, knowing you’re being watched while you’re just trying to eat dinner, but a good maitre d’ has always kept track of this kind of information. But the reservation apps promise restaurants that with even more data, including data on how you’ve behaved at other restaurants, they can provide a better hospitality experience. “The sales decks were like those optical illusions that turn from adorable to sinister when hit with different colored lights, flipping the language of care and hospitality to the language of surveillance and theft,” writes Martin.
I am under no illusion that the cheer and kindness I receive at a good restaurant is anything but a heavy dose of emotional labor; Servers aren’t chit-chatting because they find me, personally, so cool. But what makes a great hospitality experience so great is for all this to happen without you ever knowing that it is happening. At the best restaurants, part of what you’re paying for is not to see the man behind the curtain, so to speak. You are being sold to, sure, but you never feel it. You only feel the warmth, the thrill of a server saying she got the bartender to make you something special, the care of a good menu recommendation.
Being asked to hand over your phone number at a walk-in dinner shatters that fantasy. It tells you that this is a numbers game, that this is less about remembering what drink you liked and more about parting you from your money. Which again, you know, but you don’t need to know.
Restaurants shouldn’t even need to know what I’ve ordered before to show me a good time. The art of hospitality was accomplished long before we had smartphones. And it can be done without them. Recently, I’ve been going to Burmese Bites a lot, which opened in my neighborhood to much acclaim. They’re walk-in only, and keep a reservation list by hand. And after multiple visits, owner Myo Lin Thway has regularly stopped by the table and thanked us for being repeat customers. It’s nice to be remembered, not tracked.
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🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
- About 500 people are participating in a hunger strike at an immigration detention center in Georgia, to protest unbearable conditions, and the fact that most of them came to the United States seeking asylum and were following legal processes for immigration claims.
- I loved Tanya Bush’s inaugural column in Bon Appétit about taking a long walk for a treat.
- I have never understood why women who are on-screen food personalities had to take little princess bites while Guy Fieri gets to chomp into a sandwich so hard you worry he’s going to drown. So good on Nigella Lawson for taking her big bites on GBBO.
- Apparently, the Michelin Guide is using AI to write its restaurant recommendations, which is weird considering that robots can't eat.
Raven Nickname of the Week
This week’s nickname comes to us from Marina, inspired by her childhood nickname:
My parents tried to give me and my brother names that didn’t have easy nicknames, so my nickname is Sauce, because I was a truth-telling, sassy kid—my friend Allison gave it to me in 6th grade. It stuck, and it’s still what my brother calls me. In college, I had a radio show called The Sauce, and I was DJ Marinara.
Would 100% hit the club for DJ Marinara.
Want to give our raven a silly little name? You have to become a Regular. Do you want to know the raven's real name? Only Big Spenders have access to that truth.
