In the Bag

FOOD & DRINK

More and more, the food in U.S. restaurants seems to be going to the dogs --going there in paper sacks called Bowser Bags and Bow-Wow Bags.

Of course, Bowser may never get within smelling range of his fancy dinner, but diners-out have grown so in sistent on taking home the leftovers on their plates that restaurant supply houses now sell millions of special greaseproof containers for this purpose each year. "The demand is growing so great," says a flack for elegant Ernie's in San Francisco, "that we are now in the process of having a foil-lined box designed for us that will carry the restaurant's crest."

Boxes for Tiaras. So many bag toters cling to the pious fiction that they are taking the filet home to Fido that almost every restaurateur has a story about the child who pipes up: "But when are we getting a dog, Mommy?" Exasperated waiters have been known to take revenge on such hypocrites by stuffing their Bowser Bags with bones and other morsels that only a dog would appreciate, or else by putting in strawberry shortcake and similar goodies designed to send a canine to an early grave. Zaberers' Old Gables Inn in Atlantic City simply labels its containers People Bags.

Very few restaurants claim that their clientele is too well fed or bred to haul home scraps. Some places, like New Jersey's Smithville Inn, even wrap guests' unfinished home-baked bread. Manhattan's famed "21" Club humors the carriage trade by tucking unfinished delicacies in smart, ribbon-tied boxes that look as if they held tiaras rather than T-bones. At The Colony, which trills each lunchtime with some of the most expensive giggles in the world, guests' pooches eat on the house--dogs in the men's room, bitches retire to lunch in the powder room. But The Colony's management is delighted to send shut-ins Mommy's unfinished capon en geele avec sauce nic,oise.

On a Silver Platter. All too frequently, complain restaurant owners, guests use doggie bags to haul off pilfered ashtrays, pepper mills, and silverware. A waiter in a smart West Coast spot got suspicious when a svelte woman customer actually demanded a doggie bag before taking a single bite of the sizzling steak he had just set before her. When he inquired discreetly if she were feeling unwell, she explained that her girdle was killing her; after a visit to the ladies' room, she returned to polish off the steak, her girdle doggie-bagged under her chair.

The ultimate in Bowser baggery may have occurred at Ernie's, when six fashionable San Franciscans ordered a rack of lamb, then got so thoroughly marinated in martinis that they couldn't eat the meat. Home with the host went the entire roast, with all its trimmings, foil-wrapped on a silver salver.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.