deleted in the interest of taste

nr706 wrote:

King's Thursday wrote:I don't think you should wear anything to a nice restaurant

Isn't here a clothing-optional dining site somewhere that also supports this point-of-view?

Assuming that by "dining site" you mean "restaurant," then what I want to know is, what is that restaurant, and where is it (and hopefully it's somewhere south of the frost belt).

I have received two emails telling me I have new private messages. I have no new messages in my in box! Obviously, there's a problem with the system right now.

I cannot react to information I do not have, so please understand my lack of a ready response.

-ramon

Hi Ramon,

The private messaging function in phpBB allows users to delete messages they've sent before they are read by the recipient. The email telling you you have a new message, though, is sent immediately. So someone might have sent you a message and then quickly deleted it before you had a chance to read it.

EDIT: Huge faux pas on my part! Sorry folks, I wrote this in response before seeing the second page of posts. I see now that Bob S. covered social contract point and Cathy2 the concept of airline travel. Feel free to skip this post, but I will leave it up.

I don't think I enter into any sort of bargain with the other diners when I go to a restaurant.

You HAVE entered into a sort of bargain, it is called a social contract. You may have heard of it, since it has been around since Civilization began.

One could simply read EatChicago, Antonious and MikeG's posts and have plenty of good reasons for a dress code. Though like all wisdom, reason and good reasons, they can't be found by those looking to avoid them.

I agree with MikeG dressing up for a fancy dinner is fun, but what makes it fun is that everyone there is part of the same circus.

Ya'all should watch the movie Crash for a real mind twist on prejudice and correct behavior. Do I discriminate and pre-judge, you bet, probably a couple of hunderd times a day.

Let's face it a dress code is one of the last discriminating, yet politically correct measures of behavior. Not to mention it is strictly quantifiable and objective (no jeans vs. you are required to act respectfully). It is also code words for the atmosphere of the experience. I doubt many folks inquire of the dress code at O'Whathaveyou's near Wriggley, its a given.

I am sure this will continue to change over time, since there is no such thing as the office uniform for men anymore. A side-anecdote, my uncle likes to remind me when he used to travel to Mexico everyone on the plane wore traveling suits. Of course, at that time, he was not jammed into a space the size of a poodle carrier with the seat ahead reclined to the point of smashing his chest.

Can we talk about decorum and personal freedoms on an 4-hour plane trip next

Here's my favorite example of how times have changed re: dress.

When we had that deadly heat wave a few years ago, the Tribune ran an article on a similar heatwave sometime in the 40s or 50s. You'll remember that Daley II was criticized for his response, well, the Mayor then (not his father, if I recall correctly) made an important announcement that undoubtedly saved lives. He announced that due to the extraordinarily high temperatures, it was okay for men to go to work without their jackets, and for women to not wear girdles.

Along with the food, a restauranteur is also selling you an experience: service, ambiance, atmosphere...

That's all well and good, and that's just about the only justifiable excuse for a dress code I've ever heard.

I'll give you another one. It's called respect. The people in a fine restaurant are working very hard to create an experience for you. The least you can do is recognize this by dressing appropriately. It's similar to going to the theater. You can dress any way you want to go to a movie, but in the legitimate theater, live actors are up there on stage working their butts off for you. To show up in tanktop and cutoffs is a slap in their collective face. Ah, but your money is as green as anyone's, you say. Well, I say that paying good money for a ticket (or a meal) doesn't give you the right to be rude. This is not to say that many people don't send these signals of contempt in the way they dress. They do. And because we live in a permissive world, they're not thrown out on their ears. But they ought to be.

Please see my edit above. Sorry to have re-opened this thread, it looks like most points were covered, ad nauseum.

>>>One could simply read EatChicago, Antonious and MikeG's posts and have plenty of good reasons for a dress code. Though like all advice, wisdom, reason and good reasons, they can't be found by those looking to avoid them.<<<<

gleam wrote:Just like a smoker wishes restaurants weren't non-smoking nowadays.

nothing else to add except: the smokers' wishes are completely irrelevant as of today (in Chicago) ...

Sunday, I shall wear a sport coat to actually eat my shredded pork buns inside St. Anna's in Chinatown.

Lordy.

I've been the most vocal opponent of dress codes in restaurants, so let me reiterate my stance:

1) Dress codes are idiotic. I can wear a suit and tie and be more offensive to you than if I were wearing my street clothes.

2) Even if I think they're idiotic, restaurants are still well within their rights to have them and enforce them.

3) Even though I despise dress codes, and don't particularly like dressing up for dinner, I will do so for certain reasons:

a) My wife wants me to, because she likes seeing me in a suit and tie.

b) The restaurant I'm going to, which for whatever reason I feel I MUST go to (be it for the food or at someone else's request), has a dress code.


My appeal is to restaurants to change away from dress codes. The less we judge people by appearances and the less we restrict access to anything based on same, the better, frankly. Good riddance.

I look forward to the day when a group of young women can meet the president in flip flops and have it NOT make national news.

TonyC wrote:nothing else to add except: the smokers' wishes are completely irrelevant as of today (in Chicago) ...

