9/8/96

Tribal Customs:
At the Restaurant

Paying the bill is a macho joust, a vital part of the post-prandial routine.

    Dinner was excellent.
    Then we had to pay for it.
    The waitress presented the bill, and a fight broke out. Dudu whipped out a great wad of shekels, thumped it on the table and announced defiantly, "I'll pay."
    This enraged Shlomo, who was not about to be dishonored in front of his wife Bracha. "No, I got it," he snarled, slapping down a shiny gold credit card.
    Both men leaped up and made a grab for the tab.
    My wife glared at me.
    I cleared my throat. "Wait a minute, I think I have some money. Dinner's on me." I reached into my pocket and a few coins fell to the floor.
    Big mistake. This is a tribal custom, strictly Israeli, a macho joust as much a part of the post-prandial routine as tooth-picking in some countries, or chatting up the waitress in others.
    I should not have got involved. By butting in, meddling in such an ancient ritual, I had upset the delicate balance of nature among this species.
    Of course, I was just trying to uphold the Orbaum honor.
    The waitress, all too familiar with this sort of thing, fled.
    Yossi was slow to throw down his gauntlet, so he had to make up for it with a major gesture. "Blumenthal!" he yelled to the proprietor, much too loudly, "Put it all on my tab. Plus 20 percent."
    That really incensed Dudu, because everyone in the restaurant was staring at Yossi. And nobody oneups Dudu. "Yossele, my good and great friend," he said with a flashy smile, "I'm having a good month. Sales are sky-high. Do me a favor, I don't know what to do with so much money."
    "You know I just bought a new car?" Shlomo said, fearing he was losing ground. "I just sold it and bought a newer one. If I can afford that, what's a little nosh between friends?"
    "Tell you what," I offered. "How about if Shlomo pays this time, and Yossi next time, and then Dudu and then me. Fair, no?"
    Shlomo hated the idea. He had no intentions of winning the right to pay. Especially the way Yossi and his wife went crazy with the caviar. "It would be my pleasure," he said with a patronly arm around my shoulders, "to treat you all as my guests, every time."
    There was no way anyone would let him pay after that.
    A diner from another table hollered in our direction. "Let the guy in the brown suit pay." Quickly, a debate arose at a third table, and the majority opinion was offered: "The short fellow ate the most, he should pay." Finally, an elderly lady by the window, her mouth full of trout, announced: "For crying out loud, split the tab!"
    The restaurant erupted in applause.
    Yossi shrugged his shoulders, grumbled that this was a personal affront, and sat down.
    Shlomo was near tears. He shook his head balefully, slipped his shiny gold card into his pocket, and glumly sat down.
    Dudu eyed the bill as if it were a winning Toto card, glared at the old lady as if she'd just condemned him to a long prison sentence, slowly, very slowly collected his flashy wad, and sank into his chair.
    "But --" I said. "Sit down!" my wife hissed.
    Thank Heavens, all eight of us thought.
    "Okay," Yossi said. "We'll split it four ways."
    (His caviar was 105 shekels a serving, and they had seconds.)
    "That sounds fair," Shlomo said.
    (He ordered aperitifs for us all, four bottles of Yarden and a round of cognacs.)
    "Alright," Dudu said.
    (His wife ate like a pig.)
    "Uh, perhaps we should each pay for ourselves," I said, perspiring.
    (We had ordered a child's portion, shared it, drank tap water and skipped dessert.)
    "I have a calculator," my wife added quickly.
    I got the feeling we were the least popular couple at the table at that moment. 
    "Right then," she said, scanning the bill. "Shlomo had the steak tartare, Bracha the fresh salmon, you ate a third of the mezza and insisted we drink booze like goyim, plus coffee and cake, which comes to 714 shekels plus tip. Yossi and Ashley had the fish eggs, two jumbo filet mignon, an extra portion of creamed spinach, espresso and a mint tea, petits fours and apple pie with a scoop of ice cream which was extra, 592 shekels plus 15 percent, minus Ashley's glass of sherry that Bracha knocked over. Dudu and Shlomit, gevalt, did you manage to get through five goose livers? The schmaltz herring was yours, one of you had the tongue, I forget who, and the other the sukiyaki, and Shlomit was still hungry so she ordered sauteed brains, rare, which nearly made me throw up. The extra bread was yours, and you finished with a Grand Marnier souffle and Scandinavian pastries, imported, all told, 886 shekels plus tip and not including the salt shaker Shlomit put in her purse which they may or may not make us pay for. That leaves my husband and I -- you'll remember when we got here we said we weren't very hungry -- to pay 10.08, assuming they didn't charge us for the tap water. I won't even mention the brains stains on my sleeve, which will cost me something at the dry cleaner's. Anybody got a problem with the calculations?"
    Nobody knew what to say.
    Bracha found her voice first. "Tell you what," she said, patting me on the arm, "Shlomo and I would like to pay for you. It's the least we could do."
    I wasn't even sure I had NIS 10.08 on me, but my wife politely declined.
    Blumenthal convinced the waitress it was safe to return to our table, and we settled up.
    On the way home, I expressed my disgust at the shameful saber-rattling. "We'll never make the mistake of going out with those kind of people," I announced to my wife.
    "Are you nuts? They are precisely the people we want to hobnob with. And forthwith, we will do so more often."
    I glanced at my passenger, just to make sure the wife alongside was, in fact, mine. "You don't mind eating Third World portions and then eating crow when we have to pay for it? You actually enjoy this kind of company?"
    The glint in her eye lit up the road ahead. "Don't you get it? Some people feed their ego by feeding people. They need to strut their disdain of money, to show what cocky big shots they are. A fancy restaurant is the best place to whip out a pile of money, or a prestigious credit card, to parade one's success. But they need a cad to humble. And you are that cad. So what? We get a free meal out of it, if you don't mind stroking some big putz in public."
    "Sounds risky. We could be outsmarted, and have to pay for everybody."
    "Not if you insist on paying. If we get the right sort of dupe, he's not going to let you get away with that. You make the right noises, challenge him to an ego duel, and then after the correct amount of sparring you surrender to his superiority."
    "It's degrading."
    "It's the price you pay. Think you can do it?"
    No, I decided firmly. I have my pride. A full belly is not worth a little egg on the face, that's my motto.
    On the other hand...
    I stepped on the gas, ran a succession of yellow lights and careened into a parking place. "Hurry up!" I shouted at my wife as I ran into the house.
    "What's the rush?"
    "I'm still hungry. We'll call Itzik and Shoshana. They always eat late."
    "But you can't stand Itzik and Shoshana."
    "Precisely," I grinned, licking my lips in anticipation.