What they’re reading
Whether you're comfortable in a nice room. Whether they'd put you in front of their own people. Whether you'll drink too much.
What to wear
A jacket. Always a jacket, even when they said casual, especially when they said casual. No tie unless you know they'll wear one. Dark trousers, leather shoes.
The logic is simple. You can always take a jacket off. You cannot produce one.
What to bring
A card. And a credit card you've already handed to the host or the maître d' on the way in, so the check never touches the table.
When to arrive
Ten minutes early, and the booking is yours. Ask for a table away from the kitchen door and the service station, and ask when you book rather than when you arrive, because by then the only table left is the one nobody asked for. You are about to talk across that table for two hours and those are the two loudest points in any dining room. Then stop at the host stand on your way in. That's where the card goes anyway. Give them your guest's name while you're standing there, and ask them to walk your guest to the table. If the place is small, don't sit at all. Wait by the door and walk in together.
The first sixty seconds
Your instinct is the seat facing the door. Everybody's is. You want to see them come in and you want to see the room. Give it away. The seat with the view is your guest's. You take the quiet side, where you can see the approach without facing the entrance.
There are two reasons and the second one is the real one. You don't need the door, because you already asked the host stand to walk your guest to the table, so they arrive escorted and you'll see them coming from ten feet out. And anyone who can see the whole room looks at the whole room. Your eyes go to the door every time it opens. You never notice you're doing it and your guest catches every one of them. The lesser seat isn't manners. It's what keeps your attention on the one person who's supposed to have it.
If it's a banquette, the banquette is theirs. If it's a four-top, take a side chair. Be on your feet before they reach the table. Greet by name. Do not open with business. Order a drink at the same tier as your guest. If they order sparkling water, you order sparkling water. If they order a glass of wine, you order a glass of wine. Matching is the entire move.
How to act
Listen for
who at their table defers to whom, because the org chart in the room is rarely the org chart on paper, and the quiet one is often the one who decides. Listen for the personal thing somebody mentions once and never returns to, because that's what you follow up on in six weeks. And listen for the problem they raise casually, almost as an aside. That's usually the real one. The rehearsed problem is the one they lead with.
When you speak
they set the pace and you match it. If business comes up, follow it. If it hasn't come up by dessert, let it go and put it in writing tomorrow morning. A dinner where nobody discussed business is not a failed dinner, and treating it like one is how you turn a relationship into a transaction.
How you speak
ask more than you answer. Aim for them talking about sixty percent of the time. When you do talk about your own work, one sentence and then a question back.
Your body
phone in your jacket. Not on the table, not face down on the table, not in your hand under the table. Away, and for the whole meal.
The thing you can't fake
how you treat the server. Everyone at that table is watching, including the ones who look like they aren't, and it's the only unguarded read they'll get of you all night.
The mistake
Two of them, and they're both about money and control.
Ordering the most expensive thing on the menu. Order in the middle. Nobody has ever lost a deal ordering the second-cheapest entrée and plenty of men have lost one ordering the veal.
And letting the check land on the table. Handle it before you sit down. A check that arrives, gets grabbed at, and gets argued over turns the last five minutes of a good dinner into a small performance about who has money.
One more. Stop drinking one drink before you want to.
The guide
All twelve rooms,
with the drawings.
Fifty-eight pages. Free, and there is no email field.