It sounds like one of those nightmares you might have had. You know the one, where you suddenly find yourself with no clothes on, in a public place with everyone staring at you. A couple of years ago, David Thorneycroft was managing a restaurant in Liverpool's city centre when Valentine's night came around. "A woman was going to propose to her boyfriend and she had arranged everything in advance with us, " he says. This wasn't going to be a subtle bended knee approach - she was planning to jump out of a giant cake, wearing nothing but lingerie. "She had made sure there was somewhere to hide the cake, we had discussed the layout of the restaurant and made sure we sat him with his back to where she was going to come from."
During the meal, she went off to get changed - or rather, undressed - and Thorneycroft and a waiter wheeled the huge (fake) cake out to his table. In front of 120 diners, to the tune of "their song", she burst out of it as confetti flew everywhere, and asked him to marry her. "He didn't say a word, " recalls Thorneycroft. "There was not a speck of emotion on his face. He just got up and walked out. She was standing there, in her underwear, in this giant cake with confetti all around her. It was just awful. For a few seconds, nobody knew what to do." They got her out of the room so she could get dressed. "The atmosphere in the restaurant was quite subdued after that, " says Thorneycroft. "You should only propose somewhere so public if you're 100% positive the person is going to say yes, " he says, adding, "though she was sure he'd say yes."
Valentine's night is the busiest shift of the year for restaurants and some people clearly love the attention of a very public proposal in front of a packed restaurant, says Josie Stead, manager of the Gallery restaurant at Sketch in London. Others, she says, "do it quietly and privately at their table." Either way, she is always surprised at how people go about it. "One man came in during the day and gave us the ring to look after until he brought his partner in that night. Later, we found out it was worth £80, 000. Thankfully nothing happened to it but it was very trusting of him. We have also been asked to put rings in desserts or glasses of champagne. That always makes me nervous."
James Robson, managing director of Mews of Mayfair, has witnessed several marriage proposals that have gone wrong over the years, including one when a City banker wanted to put a large diamond in his girlfriend's glass of champagne, before he asked her to marry him. "The maitre d' and I warned him this wasn't a very good idea, but he was determined, " says Robson. "Unfortunately, the woman had already had a few cocktails and she didn't notice the diamond in her glass and swallowed it. The man went bright red, grabbed his girlfriend, and made a swift exit, knocking over the table as he went. He didn't even pay his bill." He adds, "I don't know if they ever retrieved the diamond."
The restaurant at Stoke Park country club in Buckinghamshire is another popular spot for proposals. The executive chef Chris Wheeler remembers one heart-stopping (in a bad way) episode a couple of years ago. A man had given his girlfriend two dozen red roses and she had asked the restaurant to put them in the fridge to keep them fresh while they had dinner. "We had other flowers in the fridge to give out to customers as part of our Valentine's night package, " says Wheeler. The doorman mistook the woman's flowers for the restaurant's flowers he was supposed to be giving out, and gave a rose to 24 other couples as they were leaving. "When we realised, we wrapped up some more flowers really nicely, apologised profusely and gave them to the woman, " says Wheeler. The man went "ballistic." "He had hooped a diamond ring on one of the roses and we had given it away to another customer." They had to phone everyone who had been given a rose and, luckily, one of them brought the ring back. While the proposal had gone horribly wrong, there is a happy ending. "The couple had their wedding here and they're regular customers, " says Wheeler.
Most of the marriage proposals at the OXO restaurant in London have been successful - one man had a huge banner unfurled from the top of the building on the opposite side of the river Thames reading 'Will you marry me?' - but it's the ones which weren't which lodge in the mind for longer, says the brasserie manager Sian Cox. On one Valentine's night, a woman turned down a proposal and her boyfriend stormed out; another man in the restaurant, whose girlfriend had suddenly left him too, went to sit with her to commiserate. Which made things awkward when her boyfriend returned 10 minutes later to apologise.
"We often get people asking for 'Will you marry me?' to be written in chocolate on dessert plates, " says Cox. "One woman who received one panicked and ran off to the loo. On her way she stopped a waiter and asked us to send her boyfriend one back reading 'Not a hope in hell'." Remarkably accommodating, the restaurant agreed to do it, though they said it might be better - and safer for the poor waiter, perhaps - if she delivered it herself. "Luckily, he thought it was very funny, " says Cox. "She just said she wasn't ready to get married. I think they stayed together."
译文:
听起来就像是那种恶梦,你可能也做过。你突然发现你自己赤裸裸的在一个公共场合,所有人都盯着你看,你懂的。几年前,熊大卫管理利物浦城中心的一家餐馆,当时刚好到了情人节。“一个女人要向她男朋友求婚,她提前把什么都跟我们安排好了,”他说。这不是一个单膝着地的低调求婚,她打算从一个巨大的蛋糕中跳出来,什么都不穿,只穿内衣。”她找了地方藏蛋糕,我们一起讨论了餐馆的布局,确保她男朋友背对着她会出来的地方。“