It's a bird, it's a plane …
no, it's the Hawk Woman!

By By Robert St. John / food columnist
July 14, 2004
The lifeblood of a restaurant is its regular customers. Before I opened my first restaurant, I worked for seven years as a waiter in other restaurants. As a waiter, I learned a lot of the ins and outs of the restaurant business. At one restaurant, the head waiter took me aside on my first day and gave me the run-down on all of the regular customers.
Then he pulled me in close, looked me straight in the eye and warned, "Whatever you do, steer clear of the Hawk Woman, the Carnivore, the Camel Woman and the Lunch Bunch." And then he walked away.
I didn't know what to think. The Camel Woman? The Carnivore? They sounded like villains in a Superman comic book. Later, when I pressed him for an explanation, he just said, "You'll see." Over the next few weeks, I came to know these restaurant villains well.
The regulars
The Camel Woman came in twice a week, always alone. She was a normal-looking, middle-aged woman. She didn't order strange foods or make peculiar requests. She was actually very polite and an average tipper.
My fellow waiters had given her this nickname because she drank an obscene amount of water with every meal. I'm not talking about five or six glasses of water, she drank five or six pitchers, never once having to get up and go to the bathroom (in retrospect, maybe they should have called her The Bladder).
If the Camel Woman was seated in your section, you were going to spend most of your time filling her water glass and neglecting other tables.
The Carnivore was a man who ate his steaks extremely rare. I'm not talking about deep-crimson-in-the-middle rare. This guy wanted his steak raw.
What's the use, I thought? Twenty seconds accomplishes nothing. It's not carpaccio or steak tartar. It was just a cheap ribeye. He looked a like a caveman, and was often rude, so I figured he had earned his moniker.
The Lunch Bunch was a group of four men who came in once a week and were the lousiest tippers in the restaurant. I never had to serve the Lunch Bunch in the five years I waited tables there.
The Hawk Woman was not an ornithologist or a customer who acted like a bird of prey. The Hawk Woman's only crime was that she had a very angular bouffant hairdo and an unfortunate profile.
Nickname evolution
Over the years, I knew other regulars whose habitual patronage garnered them nicknames for one reason or another.
Mr. Eye of the Swan was a man who ordered the same wine every time. The Split Family Robinson was a family who came in and fed three people from one entre. (Splitting entrees drives waiters crazy. As an owner, I am grateful to have someone sitting in a seat, so split away).
Sometimes customer nicknames can be troublesome. Such is the case with the Gropers.
The Gropers were a couple in their late 60s, so named because they had a clandestine lunch once a week in a corner booth. I never saw it, but other waiters reported funny business going on under the table. They arrived in separate cars and left separately.
One day a waiter made a mistake and when he presented the check to the table, instead of saying "Thank you, Mr. Smith," he slipped and said, "Thank you, Mr. Groper. Oops … uh … uh … I mean … thank you, uh … Mr. Smith." We never saw them again.
Nowadays, I am a regular at several restaurants. I have probably garnered a few villainous nicknames myself. Names such as: "The Tea Man" (the Camel Woman's arch nemesis). "Just bring that St. John guy a pitcher," they probably say. "He'll keep you running all day."
Or maybe they call me "The Stomach," for the large amounts of food I am able to consume in one sitting. "Warn the kitchen, The Stomach is at table 26 again. He's probably going to order the right side of the menu this time."
More than likely I am known as the father of "The Kid." "Batten down the hatches, hide all of the knives, lock all of the doors and put on your body armor The Kid is back!"
Robert St. John is the executive chef/owner of the Purple Parrot Caf, Crescent City Grill, and Mahogany Bar in Hattiesburg and Meridian, www.nsrg.com.