NEIGHBOR blogger Simon wonders about the striking disparity in service and charges between fancy restaurants such as a noted one in Tarlac and the hole-in-the-wall beerhouses of Metro Manila.

With the first, you wait interminably for your order and get billed stratospherically when you pay; with the latter, you are treated like a king from your first step inside their unassuming interiors and pay only the most reasonable of charges — with discounts to boot!

Makes you want to come back again and again, Simon says.

It’s something, the observation that is, I’ve been wanting to write about but somehow keep putting off, this brand of service for the haves and the have-nots. Yup, I’ve dined in that Tarlac place Simon talked about and I confirm his observation– harang! Somehow, you get the feeling the policy is NOT to welcome diners, that somehow you are made to feel like you’ve wandered in unbidded and should eat-and-leave as fast as you could — Begone!

In contrast, those small restaurants (nope, am not referring to those food chains where their “Good morning, sirs, mams” are as pat and dry as their burgers, minus the sauce) give far better royal treatment, not on the basis of your signature clothes and shoes but on your plain “honored”presence in their place. Don’t tell me these guys and gals finished HRMs and other great training — it just oozes out of them, the homegrown hospitality we are noted for — while the aristocratic eating places in Tarlac and Makati didn’t. Fat chance, that.

Maybe, it’s their (waiters’) character, maybe it’s their managers and bosses, maybe it’s the environment they work in. Then again, maybe it’s the color of money — they can just smell a good tipper or a big spender a mile away and you, you trying hard copycat (didn’t you hear that one before from Cherrie Gil and Imee Marcos on TV somewhere?) don’t measure up!

In any case, why ever go to a place and spend good money where you’re not welcome? For the food? For the ambience? Spare me, Tulume!