"Please Don't Bathe in Perfume Before Eating Out"

[Robin Garr]

Please Don't Bathe in Perfume Before Eating Out
by Sarah Baird
Food52 Blog
It doesn’t matter if you’re a sandalwood lady or a musky man: There’s really nothing worse than smelling like you’ve been swimming in a kiddie pool of perfume. In my eyes, it’s a public service to keep your scent-of-choice to just an ever-so-faint wisp—like a lovely, well-kept secret.

Read the full blog post at the link. Then come back and tell us what you think about this.

https://food52.com/blog/17469-please-do ... eating-out

Scent is just so personal. Perfume should be something intimate—my gift to you—and not something you can smell four tables over.

With one exception, I am in complete agreement. That being, one should be free of another's scent even from just one table over.....or even seated next to another at a bar.

I also agree that perfume can be just as bad as BO. I will add that it is often even more intrusive.

This happened to me last week at Seviche on the patio. I was half way through my wahoo ceviche when this party of 4 was seated next to us. One lady's perfume cut right through and negated the delicate flavors, completely ruining the dish.

This put me on the cusp of asking for us to be moved, which begs the question; Should the offending table be asked to move or should you? Philosophically, I say the former. However, I am a path of least resistance type of guy, so I would just ask to be moved in order to prevent a potential scene.

(Grammatical/spelling/syntax disclaimer: This was posted with clumsy thumbs on a small mobile device)

[Robin Garr]

This put me on the cusp of asking for us to be moved, which begs the question; Should the offending table be asked to move or should you? Philosophically, I say the former. However, I am a path of least resistance type of guy, so I would just ask to be moved in order to prevent a potential scene.

I think that's the better pick, Ray. Not just for following the path of least resistance, but if you're willing to move, you know the reason and that it's not the restaurant's fault. If you insist that they confront Mr. or Ms. Stench and force them to an unwilling move, they've probably lost a customer. That might be all right by us but it's a penalty on the restaurant's business.

What a pity the poor woman didn't have real enough friends to advise her about her heavy hand. Everyone's nose works at a different level and it could be (surely?) that she had no idea. Unless she was going for the "Here I am everyone! Don't I smell?!" entrance.