WINE AND FOOD Restaurants
Sexist practices at the table
Nigella Lawson
In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Fay Maschler said that she was rarely recognised when she went to res- taurants, despite the fact that a photograph regularly accompanies her column in the Standard, as 'I generally take a man along with me and waiters are such misogynists they don't look at women.' Up to a point, of course she's right. The story is some- what different if a woman is eating with another woman, or alone: but then the 'being looked at' is even more objection- able than the way one is not looked at when at a restaurant with a man.
It's not a question of wanting attention. The last thing a restaurant critic wants is to be made a fuss of. And for this reason, women restaurant critics can remain more unfooled observers: you can be sure there will be no special treatment. It's a question of the particular assumptions made pre-eminently about who's taking out whom.
I believe it is now accepted that women have jobs and that, consequently, they earn money. Why, then, should it so unsettle a restaurateur if a woman asks for the bill? But such prejudice, registered on the part of the waiter and, less often, waitress by embarrassment or more overt disapproval, is aired before one even gets to the bill-paying part. I can go into a restaurant with a man, tell the person at the door that I've booked a table, give the name the table's booked under, and still be sure that the waiter will ask him whether we'd like a drink, give him the wine list and expect him to order. When I went to Le Mazarin, (The Spectator, 31 October) I, rather than the man I was taking out, was given a menu without the prices on it. At Hollywood's (The Spectator, 12 Septem- ber) I had to ask for the bill three times before the manager gave in and let me pay, but not before he'd told my guest that he was 'very lucky'. To call these sexist practices a problem might be overstating it, but they are an irritation. One doesn't come across them everywhere or at all times (apparently it is found more acceptable for a woman to take a man out at lunchtime), but at no time do I wish to pay for prejudice. Going to a restaurant with another woman, or 'alone' as men with telling unselfconsciousness tend to see it (as in: 'Why are you two girls eating here all alone?'), poses another set of problems. Male vanity lies at the source of this one, as it does of so many. If I go out for dinner with another woman, which I frequently do, it is an act of choice, not desperation. I certainly don't want to be chatted up by the waiters. (Italians are the worst: countless pepper-mill `jokes'.) If one is eating with a man, discourse with the waiter can general- ly be relied upon to stick to the business being undertaken, that of ordering, and so on. If one is with another woman the waiter will feel it incumbent upon him to make conversation, even if it means inter- rupting your own.
Furthermore, since it is assumed by most men that women are always on diets (or should be), the whole business of women taking themselves out to eat is seen as an act of self-indulgence. Waiters don't seem to think there's anything improper in mak- ing remarks about what one's ordered — the `go on, treat yourself approach. This comes particularly into play with the pud- ding course, when the waiter might flirta- tiously cajole you into being 'naughty' and having that chocolate mousse or crème brulee or whatever it is you 'shouldn't' be having. Similarly, waiters feel it is their duty to monitor, and comment on, your alcohol intake.
It may be that women no longer get shoved into the table by the kitchen or behind a pillar, but I still think service in some restaurants is noticeably worse if, by some failure of nature, one isn't a man. This has always been explained by the fact that women are worse tippers. This, I think, is untrue: women are generally more anxious to please than men and are therefore likely to tip more generously. It is that women are seen to have less authority than men (they aren't going to make a fuss) and therefore to count for less: this takes us back to Fay Maschler's point about women not being 'looked at'.
As for women eating alone: unless you're going to your regular round the corner, where you're known, or don't mind spending an uneasy hour being looked at in quite the wrong way, I wouldn't recom- mend it.
Previous page
