Ask a Somm: Is It Rude to Spend a Long Time Choosing a Bottle?

There’s such a charm to lively dining rooms. Metal utensils clink over ceramic plates, faces are lit by flickering candles, a subtle yet chaotic hustle seeps from the kitchen, and diners’ voices reinforce the general hum. It’s easy to get caught up in the magic of a bustling restaurant — and it’s equally easy to forget that those serving you are on the clock.

Dining out requires a bit of a quid pro quo. Yes, you’re paying for the experience, but there’s often an implied mindfulness that waitstaff must turn tables to please the next round of hungry customers and maximize the night’s profits.

A server’s order of operations almost always begins with asking about drinks, and ensuring a swift dining experience means getting beverages to the table promptly. But amid the buzz of a happening restaurant, some guests might sit back and loiter before ordering a bottle of wine to kick off the meal. What they don’t realize is that this delays and disrupts service for all team members. Elle Roberts, a New York City-based sommelier who runs the wine education Instagram account @uncorked.elle, says a bottle order starts to cause trouble once it happens 25 minutes or more after the guests’ arrival.

“I totally understand when the guest is with clients or friends and they want to spend a nice, long time chatting at the beginning, but ordering absolutely nothing for 25-plus minutes starts to get unreasonable for the amount of time they’ll be holding the table,” she says.

Roberts’ perspective comes from her fine-dining training — in other words, even restaurants that rarely enforce strict time limits for table-turning feel the pressure from held-up drinks orders. This is especially true if the table doesn’t order anything to whet their palates before a bottle of wine.

“If the guest isn’t starting with cocktails or any aperitifs, the maximum time to spend looking through the list is 25 to 30 minutes, especially if they refuse help from the sommelier,” she says.

Daryl Coke, wine director at Bartolo, NYC’s latest buzzy Spanish-style restaurant, says guests don’t necessarily have a timer ticking on their orders, but receiving bottle requests allows her to plan how to serve the table from the get-go. As her ultimate goal is to please the guests, she views the waitstaff as unbeholden to time constraints.

“Since dinner only lasts a couple of hours, my goal is always to make sure you’re drinking the best possible version of what’s in your glass,” Coke says. “I need a moment to see what you’ve ordered, make a plan, and arrive with wine, sherry, or vermouth at just the right moment. The real time pressure is on us: stepping in before you default to a cocktail, keeping your glass comfortably full, and pacing things so there’s room for a second bottle or a great after-dinner pour.”

Apart from disrupting the flow of front-of-house functions, back-of-house staff also feel the effect of late drink asks, especially when food tickets arrive before guests decide on a bottle. Cooks know an order has come in, but they generally can’t fire dishes until the same table has received their drinks.

Ava Mees, head sommelier at the New Nordic trailblazer Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, says cooks are probably more opinionated about the time guests take to order a bottle of wine. “[It’s] more a question for impatient chefs who cannot send the food,” she says. “The answer [for them]: No matter how long is too long.”

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