Moody Blues
To keep its patrons happy, one of the fanciest restaurants in America uses software to gauge the mood of its diners.
I want one of these gizmos.
Can you imagine having a mood determinator to evaluate the relative happiness of your mate, boss, or teenager?
Okay, it wouldn’t be all that much help with the teenager, as even the most complex software, like the stuff you see on 24, isn’t sophisticated enough to measure the difference between sullen and surly.
Still, there are applications that I can easily see would have advantages around the house. It would, for one thing, take the messy guesswork out of romance. Spouse ranking currently at “7: Excitable.” Recommendation: Go, go, go!
Around the workplace, such software would be invaluable. A computer evaluation of the boss might reveal that she is in an even lousier mood than she was yesterday, which you, being a normal person, would not have thought possible. So, now you can postpone that proposal, the one that included that 10-day trip to Europe. Better to delay a day than to go forward and risk that blank stare, followed by the condescending snort, and the dismissive head shake.
But the obvious question is does the restaurant’s software work?
The ratings used in the restaurant’s gizmo are as follows:
10: Euphoric
9: Pleased
8: Satisfied
7: Quiet
6: Unimpressed
5: Disappointed
4: Bitterly disappointed
3: Hostile
2: Meltdown
1: Combative
Here’s how it works. The person at the restaurant who greets patrons sizes them up and enters a rating into a computer. Then the waiter takes over, entering a mood rating with each food order, to keep things constantly updated.
The idea is that the table is kept, or made, happy throughout the night. If a table is judged to be slipping into the midnumbers, the staff sends out a complimentary glass of champagne or an extra dessert or a tableside visit by the chef to try to revive things. The chef says the goal is that no one will leave with a rating of less than 9.
As it happens, I have been to this restaurant, and if my rating registered above a 1, the software should be recalled.
After years of wanting to go and a couple of hours of driving, we had finally made it to this temple of gastronomy. Dinner would be the price of an emergency medical procedure, but food critics and guidebooks said every obscenely spent penny would be worth it. My three companions and I were nothing short of exhilarated.
As we entered, our mood didn’t just go to 10. As the heavy-metal guitarist says about his amplifier in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, it went to 11.
But things got off to a wobbly start — there was no greeter. We stood around the foyer, making small talk with one another, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, until at long last someone appeared and took us to our table.
Small matter, but I will allow that the no-greeting thing may have dropped us to a 10.
After being seated, we waited interminably for the waiter to take our order. We polished off our bread and butter and our water by the time he returned.
Our ranking slipped to a 9.
We told the waiter we wanted to see the tasting menu.
“The tasting menu?” he said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.
“Yes, uh, the tasting menu.”
He snapped his book shut, turned on his heel, and, without a word, vanished.
Our rating, one can assume, dropped to 8.
As we debated whether to go à la carte or with the fixed-price tasting menu, a question arose.
“Is it possible to get a salad between the appetizers and the first course?” someone at our table asked the waiter when he finally returned.
“The salad is made fresh,” he replied, “and therefore I cannot assure you when it will come out. Perhaps it can be served with your main course.”
Rating down to 7.
After that, it was one calamity after another. A request to modify a dish, which the chef is renowned for doing, proved all but impossible. They brought me the wrong entrée. A tablemate’s scallops were bland and as rubbery as pencil erasers. They never did bring a salad, even though we ordered one. The waiter then blamed the kitchen.
The rating plummeted — 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 … meltdown.
Maybe that is why our waiter simply disappeared, never to be seen again.
I went right past “1: Combative” to the opposite end of the heavy-metal guitarist’s amplifier, which is to say, I went to negative 11. I was too speechless to fight.
Instead, I shuffled out of the restaurant in a sort of catatonia, pausing at the front desk to mumble out a complaint.
A manager called me at home, apologized for the experience, and invited the four of us back. The restaurant, he said, would pay for the meal we ate and the one we’d return for.
So, I don’t know what to think of the software. On the one hand, we had a disastrous evening. On the other, we got two free meals at one of the best restaurants in America.