Splitting the bill

I'm going to New York next weekend for the New Yorker Festival and to party like a rock star with my four best friends from college. Some eating, drinking, shopping, dancing, and seeing lectures on casualties in Iraq and other fun stuff.

The five of us are really different, with different life situations and priorities. Financially, it's going to be a little like that Friends episode where the three of them were flush and happy to just split the bill evenly at the end of a restaurant meal, whereas the other three ordered on the cheap side specifically so their bill was going to be manageable (meaning, they wanted to pay specifically for what they had eaten).

What's the etiquette of that? How do you handle splitting the bill? Let's say I want to order a snazzy bottle of wine--I want to share it with my friends, but I don't want them to feel weird about not paying for it. Is it OK to sneak away and slide a credit card in your waiter's apron, or does that read as slimy and underhanded somehow?

I hate being all legaleese about who ordered what, adding their percentage of the tip, etc. Takes some of the fun out of dining out. But is it more annoying to those people who ordered inexpensively to pay for more than their share?

Napkins...the good, the bad and the ugly

Like it: When the restaurant offers you a white napkin or a black napkin depending on your outfit so you don't get little lint boogers.

Hate it: When the guy keeps putting your napkin on your lap for you even if you've just gotten up to go to the can. Also, when they reform the napkin into a swan or whatever during your bathroom break.

Like it: If there are gunky paper napkin balls on your table, it's nice when a server takes those away and brings you a new one for dessert.

Hate it: Those nylon-like colored hotel napkins that aren't absorbent.

Like it: Finger bowls and those warm towels at the beginning of some Asian restaurant meals (but what's the etiquette with those--can you wipe your whole face, or even the pate of your head if you're bald?)

Anyone else?

Return to Sender Part Two: Poor Pours

There are only a few real reasons to send a wine back: if it’s not the wine you ordered, if it’s not the year you ordered (vintages vary wildly, so getting the advertised year is important) or if there is something technically wrong with the wine.

Says Pelagia Chef Fabrizio Schenardi, “The wine can be tricky sometimes, because there are a lot of things that can be wrong. The worst thing for a wine is for it to be corked. Then it is perfectly fine to send it back.”

A corked wine is simply a wine that has a defective cork. You’ll know this because when you are presented with the cork it may be mildewy smelling and excessively wet or bloated on one end. The wine itself will have a wet cardboard smell. Once you suspect this is the problem, call it to your waiter or sommelier’s attention, asking them to smell or taste the wine, too. Almost every restaurant will take back a corked wine.

Return to Sender

The etiquette of sending food back is hotly disputed among chefs, restaurateurs and the dining public.

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

The punch line to the joke varies, but the scenario is clear cut. Insects of any kind, swimming the backstroke or bobbing idly, are cause for sending soup back. Were it all so simple. At some point every diner is faced with the temptation of returning a dish to the kitchen. There’s the steak that is decidedly not medium rare. Or the time you asked for the sauce on the side but it arrived topping your fish like molten lava destroying a whole civilization.

But when is it OK and what are the rules of engagement?