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IP: a very adapt (and sad) tale of society/values today...
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 08:07:30 -0400
From: "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff () iconia com> Lying a La Carte: Drop a Name, Tell a Fib, Get a Table By GLENN COLLINS NEW YORK -- The staff of the Grand Tier Restaurant in the Metropolitan Opera House waited expectantly, as it always does, on Paul Newman night. The actor and his wife, Joanne Woodward, visit several times a season, and Erik Rothman, the tuxedoed manager, had set aside a prime table with a perfect view of the Chagall murals. Placido Domingo was performing that night in "Samson et Dalila," so tables had been booked for weeks at the restaurant, where only operagoers who have paid up to $200 a ticket have the privilege of dining for an average cost of $80 a person. Promptly at 6 p.m., a nondescript man with black hair sidled up the grand staircase and presented himself to Michelle Tanhoff, the hostess. "I'm Mr. Newman," he said. "We always wonder whether the real Paul Newman will show up, and we take bets on it," Ms. Tanhoff said. "That night, I lost. It was Mr. Impostor again. He's done this before." (And got a table every time.) The faux Newman, whoever he is, is hardly a criminal genius operating in splendid isolation. More and more, maitres d'hotel and restaurateurs say, people will do just about anything to get a table at the hottest restaurants in the nation's most competitive foodie town. They lie. They cheat. And yes, they steal. "The chutzpah was incredible," said Jeffrey Toobin, a writer for The New Yorker who arrived at Bouley Bakery last month only to discover that a party of six had, well, fibbed about their name so they could take the table from Toobin's party of six. The impostors seemed to have read the reservation book upside down and backward. "The restaurant people asked them to give up the table. They refused." He sighed. "It was one of those possession-is-nine-tenths-of-the-law situations," said Toobin, a legal analyst who wrote a best-selling book on the O.J. Simpson trial. "We didn't want to make a scene, and finally the restaurant improvised a table for us. All we wanted to do was eat dinner." Unfortunately, that is all that everyone in New York seems to want to do these days, at least in certain celebrated spots. "The demand is greater than at any time in the last 20 years," said Tim Zagat, publisher of the Zagat Restaurant and Hotel surveys. "It's the economic boom. There is strong domestic demand from young financial wizards for whom price is no object, plus strong international demand from those accustomed to paying twice as much for a meal in Europe or Asia." All that demand has turned getting a reservation into a trial by frustration, and often by busy signal -- for the simply star-struck diner as well as for the plainly larcenous one. To make matters worse, some restaurants, Jean Georges among them, will not accept reservations more than 30 days in advance. And so, scarcity has prompted some to adopt the old end-justifies-the-means mentality, and Zagat himself could be a poster boy for victimization: Dozens of maitres d'hotel have called to tell him that diners have made false reservations under his name. Now when he makes reservations he tells restaurants to confirm with his office. "I was unprepared for the very great amount of lying," said Alain Michel, restaurant director of Jean Georges, the star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's New French bastion in the Trump International Hotel on Central Park West. "So many people say that they called for a reservation and then claim that we lost it." They feign shock and indignation when the restaurant doesn't have the reservation that was never made, he said. Jean Georges has been forced to treat its reservation holders as if they were Holiday Inn customers: They are required to phone a special line on The Day, validating their call by offering a confirmation number. These days, the bestiary of shameless restaurant prevaricators includes not only Celebrity Impersonators and Outright Thieves, but also Owners' Best Pals, Name Droppers, Epic Bards, Bribers and Great Intimidators. The Celebrity Impersonators practice their craft in all manner of ways. Call it lying a la carte. At the Grand Tier, the staff doesn't even know if the pseudo Paul Newman's name really is Paul Newman, "because he always pays in cash," Rothman said. Some impersonators have a right to the names they use, though perhaps not to the tables they command. "We took a reservation asking for a great table for Bill Cosby," said David Ruggerio, chef and owner of Le Chantilly. "When he arrived, he was obviously not the comedian. But his credit card said he was William Cosby." And then there are those who have a penchant for appending the words "princess," "duke" and "lord" to their names, which are revealed unadorned on their credit cards. A variant is the secretary-of-the-important-man gambit. "We get lots of calls from people who say, 'I'm calling from the president's office," said Marco Maccioni, a co-owner of Osteria del Circo. "They