Dining some nights only?

[darnheather]

Is that an actual thing? waiting for the other group?

If I were dining with friends, of course I'd wait. But if sharing a table with some randoms, I'd be quite frustrated if the servers expected me to wait for them to arrive prior to ordering/eating?

I was raised that one waits for the people seated at your table, at least a respectable amount of time. And I wouldn't say they are "randoms" they were our table mates.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Is that an actual thing? waiting for the other group?

If I were dining with friends, of course I'd wait. But if sharing a table with some randoms, I'd be quite frustrated if the servers expected me to wait for them to arrive prior to ordering/eating?

Yes. In most cases, unless the missing/late party has informed the server that they are not going to be there, they will wait a while to see if anyone shows up. Serving the same table different courses at the same time (one party just receiving appetizers while the other party has already moved onto entree) can mess with the whole flow of all tables that server is handling.

Generally, the first night in the dining room, if we have plans to not be there on any subsequent nights we will tell both our servers and our table mates. And also, we give them (servers and tablemates) the head's up of "if we're not here within 5-8 minutes of dining opening time, go ahead without us."