Should Restaurants Have a Split-Plate Charge for Shared Salads?

My husband and I recently dined out with another couple at a new family-owned Italian restaurant in our town, eager to support a fledgling independent eatery amidst a sea of Chili's, Chevys and other corporate chow chains. All four of us ordered separate entrees; each couple also ordered a salad to share. To our surprise, when the check arrived we were charged two split-plate charges of $3.50 each for the two shared salads.

Before you assume I am a cheapskate, I have no quibble with the concept of split-plate charges in general. In this age of frugality and fat-o-phobia, many couples now split entrées, mega-meals that have been super-sized to feed two people or, in some cases, entire villages. When my husband and I share an entrée, we usually order an extra salad, appetizer and/or dessert to fatten the tab (if not our waist lines). Still, some restaurants charge a fee for splitting just one entrée, and we have never batted an eyelash at this practice, realizing their need to earn a minimum return on each table.

But charging a fee to share a salad is a horse radish of a different color. It is bad enough that restaurants that like to fancy themselves as fine dining establishments do not include a soup or salad course with their entrées, as if doing so would be lowbrow. But when they charge about half the price of an entrée for their salads and then provide a salad serving large enough for two people, it doesn't take a psychic to predict that salads will be shared. Instead of rewarding diners for adding to their tab, restaurants that charge a split-plate charge for sharing a salad before the entrée are nickle and diming their customers at their own peril.

What was especially ironic in this case of the salad split-plate charge was that neither couple asked the waiter to divide the salad in two. My husband and I frequently share a salad and are happy to two-fork it. If the waiter goes to the trouble of serving the salad on two separate plates, we reward him with a larger tip, but we never ask for two plates. Barring the waiter's eavesdropping on our conversation, he had no way to know whether we were planning to share the salads, so he split them of his own accord, making him complicit in the bad taste that was left in our mouth after an otherwise delicious meal.

Not surprisingly, the other couple's first reaction was to penalize the waiter. Instead, they opted to ask him about the split-plate charge, and after a lame explanation involving "the computer," he conferred with the manager and had the charges removed. A savvier waiter might have asked if we wanted separate salad servings and spared himself and his customers unnecessary awkwardness, not to mention the potential for a shrimpier tip.

As it turns out, the restaurant's menu does indicate there is a $3.50 charge for split plates, but even if we had seen this, we would have assumed it was for entrees and not for salads. After all, we also ordered one bottle of wine for the whole table and one dessert for the whole table, neither of which incurred a split-plate or split-bottle charge. Why choose the most nutritious course to single out for this dubious honor?

Ultimately, restaurants have the right to charge whatever they wish for their food and service. Why not get creative and start charging for using their bathroom or being seated at a table (as some restaurants do in Europe)? Fortunately, customers also have rights, perhaps the most important of which is the right to choose whether or not to return to a restaurant that imposes silly surcharges on salad splitting.