IP: a very adapt (and sad) tale of society/values today...

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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