🚀 go-pugleaf

We've found that most restaurants in DC are accommodating us reasonably 
well as far as keeping us away from cigarette smoke is concerned, but I'm 
surprised at the places that act like they've never HEARD of such a thing 
as a non-smoking section, or at least can't seem to provide one.

Last week we walked into Nero's (which I had just given a decent review a 
few weeks earlier) and asked to sit in non-smoking. They have two 
separate rooms, and the first time we went there one of the rooms was the 
smoke-free zone. Easy division. This time, people were smoking in the 
non-smoking room. The host shrugged. "They were a party. That's where we 
had enough space to seat them." We walked out.

Some months ago we went to Tony Cheng's Seafood restaurant. We specified 
no-smoking, as always, but upon sitting at our table realized people were 
smoking next to us. We complained, the staff acted like they hadn't 
understood what we wanted the first time, and moved us elsewhere. But 
elsewhere had ashtrays on the table. Seemingly perplexed, the waiters 
moved us a third time, and again we were surrounded by smokers. Now, this 
is quite a large room, and it also seems to be a popular place. Why they 
carried on like they didn't understand what we wanted, I can't fathom. 
Why they thought we wouldn't notice if they moved us to ANOTHER 
smoking-area table, I can't fathom. That was really insulting. We stormed 
out.

The first time we went to Coppi's (or was it Utopia? It was on that block
of U Street) there was ONE table in the non-smoking section--right next to
the first smoking-section table. Brilliant. 

We've had situations where the host acted bewildered that someone would 
request a non-smoking table, and would try to remedy the situation by 
offering to seat us in an area where all the tables had ashtrays but no 
one happened to be smoking AT THAT MOMENT. "Nobody's smoking here," they 
say. Uh huh. Are you planning on telling all the people who are already 
sitting at the surrounding tables that they now can't smoke for the rest 
of the evening? Of course not. Geniuses. We really came here to have our 
intelligence insulted this way.

I can't think offhand of any real restaurants that are smoke-free. Some 
McDonalds seem to be, as are Au Bon Pain shops.