Please Never Ask Your Waiter This Question

Whenever you go into a restaurant, your server is your point of contact. Well, not physical contact because no server wants to be touched by a customer, ever. But they are there to help you with your meal by taking your order, bringing your food, making sure you have what you need, and answering any questions you may have. Some questions are better to ask than others and there’s one question that should never pass your lips.

What's your favorite thing on the menu?

Asking a server what’s their favorite thing on the menu isn’t necessarily a great way to help you decide what to order. I have the palate of someone who grew up on Swanson Frozen dinners and Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza so my favorite thing on the menu is probably the same thing as a 10-year old. I quickly learned that telling customers my favorite thing was chicken fingers on the kids menu wasn’t helping them make a good decision or helping my check average.

Instead of asking a server what they like best, ask them what’s the most popular thing on the menu. That way, the server can respond honestly without their personal likes and dislikes getting in the way of the answer and you can get an answer that has a wider swath of opinions. At my last restaurant, if someone asked me what my favorite thing on the menu was, the answer was always the hamburger, but if they asked about the most popular item, it was by far the grilled salmon.

Related: How to Handle Being a Picky Eater As an Adult

"I quickly learned that telling customers my favorite thing was chicken fingers on the kids menu wasn’t helping them make a good decision or helping my check average."

Darron Cardosa

Is this dish good?

Don’t ask your server if something is good because that’s again relying on their taste buds to determine your answer. Instead, ask how it’s prepared or if other customers seem to enjoy a particular item. Plenty of servers haven’t tried everything on the menu, so they might not actually know if it’s good or not. They can tell you how other customers seem to like it, but there’s a good chance your server has never actually gotten to taste some of the most expensive items on the menu. If someone asked me how the steak tartare was, I’d have to throw up in my mouth a little bit before saying it would be better if it was formed into a patty, cooked medium-well, covered in cheese, and then served on a bun with french fries. I’d also have to tell them the kitchen doesn’t make that for us to taste.

Ask how something is specifically prepared because that is something a server can answer with definitive clarity. Then, you can take that information and make a decision about whether you would like it or not.

Why does it cost so much?

Ask how much something costs, but don't ask why something costs what it does. Your server doesn’t know. Ask how much longer your food will take, but don’t ask why it’s taking so long. Again, your server doesn’t know. Ask if you can be moved to another table, don’t ask when the crying baby next to you is going to be quiet. Your server does not know.

Related: Mad About High Restaurant Prices? It's Not the Chef's Fault

What else do you do for a living?

One thing you should never ask your server is what else they do for a living. Asking that question belittles what the server is clearly doing for a living. Maybe the assumption is that someone can’t make enough money to live on by only waiting tables. Or maybe you think that someone who’s waiting tables is doing it because they have no other choice. Even if someone is waiting tables part-time, it might be because their “real job” doesn’t pay them enough and this is what they do to supplement their income.

However the question is framed, it’s off-putting. Imagine someone coming to the desk that you sit at for 40 hours a week and asking you what else you do. There might be servers who aspire to do something else, but that could be the situation for practically anyone who maintains any job. You wouldn’t ask that to a teacher, so don’t ask that to a server.

Related: 'It Would Be My Pleasure' and Other Little Fibs Your Waiter Tells You

The one question your waiter will never mind

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