Do birthday parties held in restaurants give you a palm-dampening, heart-palpitating anxiety attack? You’re not alone.
Maybe it’s repressed resentment at never having gotten to wear the Burger King paper crown as a child. Maybe it’s a simple fear of singing in public. But more likely it’s that inevitable, uncomfortable moment when some self-appointed school-committee type grabs the check, squints at it, performs a mysterious algorithm and loudly announces the amount everyone owes, which includes a portion of Birthday Person’s meal, of course. There follows a festive clinking of glasses . . . and a furtive clenching of teeth.
It’s not that we don’t wish many happy returns to B. P. — now blushing in thanks or dashing abashedly to the powder room — really, we do. It’s the guy two chairs down who ordered the foie gras appetizer, Dover sole entree, side of truffled mashed potatoes and three martinis made with designer gin whom we never want to see again.
“Vegetarians always get screwed at these things,” rightly groused a paralegal who is tired of subsidizing other people’s steak frites.
“Order the biggest dinner you can,” advised a struggling stand-up comic, whose cousin’s 30th-birthday party of 10, at the Slanted Door in San Francisco, proved anything but funny. “It was one of those super-overpriced, nothing-on-the-plate places,” she said, “and everyone was gorging — ordering two, three, four dishes. And lots of wine.” In a vain attempt to be frugal, the comedian ordered but a starter of dumplings, washing them down with tap water. When the bill came, her abstemiousness was ignored; she wound up putting $50 on a credit card. “I was too passive to speak up — so mad, and still hungry,” she said.
Large groups of friends going Dutch at birthday parties, at what people persist in calling “ethnic” restaurants, is common practice just out of college. “After age 30, it’s tacky,” the paralegal said — though surely some slack can be cut for Manhattanites whose apartments are too small to entertain in. But what’s the excuse of that successful actress who recently gave a birthday dinner for herself in a private room at a pricey steakhouse in Beverly Hills and, at the end of a boisterous evening, solicited $100 contributions from each invitee? (The drinks were on her, she announced magnanimously.) “In my mind, ‘private room’ should be synonymous with ‘prepaid,’ ” said one bitter attendee.
Then there was that rising screenwriter who invited 25 associates to a birthday dinner
during the popular, budget-friendly Grilled Cheese Night at the upscale Los Angeles restaurant Campanile. About half the group belonged to Hollywood’s aspiring creative class — which is to say, they were unemployed — and gratefully ordered the sandwiches. The other half, mostly studio execs, decided to order liberally from the regular menu, one giving his meal an extra fillip with an expensive dessert liqueur. When the check came, it was split equally. “So we had to pay $100 a person for what amounted to two pieces of bread and some cheese,” fumed one peon. “And the people with the expensive entrees all had expense accounts!”
It’s not just the guests who are complaining about the practice. “In my experience, when you host a thing like this, you always end up 10 percent short,” said — believe it — a math professor. “Is it because, out of 20 people, one or two will just forget to pay entirely? Or because everyone slightly undercalculates what they owe? Who knows?”
And in the end, who cares? We need not abandon the idea of parties in restaurants altogether. After all, not everyone has the space, the culinary skill or the energy to celebrate friends in the style they deserve. But perhaps there should be a few rules of order(ing). First, avoid long tablefuls of too many people, lest the honoree feel like she is presiding over the Last Supper. “Groups of 10 or under are great,” said a novelist who’s still recovering from a raucous gathering at a West Village restaurant attended by 19 of her nearest and dearest. If it’s a fancy place, consider limiting the menu choices ahead of time to several reasonably priced alternatives and house wines, perhaps to be printed on a keepsake placard. If you have piles of money, consider paying for everybody. If you don’t, consider disclosing a rough price of entry ahead of time. And if that is exceeded, suck it up, because the alternative is just unpleasant.
“I went to a dinner for a friend that ended with a girl calculating how many glasses of wine each person had had, dividing the cost of the bottle by glass and calculating how much each person owed,” said a Brooklyn-based lawyer. “Then she calculated the cost of what each person had had to eat, added in the birthday girl’s cost — you get the point. If you’re going to a party at a restaurant, you need to be prepared to split whatever the bill is. Then you can complain about it later to someone who wasn’t there.”
