by Anti-Foodie | My least favourite customer is the Cougar’s male equivalent, known colloquially in the business as the Hawkpanther. That’s a guy in his mid-forties to mid-fifties who dyes his greying hair, tips 10% on good service, wears artificially ripped denim, over-tans his skin, drops names of people he doesn’t know, drives a leased Audi TT and masturbates to watches Jersey Shore to stay current. What does he do for a living? Property development, stock speculation, investment banking, law or sales. If asked, he’ll say his favourite band is Eminem (when it’s really UB40), and when cornered, he’ll insist that there is such a thing as red Chardonnay and that Rob Feenie was best man at his current girlfriend’s wedding. In other words, he’s what total douchebags eventually grow up to be, meaning he’s the worst fucking customer in the entire world.

Because we’re what the old folks call a “hip” kind of restaurant, these shitwits are mercifully rare in these parts. When they do make an appearance, I won’t hesitate to pawn them off to a female server, with [manager] acting as my willing accomplice. “They don’t want him anyway,” he’ll tell her, “on account of his penis”. Thank Christ.

One of our number, [female server], was caught with 6 of them during service on Saturday night. She had a hell of a time for all of 12% on a $530 bill (all red meat and rye). They stayed until well after we’d closed telling racist jokes and generally making asses of themselves. Poor girl and all, but better her than me.

As we sat there, doing our cashouts and eating leftover bread and drinking a bottle of good Cava that we’d pooled together for to buy at cost, we wondered where they usually hunted for their prey. Here are a few of the local restaurants that we came up with for Vancouver’s first (and hopefully last) Lair of the Hawkpanther award. Do your Scout duty and pick the winner…