`Was everything alright, sir?" "Fine, thanks." And sotto voce, "except that the food took hours to come, and they got the order wrong, and the waitress was rude and forgot to bring the water we asked for, and I resent having to pay a service charge for such shoddy service."
Does this sound familiar? Dublin's boom has meant more and more restaurants, with food of a higher and higher standard, but the service doesn't seem to have improved with it. Too many diners experience unfriendly or incompetent service, which can ruin a night out.
"I think service is one of the most important aspects of the meal," says Mark Harrell, co-owner of the Mermaid Cafe on Dame Street. "It should be attentive to detail, and friendly: your wants should be pre-empted." He also takes it for granted that his staff know how to lay a table and pour a bottle of wine.
Unfortunately, these are not skills that all restaurants seem to demand. In one restaurant in Temple Bar, where we finally got menus after a 10-minute wait, and ordered after another 15, the waitress brought us the wrong bottle of wine, and poured it with her hand over the label, so that it wasn't until she put it down that we saw the mistake. Next, the chef forgot one of our starters, and when the cutlery was removed after the first course, nobody replaced it until we begged for forks to eat our main course with.
When they failed to add up the bill correctly, we did complain. This was met with flustered apologies, and bewilderment. Our waitress didn't know what to do, and the manager was not much more sure. We left feeling that the problem was not, as is often alleged, that the restaurateur was too sure of a steady supply of customers to care, but that no one in the restaurant had any idea of how to provide good service.
There are places where managers really don't care about their customers' enjoyment. In one city-centre cafe, when a waitress was asked why she always worked the cappuccino machine instead of waiting tables, she replied "I think that dates from the time I told a customer to stick her head through a wall." No other retribution than this quarantine behind a counter had ensued. You'd never know that Ireland has twice won gold medals in the World Skills Olympics for service.
This is the sort of situation that drives Joseph Hegarty, who has been Head of School Hotel and Catering Association at D.I.T. Cathal Brugha Street for 27 years, to distraction. "At the top end, we are very, very good. But then there are variations, from the old-style maitre d's, right down to short-order waitressing at the bottom. Those are people who are resentful, who don't want to be there." And who frequently make customers wish the same thing.
Hegarty points to the perceived low status of the job as one reason why staff are unskilled. "You can't get people to come in and learn to clear dirty plates, and take all the bullshit that comes to waiters. You can educate them in the principles of service." He wants to see every waiter in Ireland trained in the technical skills, and educated in the psychological principles of restaurant service.
This ambition is a long way from realisation, despite his efforts. There are now 18 people participating in the Advanced Food and Beverage Restaurant Service day release course at Cathal Brugha Street: there are over 80 restaurants in Temple Bar alone. Many of the staff working in these establishments are part-time or temporary: students with holiday jobs, or foreigners trying to learn English. They are paid very little; £2.50 an hour plus tips seems to be the going rate, and they are given no guidance in how to deal with difficult customers.
"There are plenty of members of the public who can be appallingly rude, and the only way to deal with that is to be coldly polite in return," says Mark Harrell. His staff are all experienced waiters, and encouraged to treat the clientele as guests, rather than with the formality expected in The Clarence Tea Rooms. "We don't stand on ceremony here - the food is not about that, the atmosphere is not about that. If a customer complains, our policy is to make it right. And if we have made a mistake, we apologise."
This sounds like a very simple and obvious principle, but not all cafes have grasped it. All too often a complaint meets with a blank look, and a shrug from the unfortunate waitress, who knows nothing about the preparation of the food, and is not keen to pass complaints back to the chef, who will no doubt shout at the waitress again. It's not her fault the advertised tomato and olive salad has no olives in it, but it is she who will get no tip as a result of the mistake. In this no-win situation, would you manage to smile at the customer?
There are exceptions to the general rule of incompetent service: I would like to nominate Cafe Irie on Fownes Street as a tiny, crowded cafe which yet manages to have efficient and friendly service. And for speed of service, it would be hard to beat the noodle bar Wagamama, in the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre. At the top of the range, Joseph Hegarty recommends the Berkeley Room at the Berkeley Court: "That's service you couldn't beat with a stick." Dublin diners need not despair.