Dining out at a restaurant is one of life’s little luxuries – enjoying food and drinks you didn’t have to make for yourself.
But the experience can often be let down by irritating behaviour from fellow diners.
Perhaps the people at the table next to you are being incredibly rude to the waiters, or maybe there’s a screaming child running riot through the restaurant.
One person who has likely seen and heard it all from diners is MasterChef: The Professionals judge Marcus Wareing.
The 54-year-old chef has worked in restaurants for 35 years, and until December last year owned and ran his own one Michelin Star eatery in Seven Dials, Marcus.
But what is it that restaurant goers do that really gets under his skin? Well, it turns out there are two things he wishes customers would stop doing, and the first is all to do with being on your phone while out for a meal.
This is something many of us will likely be guilty of, especially if you’re eating at somewhere particularly aesthetically pleasing.
‘Stop taking photographs and enjoy your dinner,’ Marcus tells Metro.co.uk. ‘You don’t need to film yourself eating your dish. Just eat dinner and enjoy the company that you’re with.’
The chef went on to say that he finds it ‘weird’ how obsessed we are with scrolling on our phones when we go out.
‘One of the things I see a lot in restaurants is people just glued to their phones. It could be a romantic dinner or just people going out with their mates, but you see them and they’ve just got their heads down looking at their phones. I find it quite weird. You’re supposed to be out for a reason.’
And the other thing Marcus really wishes people would stop doing is complaining after they’ve eaten their dinner.
‘People never complain or bring up any issues when they’re actually in the restaurant, the majority of people just seem to accept their food even if they’re not happy with it,’ he says. ‘They’ll suck it up and eat it and then send an email or go on Tripadvisor and complain.
‘Good restaurants love to make the customer feel happy, so if you say something during the meal, they’ll put the problem or mistake right, or give you something like a glass of champagne to cheer you up.’
The expert continues: ‘We don’t want to make people’s lunches or dinners miserable and we certainly don’t want to make mistakes, so we really do like it if you mention a problem right there and then.
‘It’s easy to go home and be a laptop critic and expect a long-winded investigation to take place, and that is exactly what happens, when people write to you afterwards a massive investigation has to take place into who was it, what happened and it can take hours to get to the bottom of it.’
Marcus adds that even after spending ages looking into the issue and sending a response to the customer, often the diner still won’t be happy with the outcome, which is frustrating as the upset could have been avoided if they’d spoken up earlier.
This comes after the chef, who is also an ambassador for P&G Professional, shared his thoughts on the popularity of Dishoom with Metro.co.uk.
We spoke to experts about why people still feel the need to queue for hours to get into the Bombay-inspired restaurants despite the chain having been open for 14 years.
Marcus praised Dishoom for still being able to draw crowds, while other restaurants were struggling.
‘Dishoom is really interesting,’ he said. ‘You see them dotted all around now. I remember when they opened the first one in Covent Garden and the reviews had been absolutely outstanding, and their story was beautifully told… Owning a restaurant opposite it, and watching people queue every day was one of the hardest things to see as a restaurateur.’
Despite refusing to queue, Marcus is still a fan of the food. ‘I don’t go very often now, because I don’t want to queue outside of a restaurant, I just can’t be bothered.
‘They’ve not lost me as a customer though, if I happen to walk past and I’m hungry and there’s no queue then I’ll go in.
The expert went on to share his thoughts on what drives the queues, and for him the answer was obvious: it’s the power of social media.
‘I actually went to one a little while ago in Seven Dials for a breakfast meeting. It was a wet, horrible Tuesday, 8 o’clock in the morning, it was pouring down with rain, I walked in and my mouth just dropped on the floor, because it was full.
‘It’s like what the f**k? How do you do this? What is their magic? Because it’s not just there, it’s at all their restaurants, and that’s social media, that’s TikTok — it’s really re-invented the way that people go out and eat.’
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