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The Spiel Has Become a Scourge
Photo: George Karger/Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The other night, at a perfectly nice new downtown restaurant, the server came over to take our order. Even he didn’t look up to the task: “Are you good on the menu, or should I do my spiel and walk you through?” We opted for the Spiel, mostly out of a sense of obligation. We all knew he was supposed to give us the Spiel. This was, by the way, three nights after I’d gotten the Spiel at a midtown Italian place and just a week after a Spiel at a New American spot near Herald Square, which broke down a 16-item menu that involved such otherwise-difficult-to-grasp concepts as “shrimp,” “steak,” and “linguine.”
The Spiel, for anyone fortunate enough to have somehow avoided it, is the increasingly long monologue that every waiter in town must now deliver to tables at restaurants of a certain price point at the start of each meal to talk through … menu highlights? Things that might not be clear? Dishes that the kitchen would really like to push? Having now been subjected to the Spiel at dozens, if not hundreds, of restaurants over the past couple of years, I’m not entirely sure what its real purpose is. A server reads through a grab-bag selection of some courses, explains a few ingredients or maybe recommends something else, but there’s never much rhyme or reason. For how often the Spiel is delivered, there seems to be little consensus on how exactly it should play out.
All Spiels do have a few elements in common: They are always halting, never not awkward. A Spiel breaks up the flow of conversation at the table and grinds the night to a stop. I am reluctant to single out any one restaurant because every place in town trains its staff to do this. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t get Spieled. But I do know its recent resurgence coincides with the post-COVID rising of prices, the transformation of even small dining rooms into luxury dens, and the renewed emphasis on hands-on service.
One front-of-house vet I know says this Spiel renaissance has sprung up as a way for servers to connect more directly with diners, a moment for increased hospitality. But another, more cynical frequent diner I know theorizes that it’s a way to not-so-subtly massage messaging and inject talking points into diners’ minds in this age of social-media omnipresence. Two things can be true at once, I suppose.
Whatever the reason, maybe it’s time to give it a rest. I’m all for making every single customer feel as comfortable and welcome as possible, but why does it have to come in the form of explaining the concept of “antipasti” to diners who are about to pay something like $300 for dinner?
There are places that give good Spiel, like Diner, where it’s been baked into service since day one and where the very short daily menu can be explained (and written onto the table — still a nice touch all these years later) in a matter of minutes.
I’m not suggesting we eliminate all Spiels, but I do think we need to impose a time limit: 45 seconds. Servers should be able to Spiel their way through a menu in under a minute. Less is more. Hit two or three highlights and let’s get on with things. We’re hungry, after all. We’re ready to eat.
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