Two-Top

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Alina from Fort Worth, Texas.

Alina, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

I had a question that had to do with restaurant lingo.

I’ve been working in restaurants around Fort Worth for about six years,

And we have a phrase that we use when we’re describing the size of a table.

We call it, we reference the size by using the word top.

So if there was a couple at a table, we would call that a two-top.

And if there’s more than six people at a table, like if we had to put two tables together for a group of eight or nine, we call that a big top.

And I always wondered what that was about.

Is it referencing the table top or is T.O.P. Short for something?

What I understand from this lingo, and this comes from all the people that I’ve known throughout my life who work in this business, because every time you talk to them about restaurant jargon, it’s all great.

What I understand is that it originally came about as a distinction between seating people at the bar and seating people at a table.

And so you were emphasizing the top aspect, which is two place settings on top of the table, even if there were four chairs, right?

And at a bar, you don’t really care one way or the other because you’re just putting them at the bar, right?

And you don’t even really have to – you’re not setting up a table.

You’re not moving chairs.

You’re not changing place settings.

They’re just at the bar, and it’s all kind of out of your hands.

Yeah, and last year I actually worked on a cruise ship for rural Caribbean,

And so this is an international setting,

And even then sometimes we would reference people like that two-top over there.

Right, right.

I just didn’t know if they’d pick that up since we were in the United States cruising,

Or is this truly something all over the world?

I like the big top for the big table.

That’s pretty funny because it doesn’t really kind of indicate

That there’s a circus happening over there with a lot of crazy stuff, right?

Yeah, we just say go to the big top.

It’s the biggest table in the restaurant.

Just go over there.

And to keep that table happy, you kind of feel like a clown in a clown car, right?

Yeah.

Running around with your refills and jokes.

Yeah, yeah.

You got your spritzer bottle and your honker and everything else.

I also wanted to tell you guys about a new slang that I recently learned about.

The restaurant I work in is owned by Mexicans in the Fort Worth area,

And most of the people who work there are Hispanic, but it’s owned by a Mexican family.

And apparently there’s a slang that’s somewhat regional to Mexico.

And so that’s why it says specifically Mexican.

When somebody orders waters, and if you were to tell another waiter, you know, go get me three waters,

You reference that by taking the palm of your hand and tapping your elbow.

And this is brand new to me as a Caucasian in Fort Worth.

But apparently in Mexico, there’s a region where people are considered to be cheap.

I don’t want to name the region.

But the nickname in Mexico only, apparently, for these people is Coro.

Coro, elbow.

Elbow.

And so if a table were to order three iced teas, you’d hold up the number three and make a little time-out tea.

And two waters, you’d hold up the number two and tap your elbow to reference that they’re cheap.

And they wanted only water.

Oh, interesting.

I love that.

It’s Chihuahua State, right?

It’s actually Monterey.

Monterey, okay.

That’s interesting. In Argentina, I’ve heard a phrase that translates as tight from the elbow.

If somebody’s a real cheapskate, he’s tight from the elbow.

So maybe that’s what that is.

I have no idea. I did ask around to some of my Hispanic co-workers why the elbow.

And he said, in Mexico, that’s just what we do to reference people from Monterey.

That’s cool. I love this.

That’s a new one.

I thank you so much for this, Alina. This is wonderful stuff.

And I love the restaurant slang and jargon. It’s beautiful.

We’ll link to a bunch of this great stuff that we find online.

We’ll put some links on at waywordradio.org.

But I also want to say I really got turned on to the kind of multinational aspect of the restaurant business

When I was reading Anthony Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidential.

And he talks about kind of this multilingual, multiracial, kind of multi-whatever experience

Of the Spanish and the English, kind of this weird kitchen Spanglish.

And one of the terms he uses is, tell me if you know this, en mota.

Mota is slang for marijuana, but it refers to dicing up green vegetables like chives or onions or something or peppers, right?

So you do the peppers in Mota.

It means you dice them up so they look like marijuana.

I don’t know.

Oh, that’s funny.

No, I haven’t heard that, but I’m a front of the house girl.

So I have slangs for customers, slangs for drinks and types of food.

But yeah.

Front of the house and back of the house.

And sometimes they’re called the fro and the bro or the foe and the bow.

Yeah.

All this different language.

There’s a friendly battle between who’s cooler, the front of the house, and the back of the house.

I will have to ask one of them, though.

Alina, you have to send us more slang when you find it, and we’ll share it on the show, all right?

We do.

I will try my best to find appropriate slang.

We like to wear a little loose with our lists in the restaurant.

I’ll send all that to Grant.

He’ll take it.

Anthony Bourdain works a little blue as well.

Thank you so much.

It’s good to hear from you.

Thanks, Alina.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Love to hear your slang from your workplace.

877-929-9673.