never say the president of what." In Ruggerio's opinion, impersonators are more forgivable than Outright Thieves, like the group that took Toobin's table. "These people inch to the front of the line, wait until the maitre d'hotel is gone, then look in the reservation book and pick out a name," he said. Which has prompted many maitres d'hotel to close the book when they show people to the table. This works only as long as you have the book. "At Christmastime 1994, someone stole our reservation book," said Jean-Jacques Rachou, owner of La Cote Basque. "A young man came into the restaurant, asked about a reservation and -- when the maitre d'hotel went to seat someone -- the man left with the book. Maybe he couldn't get in, maybe it was a prank, but it caused a very great confusion at our busy time and made it so difficult for us to tell who had a reservation." As always, New York's connivers are using the Owner's Best Pal stratagem -- or, at least, trying to. Sirio Maccioni, owner of Le Cirque 2000 and Marco Maccioni's father, said that "many times people have come up to me and asked for a reservation claiming they are a dear friend of the owner, Sergio," he said with a laugh. "What am I going to say, 'You are a liar?' No, sometimes I put on my glasses and say, "Oh yes, I'm Sergio, I didn't recognize you." The Epic Bards are a more exotic group of Outright Liars who spin wondrous fables to get reservations. "We got a frantic call from a CEO who said he was desperate for porterhouse, he was unable to get a reservation in our Minneapolis restaurant, and he was landing his jet soon at Teterboro, so could we fit him in," said Seth Bromberg, maitre d'hotel for four years at Morton's of Chicago, which caters to many captains of industry. "I thought, 'Who would make up a story like that?' and gave him a table," Bromberg said. "A few minutes later he came in with his wife. I asked, 'How did you get here so quickly?' and they sheepishly admitted that the story was a ploy. But I was charmed. I think he deserved the table, and he's become a good customer." Then there are the Epic Bards who never look back. "I told one walk-in that he'd have to wait an hour for a table," Bromberg said. "He said, 'I can't wait that long.' I asked, 'Why?' He said, 'I only have six months to live, and every moment is precious to me.' How could you not give that guy a table?" In a way, all of this dirty rotten dishonesty is a backhanded expression of regard. "We are in a service business, and it is our pleasure to be nice to people," Sirio Maccioni said. "The restaurant should be thankful to these people for trying so hard to get in. It would be so much worse if they didn't want to come in." But restaurant managers draw the line when it comes to bribery and intimidation. "One evening a gentleman arrived at 8 p.m. waving several hundred dollar bills in my face and loudly saying that if I got him a table, then this is for me," Michel of Jean Georges said with a frown at the sheer tastelessness of the spectacle. "I honestly had absolutely no room for him. What kind of a reputation would we have if we accepted such inducements?" Maitre d'hotels say that boors offer money in exotic and sometimes hilariously contrived ways, secreting bills between fingers and in their palms "as if they'd seen it done in a bad movie," one manager said. When lying fails, a not inconsiderable number of prevaricators and bribers resort to intimidation. Owners and maitres d'hotel report that the Rejected Ones threaten to complain to the mayor, the Department of Health, the Zagat Survey and even The New York Times. "We hear a lot of swear words, when we're not hearing weeping," said Josh Goodman, the restaurant manager at Balthazar, a bistro that gets from 1,000 to 3,000 calls per day and has eight reservation takers to field calls. The staff has even received death threats. On Valentine's Day, when Balthazar had been totally booked for more than a month, one rejected caller, who had failed to connive his way into the restaurant, said, "I'll be down there, and I'm going to hurt you in ways the likes of which you've never bleeping seen, and then I'm going to bleeping take you out," Goodman recalled. Perhaps Cupid took pity and intervened. However skilled they may be at duplicity, New Yorkers hardly have the depth of audacity of Parisians, some of whom have raised celebrity impersonation to the level of art. "Two months ago I got a call saying that Monsieur Chirac would be coming to dinner," said Jean-Claude Vrinat, owner of Taillevent, an 80-seat restaurant that has had three Michelin stars since 1973, the longest streak of affirmed excellence in Paris. The request was not unusual, since President Jacques Chirac has been a frequent visitor. "They said he was to be a secret guest, and that we should mention it to no one," Vrinat said. "But when the party of eight arrived, Monsieur Chirac was not present. We asked where he was, and they said, 'He's coming for coffee.' By then I knew perfectly well that this was untrue. And indeed, Monsieur Chirac never did manage to arrive." Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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