"So, do we order? Like, what we want?"

Has anyone noticed how more and more waiters, upon first visiting your lucky table, lead off not with the traditional question about your desire for a beverage, but with this:

"Have you been here to [this restaurant] before?"

And I'm yet to understand why. I could understand if this was some special restaurant with prix fixe meals, or one that showcases wine pairings, or even one that specializes in Dim Sum. In these cases, when a new customer is wondering why the heck the chef is filleting some poor octopus at your table with some scary-looking knives, I can see why the waiter has to explain the process to newcomers, so that no rookie mistakes occur, like returning your too-rare tuna to the Benihana grill after you've taken two bites.

But why would a normal, run-of-the-mill restaurant ever need to ask whether you've been there before?

Perhaps they look to welcome returning customers with great pomp and circumstance. However, restaurants to which my friends and I return "welcome" us back not with celebration, but with fear and trepidation, much like the French seeing the return of the Germans.

Perhaps they notice that I'm foreign and need instruction in the art of America. However, I don't. Also waiter seldom realize I'm foreign, since, when they ask that question, don't enunciate LOUDLY AND SLOWLY, while moving their hands a lot in front of a huuuuuge, friendly, phony phony phony smile.

Or perhaps they simply think that we don't know Standard Operating Procedure at restaurants, and feel the need to remind us that it is they, and not us, that are supposed to go into the kitchen to retrieve the food. I mean, when I was asked into the kitchen barged into the kitchen like a bull in heat, it wasn't that big a deal. I was just hungry. Like, really hungry. And really, it's their fault that I got seated next to the kitchen. And a man my size and shape, so near the kitchen, with the smell coming in and out, and, well, obviously not in his full senses, well, what do they expect?

And hey, at least it wasn't the bar.