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> The last thing is how the servers know when to be present without hovering or interrupting too often or too infrequently.

Exactly. You can often tell the step up from good to great by whether the servers are intentionally making a show of their presence vs. when you don't notice them other than when you want to.

At one place which should have known better my date and I ended up playing a game of "try to touch the wine bottle before the sommelier would make it to the table" as they insisted on making an annoying show of serving that at first was disruptive rather than helpful, and so we turned to passive aggressive rebellion... But that was funny once - it made me reluctant to go there on dates again.

Conversely at some of the best places I've eaten the serving staff are like ninjas and you hardly even notice your napkin is dirty before it has magically been replaced.

(I've had memorable interactions with servers who knew when to be noticed, so it's not about never being heard or seen, but about understanding when it adds to the experience and when it would interrupt)

One thing I have realised in life is the wide range of expectations or wants of people; some people want/like/demand the show or theatre of the server serving your wine, some dont mind if the server pours it or they pour it, and some just want the server to appear silently put things on the table and go away.

The best figure it out fast and adapt - obviously this all applies to more than just serving food of course.

I think the show can be fine, but it's notable that the kind of excessive focus on being seen at all cost in my experience rarely happens at top restaurants.

They'll put on a show, but it'll be understated, and they'll know when to dial it back because they see you in conversation, and when it's ok to interrupt.

The over the top show is a trademark of second tier restaurants that often are still great, but feel a need to trade on gimmicks as a step up from places where the service is inattentive.

So you go from inattentive to overattentive to well calibrated.

The servers at these kinds of places really are career professionals, and it shows.

Turns out when you really care about something and do it for a long time under the tutelage of experts, you can get literally 10 or 100 times better at, say, serving someone water without being noticed.

They are also, in my experience, just as excited as you are. These people love their work, or they wouldn't be there; they get so happy when people love the food they're serving, and they're always ready to gush with you about how good it is. Very fun interactions.

Working at a high quality fine dining restaurant in any capacity is hard work.

I don't think it's possible to do it unless you actually enjoy it.

> I’ve been to many places with inferior levels of validation that were much more pretentious, like the Italian places all over America where nothing is in English but you have to pretend you’re cultured enough to just know what everything is - there’s more English on menus in actual Italy! Even in the middle of nowhere!

IMO these are the worst restaurants; wanna-be "fine dining" which simply isn't..