It's a good litmus test for a restaurant too, because I've found it tends to have an uncanny valley. At less formal restaurants, the staff are chill enough to

It's a good litmus test for a restaurant too, because I've found it tends to have an uncanny valley. At less formal restaurants, the staff are chill enough to immediately tell you what they eat. At high end restaurants, they can tell you because they've had tastings and ingredient drills. In the middle? You run into the weird "just enough training to pretend to be formal, but not enough to actually have comprehensive menu knowledge." Hence a lot of refusal to make recommendations or braindead "Do you like steak? The steak's good." (And yes, I know all the ways that customers are assholes about recommendations)