At delicious. on Sunday, while we’re mostly about championing excellence in dining out,we do come across idiosyncrasies – or should they be idiot-syncrasies – that can frustrate even the best meals.

Interestingly, most of these gripes are around service, supporting my long-held view that more meals are spoiled by bad service than by bad food. Here, we* present our pet hates when eating out.

Bonkers bookings

Online booking systems that only release 6pm or 9.15pm tables make us mad! Restaurants know they can count on walk-ins between 7pm and 8.30pm, but those are the tables we want, too, so they should reward committed customers by allowing us to book them.

Restaurants that don’t take bookings at all make us even madder. There is no benefit in this practice for the customer. When you’ve only got a rare night out and you need to arrange a sitter, book a taxi, or make the last train home, you don’t want to wait in a queue outside a restaurant that might have a table, or turn up at 5pm for a table that they’ll hustle you out of at 6.30pm.

Maddening menus

Menus that bang on about ‘seasonal’ and ‘local’ but feature tomatoes in June.

Menus that are wanky or hard to decipher. Melbourne reviewer Megan Miller takes particular issue with those French restaurants that litter the menu with fancy French terms that you’d need a licence professionnelle (French for degree) to understand. “Is it so hard to include a glossary so your meal becomes a learning experience?” she asks.

John Lethlean, the national reviewer over at The Weekend Australian, takes aim at those menus where dishes are described with just three words – you know – leeks, chicken, mushrooms. “They need to explain whether it’s a salad or a braise,” he suggests. Then there’s the bit where the waiter feels the need to ‘explain the menu’. As Melbourne reviewer Dan Stock puts it,“We know how it works. We order food. The kitchen cooks it. You bring it.”

Floor staff faults

Waiters who diligently recite the specials but not the pricing.

Waiters who squat at the table, call you ‘mate’, or get touchy feely.

Waiters not writing down a big order and either returning to the table minutes later – with a notepad! – to check the order. Or, worse, the wrong food arrives or something is forgotten.

Waiters, who, when asked about the specialty, tell you their favourite dish.

Waiters who avoid eye contact when they’re walking through the restaurant. If you don’t want us to whistle at you, or snap our fingers – not something we ever want to do – scan the diners as you walk so you can see if anyone needs anything. That is really the essence of your job.

Waiters who correct our pronunciation – you know what we mean when we ask for ‘sauvignon blank’ so just bring us a bottle already. It is acceptable if, when you present the wine at the table, you pronounce it correctly. We are smart. We’ll learn.

The word ‘cap-eeew-cino?’ spat out with a question mark. Stop oppressing us with your coffee snobbery. If I want a latte after my Italian dinner, I’ll have one.

Restaurant wrongs

Paper napkins in restaurants. Unless you want to go the full picnic and serve up wine in plastic tumblers, stop cutting corners. (Needless to say they are fine in cheap places.)

When the kitchen sends out every share plate at once and puts them on a table that’s too small. The random arrival of shared dishes annoys South Australia food guru, Simon Wilkinson from The Advertiser. “It’s the sign of a lazy kitchen,” he says. “I don’t want my sardines to arrive with my lasagne. They aren’t designed to eat together.”

With the rise and rise of takeaway delivery services, a constant stream of blokes rushing in to make pick-ups is a new bone of contention.

Cafés and restaurants that scatter flowers on everything. Please stop. Ditto, pomegranate seeds on savoury breakfasts (a personal gripe of mine).

Soulless restaurant soundtracks produced with a computer rather than curated by a human being. It’s the new ‘elevator muzak’.

Cold plates and other plates such as slate, that suck the heat out of food.

Pretend restaurants. Built by investors, often with a naff theme; they miss the point of why we go out to dine.

Average chain restaurants that make hard even harder for the good smaller operators to make a dollar.

Chefs who preach healthy eating for themselves but sell or promote stuff to us that ain’t healthy.

Chefs who smoke outside their premises in their chef whites. It’s not a good look and paints an unappetising welcome for diners.

Credit card surcharges. As one of our panel put it, “Really, Mr Restaurateur, you’re telling me it was cheaper for you when you handled cash? To go count it at night, to lock it up, to take it to the bank? Give me a break.”

It’s an insidious on-charge that snuck in and customers are now stuck with it.

Finally

The number-one thing that bugs the heck out of all of us… The disappearing floor staff at the end of the night, making it difficult to pay the bill. As our national reviewer Anthony Huckstep puts it: “It’s what a restaurant has been working for all night – your money – and yet sometimes it’s nigh impossible to get anyone’s attention to pay it!”

Our top 10 water and wine whinges:

1. Not getting your drinks straight away. Where’s that beer, glass of sparkling or G&T you wanted to drink while looking at the dinner menu or, more importantly, that first coffee that’s essential so you can clear your head and consider whether you want the smashed avocado or the chia and acai bowl for breakfast?
2.  Ongoing confusion/sneakiness over water – the loaded question of “Still or sparkling?”. Are you charging for still? Does still mean tap water? Are you offering me tap water?
3. Herald Sun and On Sunday Melbourne reviewer Megan Miller also denounces sneaky charges for water – like when you order a 1L bottle and your water glass is constantly refilled but you’re not told when a new $12 bottle is opened.
4. Given all the concerns with the ecological impacts of what we consume maybe restaurateurs should, more importantly, be asking whether it’s all that responsible to be selling imported bottled water anyway.
5. Waiters who don’t pour wine by the glass at the table, and just bring you the glass of wine is a big one for many on the panel. As The Advertiser’s Simon Wilkinson points out, how do we know it’s actually what we asked for?\
6. “A dated charade”, that’s how one of our panel slams the rather fruitless act of offering a taste of a bottle of wine they just opened for approval… when it’s been sealed with a screw top or sealed under Stelvin. Assuming the seal hasn’t been compromised, it should be fine. On the other hand, do offer a little taste of a wine you’re pouring by the glass. As Herald Sun and On Sunday reviewer, Dan Stock points out, good waiters and good places do this. In return, we promise not to abuse the privilege.
7. Please can we rein in those fancy sommeliers who want to give you the life history of the wine before they pour it. It’s like them standing by the table with the steak you ordered in their hands and proceeding to tell you that the cow’s name was Kevin, he ate grass in the summer and hay during the winter, and that he preferred to sleep on the far side of the slope on rainy days. Just tell us, quickly, why you picked it to go with what we are eating and be done with it.
8. Never, ever tell us about the wine after the food has hit the table. We want to eat our food while it’s hot and enjoy each other’s company, that’s the whole point of eating out, after all.
9. We are bamboozled by the trend for that very modern tautology, “non-alcoholic spirits”. It has more than a few of us scratching our heads, voicing suspicions that this a sneaky way of charging $20 for a cordial, or just wondering if we are just not millennial enough to understand it.
10. Enough with those giant round ice cubes in cocktails that bounce against your nose when you are drinking that negroni. It makes at least one of my good mates feel too much like a performing seal.

*We the panel are:

Kerrie McCallum (the boss), Anthony Huckstep (national and NSW reviewer), Dan Stock and Megan Miller (Victorian review team), Anooska Tucker-Evans (Queensland reviewer), Simon Wilkinson (our South Australian food guru), Kate Gibbs (the other boss), John Lethlean (guest food expert, old mate and national reviewer) and myself.