Jennifer Gibson Schecter was once a tourist in New Orleans herself and is now proud to call NOLA home.
New Orleans doesn’t draw visitors with sandy beaches, a bustling theater culture or a strip of high-end casinos. Instead, the year-round experience that guarantees a good time is our dining scene. We love food here, and we love to share it.
New Orleans and Company, the regional destination marketing organization, touts on its website, “Every day, the city’s more than 1,000 eateries ready themselves to welcome their guests with a gusto.” For the most part, this is true. Regardless of the cuisine or whether the food is served on paper plates, our dining establishments are staffed by people who appreciate delicious meals and understand that dining out is a choice that deserves “the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests” – hospitality.
With generous hospitality so prevalent in our culture, it is especially jarring when the opposite happens.
Last month, I had the privilege to eat two meals out in two days – lunch at Commander’s Palace and dinner at a new pizza place. While it is fair to say you can’t expect high-end service like three waitstaff, fresh iced water glasses and lagniappe garlic bread from both places, it is also fair to expect basic hospitality from both.
The staff at Commander’s welcomed us in. And for those who have never dined at Commander’s, imagine that as you walk to your table, every staff person you pass pauses from their task to look you in the eye and say, “Welcome to Commander’s Palace.” We were literally welcomed by nine people by the time we sat down.
A few minutes after we were seated, the manager came over to confirm my last name. There may have been a mistake about our table placement. It was treated lightly, and the manager simply nodded, thanked me and walked away. Were we at the wrong table? We’ll never know, because the staff handled it — we remained where we were and didn’t hear another thing about it.
We took advantage of the Coolinary menu, which Commander’s participates in annually in August. The citywide program helps restaurants draw guests during the slowest month of the year by offering multi-course, prix-fixe menus. Start with the turtle soup, and end with the bread pudding souffle and you will have a perfect meal regardless of what is in between.
The following night, a group of friends gathered to celebrate a birthday. We were 14 people, all dressed nicely and excited to try a new restaurant. It’s a pizza place with a full bar that received good reviews by local press since it opened in the spring. It doesn’t take reservations, but when my friend called a week before to see if they could accommodate a large group, the restaurant advised us what time to arrive for the best odds of being seated. Since it wasn’t a guaranteed reservation, my friend told the staff she expected about 10 people.
That night, we squeezed in to fit at a table. No worries. More people arrived, so we asked if they could be seated at empty seats at the bar. Sure. The last two people came, we asked if they could sit at an empty two-top, and then we were verbally accosted by the manager. We were yelled at, told we misled the staff with our group size, and told he could no longer accommodate us.
At this point, we had all ordered our first round of drinks. We asked if we should just pay for our drinks and leave, and he said yes.
This group of New Orleanians stood outside of the building in shock. We had never in our lives been treated like that at a restaurant. And as we all checked in with each other, asking, “Did that really just happen?,” the hardest thing to comprehend was how that could happen in New Orleans.
Some of us have lived in other places, a few of us in New York and Chicago, and we all consider ourselves foodies. We’ve experienced snobby host staff, pushy wait staff and flippant bartenders, but never in New Orleans. Being a tourism writer, my immediate thought was, “What if a tourist tries to eat here, is treated like this and then judges our entire city on the actions of this man?” Our hospitality workers are critical to our reputation as a destination. They are ambassadors and culture bearers, and I have the utmost respect for them.
There are a few Yelp reviews of this place that call out some rude behavior. Most of them rave about the pizza, but I will never try it. I hope this restaurant finds a way to treat guests better, and ultimately finds success as a New Orleans dining destination. Until then, it won’t have a place on my list of recommendations.
