A wet rag does not a clean table make

What does it take to clean the top of a table at your favorite restaurant? Not much, right?

Yet, the ability and methodology to clean a table top escaped the crew at Macaroni Grill in Ala Moana Center last week. I’ve cleaned my fair share of table tops through the years. It’s an art I learned from my mother, long an aficionado of things shiny and clean.

It can’t be that hard. Take a clean, dry cloth. Spray the table top with some kind of cleaner (Windex is the choice of my tables, though your mileage may vary). Wipe down the table top with the clean, dry cloth. Is that so hard? Yes.

What many cleaners fail to understand is the need to cover every inch of the table top with the cloth, and to replace the cloth after a few tables have been cleaned.

Instead, those same many cleaners simply grab a wet, grimy cloth, drag it in a haphazard manner here and there across the table’s top, and pronounce their effort done and the table clean.

And it clean it must be. Officially, if not in actuality. Often there are streaks of Not Clean left on the table top areas which were not wiped, and a putridly sour smell left from the wet in the cloth.

So it was at Macaroni Grill last week.

We noticed the smell right after we sat down at our table. A quick look under the paper table ‘cloth’ revealed the source. Unclean table, unclean smell. We asked for another table not near the unclean table.

The dining experience improved markedly. The waitress admitted that Macaroni Grill’s beer wasn’t as cold as she liked, and if I liked cold beer, I wouldn’t like theirs. But she suggested that if I wanted a cold beer and didn’t mind waiting 15 minutes, she’d have the bartender chill a bottle and a glass just for me.

Add five extra points to my Macaroni Grill report card. The calamari appetizer was the best I’ve ever had, anywhere, the grilled salmon was superbly tender and moist, and the asparagus gave me gas (not the fault of Macaroni Grill).

In other words, dinner at Macaroni Grill was good. Very good. It would have been better with a clean table top. Why? Because a wet rag does not a clean table make.