It’s common wisdom that you can tell all you need to know about a person from the way they treat waiters. However, another restaurant-based measure of humankind has recently come to light: how much they dither about ordering.
The food and culture magazine Vittles reached this conclusion after witnessing Rishi Sunak making a proper meal of it in Mayfair’s The Dover a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, the former prime minister began by painstakingly checking what every other occupant of the table was planning to have, canvassed the waiter’s opinion, then spent 10 minutes “fussing about whether the dover sole was too big”, before asking the waiter (“answer: no”), then trying, unsuccessfully, to get his mate to enter into a coalition and share the sole with him, before “capitulating” and plumping for the penne arrabbiata.
Ugh, after all that, pasta? And a super-basic variety at that? If Sunak had still been in power, this story could well have been his Miliband bacon sandwich.
Vittles then attempted to sidetrack with “An interesting parlour game for nerds: which PMs would have just ordered the sole?” (Wilson, Blair and “even Callaghan”, they reckon), but let’s get back to the how of ordering.
We all know people who wreck it like Rishi, faffing about so long you begin to wonder why you didn’t stay in. Many have … let’s call them quirky strategies for handling menu decisions, and if you end up mixing incompatible parties it can cause havoc. I have a friend who, for reasons best known to his therapist, refuses to have the same food as anyone else at the table, even if it’s what he really wants. Sod’s law therefore decrees that he will end up dining with a ditherer who needs to ask what everybody is having, and that his will be the option the ditherer likes best and therefore settles on, leaving him with no choice but to switch. It will then become imperative that he only orders after the ditherer, no matter what direction it’s been going until then, in case the ditherer re-dithers and changes their mind, meaning he can go back to his original choice.
Another weirdo insists on always trying something new whenever eating out, so she usually picks the least-appetising offering, then spends the rest of the evening begging her partner to give her his dinner instead. A different couple agree what each of them will have, together, as a team, and then eat half before swapping plates. This is infuriating because it seems co-dependent, but then you realise it’s a great idea because both get to try two dishes. However, you can’t copy it because you have sneerily decreed it co-dependent. They have never had a row over one of them eating more than their share pre-handover, but everybody they have ever met lives in hope that day is coming.
The lowest of the low must surely be those who, like Sunak, involve the poor waiter in their decision. First, the waiter doesn’t care. Second, just because they like something doesn’t mean that you will, and vice versa. My favourite scenario is when the answer to “Would you have the chicken or the beef?” is a smug “Neither – I’m a vegan”, thereby making the questioner feel guilty as well as pathetically indecisive.
At the opposite end of the scale from the hmm-ers, who plead to go last (and when it is finally their turn,say, “I … will … have … the …” as slowly as possible, so they get an extra few seconds to think), are the super-organised. These impressive creatures have been poring over the menu online for weeks and arrive prepared: they don’t need to look; refuse to be swayed by specials. The only potential spanner in the works is the last-minute seasonal menu change, which leaves them as clueless and confused as the rest of us.
But let’s be honest here: whether we’re billionaire ex-prime ministers or paupers, whatever our method or madness, we’re all just human beings out in the world, struggling against the horror of food envy, or orderer’s remorse. It’s never been as important as now, when times are tight and eating out is more of a treat. Still, there’s never any excuse for having the boring old pasta.
• Polly Hudson is a freelance writer.
