Naughty Bits

I love sexy restaurants like Café des Amis (see review), but I draw the line at sex in restaurants. Most veteran waiters I know, including my friend Ned, have at least one story about watching customers do it — you know, right there in the dining room. When he was working in one of Kansas City's hotel dining rooms (the one with the breathtaking view), Ned walked right past a semi-enclosed banquette and saw a woman enthusiastically exercising her wrist muscles on her octogenarian dining companion.

"My immediate reaction wasn't shock," Ned recalls. "My first thought was that I hoped he would leave me a bigger tip than he was giving her."

I've heard another story from a server in the same hotel. One night, she pressed the call button for the elevator, and the doors parted to reveal a young, attractive couple in flagrante delicto. They didn't apologize; the man politely asked her to wait for the next elevator. Using the elevator was so much more economical than actually checking into a room.

Things were pretty staid when I was a waiter in a macrobiotic restaurant. But one night, a female customer, tipsy from throwing back goblets of mead (that old hippie wine made from honey), yelled to her escort, "Let me see it, damn it! I wanna see the meat!"

When he heard about the loudmouthed customer, the restaurant's humorless chef-owner raced into the dining room and announced, "Madame, this is a vegetarian restaurant."

A hush fell over the dining room, and the woman winced as if she'd been slapped. To add insult to injury, one of the more mischievous gay waiters hissed at the woman on her way out, "I've seen his meat, honey, and it's no big deal."

I was never that quick with the snappy responses. More typical was the moment when, working at a different restaurant, I arrived at a table carrying two very hot dinner plates and my Lothario customer had just stuck his hand into his date's glittery tube top. He glared at me for interrupting his tender moment.

That night, I told him, we both had our hands full.