1. Adopt the preparation methods of a bank robber: Stake out a restaurant for several weeks before your reservation (from a parked car across the street using high-powered binoculars) and determine the route taken by each bread server through the dining room. Calculate the position of the most-trafficked table, which you will then request upon arrival at the restaurant.
2. While on the stakeout, adopt a crash diet, aiming to lose 15-30 pounds, depending on your starting weight. Upon entrance, your waifish, gaunt appearance will elicit the concern of your waiter, not to mention fellow diners, who might be saving room for their entrees anyway and have extra bread to send your way.
3. When perusing menu, seek out items often served with bread (soups, heavily-sauced entrees, stews, etc). A well-trained server, sensitive to such things, will notice, and dole out additional buns with reckless abandon.
4. If you’re feeling neglected, display outward signs of hunger for the waitstaff’s benefit. Learn to salivate at the mouth on demand or, if unable, achieve the same effect by applying single Tabasco sauce (or another vinegar-based hot sauce) packet to your tongue, stimulating the salivary glands directly. If the ploy is successful and the restaurant is providing, say, a robust ciabatta, you can dress each piece with an additional packet for a kick of heat and prolonged salivation.
5. When the server holds out the bread basket, grasp the basket (not the bread) firmly, and look him/her calmly in the eyes. If he/she is dedicated, as all in the hospitality industry should be, to the notion that “the customer is always right,” he/she will feel unable to correct your dining etiquette and deny you. Upon prevailing, place the basket under the table and return to it as needed.
6. In the more rarified realms of upscale dining, specialized tasks such as the allocation of bread are assigned to specific members of the waitstaff, whose sole duty consists therein. After the first round of bread service, in order to establish rapport with the relevant server, effect a trip to the restroom, making sure to cross paths with them en route. Acknowledge, and smile warmly, as if in fond remembrance of favors bestowed, and keen anticipation of their continuance.
7. To call attention to your table’s bread shortage, demonstratively consume the now-purposeless condiments by themselves. If butter, cut yourself a morsel using the bread knife, place directly on your tongue, and allow to melt. If olive oil, sip directly from the shallow bowl. You may feel sick, and grimace; this will agitate the servers into more urgent dispensation of the bread.
8. Go to Olive Garden, soak unlimited complimentary breadsticks in unlimited complimentary tap water until softened, close your eyes, and ingest. Also, try the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno.
9. Submit and publish an article on ways to get more free bread that goes viral, calling attention to public demand for more generous restaurant bread policies, and eventually bringing about a paradigm shift in the food service industry’s approach to optimization and implementation of its diverse, wheat-based assets.
10. Develop a career as a freelance food writer, eventually becoming the chief restaurant critic of The New York Times. Once ensconced in the position and having a reputation for the utmost refinement of one’s palate and journalistic integrity, begin to review restaurants exclusively on the basis of how much free bread they give you, setting the food world afire with withering denunciations of “paltry, stale crumbs, unfit for mice,” and “wafer-like slivers of olive-studded mediocrity.” Peak with a brutal “no star” review of a celebrity chef’s highly-anticipated new downtown French brasserie (“my guests, since they did not count the Son of God amongst their number, could have used a few more loaves”). Now when you walk into a restaurant, brush past the genuflecting, terrified owners, take your seat, and expect to be served up a bountiful harvest.
11. Go before Congress and take a heroic fifteen-hour stand, testifying on behalf of downtrodden grain farmers in the sunbelt, imploring the legislative body to grant them long-overdue tax credits to counteract the effects of globalism, which has riven the fabric of the social and cultural order in the name of the market. Then, embark on a three-week speaking tour in a weathered Dodge Durango through that underappreciated part of the country, securing a future of strong relations between Washington and key grain-exporting states, and bringing an awareness to pampered, sheltered urban elites of the pressures faced by farmers. Recognizing that lackluster, outmoded farming methods are in dire need of automation, use the goodwill generated by your pro-farmer activism to lure the National Association of Wheat Growers into a deal with a Silicon Valley self-driving tractor startup called Reapr, promising the farmers WiFi-enabled, air-conditioned cockpits (while neglecting to mention the autonomous driving software which will soon render their jobs obsolete). The innovations will increase wheat production five-fold, driving down a critical input cost of bread production, eventually allowing restaurants to provide far more generous portions of free bread.
12. If all else has failed, it will be necessary to infiltrate the kitchen. Announce to a waiter that your shallot jus is underseasoned, and demand to see the chef. When told that chef is too busy to deal with individual complaints, get up, scraping your chair loudly and casting your napkin aside carelessly, storm past the server into the kitchen, ignore the startled line cooks, and use your olfactory sense (sharpened by hunger) to locate the trays of freshly baked bread. Having worn slim black cargo pants which in the restaurant’s dimmed lighting have passed for dress pants or dark jeans, stuff your pockets, muttering, “Only thing that’s edible around here.” With tumescent legs but a dignified air, return to your table, sit down, and enjoy the rest of your evening.