Sunday, I shall wear a sport coat to actually eat my shredded pork buns inside St. Anna's in Chinatown.

Nah, as of January 16th in restaurants - and 30 months from now in bars and taverns. (Unless they install air purifiers that make the inside air quality identical to the outside air, whatever that might mean - isn't Chicago constantly cited as having terrible outdoor air quality?)

Pete wrote:

TonyC wrote:nothing else to add except: the smokers' wishes are completely irrelevant as of today (in Chicago) ...

Sunday, I shall wear a sport coat to actually eat my shredded pork buns inside St. Anna's in Chinatown.

Nah, as of January 16th in restaurants - and 30 months from now in bars and taverns. (Unless they install air purifiers that make the inside air quality identical to the outside air, whatever that might mean - isn't Chicago constantly cited as having terrible outdoor air quality?)

Hmm, as the resident LTH environmental attorney( ), should I or should I not weigh in on this? O.K., I will. While the outdoor (ambient) air quality in Chicago is definitely a "nonattainment zone" for criteria pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the air inside buildings is often far more unhealhful than the air outside. Some of this relates to chemicals that offgas from bulding materials, carpets, furniture, etc. made from petroleum-based chemicals, formaldeyde and other nasty compounds that build up in closed spaces. Other sources include radon (radioactive particles that rise up from subsurface soils and groundwater, through the basement sump and into the interior space of the building -- everyone who lives in a garden apartment or a home with a basement really ought to get the radon checked, by the way. Have one company check it and, if it exceeds the EPA's action level of 4.0 picoCuries per liter (pCi/L), have ANOTHER company install a radon mitigation system. Radon causes lung cancer at least as often as smoking.). Anyway, smoking is another source of indoor air pollution, and levels of particulates (the big nasty in smoke) are often 100 times or more higher inside a smoky bar than outside -- even in the mean streets of Chicago. You can't ask a bar or restaurant to have air quality that is BETTER than the air outside the building (although a good HVAC system and a special smoke filtration/ventilation system can sometimes attain this). So, that's why they are saying that if it's no less dangerous than breathing the ambient air (demonstrably so), the City would not ask you to do more. The devil is in the details; I'm not sure how many places could really afford to retrofit that kind of air changing equipment. A place like the Matchbox would be reduced to seating for maybe three patrons. But ESPN Zone probably could do it.

Is there a dress code for the LTH holiday party? I may have a mid-eighties ruffled turquoise prom dress I could drag out of the closet for the occasion. Please advise.

Your question about the dress code for the holiday party is answered here

I just remembered a situation in which I dearly wished I had been alerted to a "dress code." My wife and I checked into the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills early one Sunday evening, tired from our travel from Chicago. As for dinner, all we had the energy to do was dine in the hotel's dining room. I suspected it was dressy, so I inquired of the desk clerk upon check-in what the appropriate dress would be. (We could easily change quickly into any garb once we were in our room, before coming down for dinner.) He replied that we were "absolutely fine the way we were" (in my case, sport shirt and khakis). If not for his reassurance, I would have gladly changed for dinner. Well, his reassurance turned out to be a lie. I was the only gentleman there not wearing a jacket, and most were in suits. I felt like a rube. No one in the restaurant treated us as if we were out of place--so I suppose in that sense we were "absolutely fine" just the way we were--but I didn't feel that way. I would have dearly appreciated a more accurate heads up, so that I could have dressed more appropriately.

riddlemay wrote: No one in the restaurant treated us as if we were out of place--so I suppose in that sense we were "absolutely fine" just the way we were--but I didn't feel that way. I would have dearly appreciated a more accurate heads up, so that I could have dressed more appropriately.

See, that tells me that you were just fine, and that you shouldn't have felt any other way.

The wait staff treated you the way a professional wait staff should, with professional dignity and grace. No one in the room fainted at your lack of a suit, or tossed their cookies, or immediately left in a huff.

I just have this uncanny ability to not feel care what others, especially people I've never met and will never again meet, think of me. If they think I'm a rube, that's their problem.

If I'm interviewing for a job, I wear a suit.* That, however, is a very different situation. I'm not trying to impress anyone when I go out to eat.


Funny story about that. At my first interview for my current job, which is a shall-we-say "alternative" industry, I wore a suit. I got called back some weeks later for a second interview, and they explicitly told me I didn't need to wear a suit or dress up.

I showed up in my normal lounging-around-the-house clothing -- polo shirt, khaki pants. They still said I was too dressed up. A few months after being hired, my boss confided that they were a little freaked out by the suit. My how times change.

The best response I ever heard from a maitre d' (in a haute cuisine restaurant) when queried about a dress code:

"Well, if you're the kind of person who's not uncomfortable in slacks and a shirt when everyone else in the restaurant is wearing a jacket and tie, then feel free to come dressed as you like."

jbw wrote:The best response I ever heard from a maitre d' (in a haute cuisine restaurant) when queried about a dress code:

"Well, if you're the kind of person who's not uncomfortable in slacks and a shirt when everyone else in the restaurant is wearing a jacket and tie, then feel free to come dressed as you like."

What restaurant was that? I'm tempted to give them some business