How are you folks doing?

Going for dinner in the USA, where I am at the moment is a cultural experience for a Dutchman, even one who has lived abroad for many years like me. First, you need to wait to be seated, this can take quite a few minutes. The seating is being done by someone that you will not see again for the rest of the evening. After that someone will come to the table introducing himself: " I am your server tonight". The restaurant where we ate tonight did not serve individual portions but only small - as in for 2-3 persons- and large -as in for 5-6 persons. Since we were only 2 we went for the small persons, which turned out to be as in for 4-5 persons. During the dinner our server came by a number of times, interrupting our conversation to find our whether we were really fine and whether everything was really OK. Paying for dinner takes a good mind for numbers as you are supposed to leave a 15% tip for the server. It is not considered a good idea to include this in the bill. Since we had enough food for 4 or 5 persons we had asked for a doggy bag, another American invention. Unfortunately after 5 minutes of waiting it became clear that they had thrown the extras and away and our server informed us that they were cooking a new portion so that we could take that with us. That was not really the intention and then we left.