“Put it on my tab.” Five words that make just about any meal taste better, especially if it’s not your tab. Even if it is you who ultimately foots the bill, now everybody at the table is happy, and all quibbling over percentages and who ordered what disappears.
Long before credit cards, the house account offered a select group of diners the opportunity to drop in to their favorite restaurant, order the whole kitchen and leave without digging for their wallets. Usually the proprietors would offer the accounts only to customers they recognized.
With a traditional house account, a patron received a statement in the mail at the end of the month and sent a check. But by the 1990s, with the spread of computers and credit cards, house accounts became an endangered species.
Still, the notion of a house account lives on at a handful of New York power eateries including Peter Luger, Fresco By Scotto, The Palm and ‘21,’ the famed 52nd street hotspot.
If the the lawn jockeys that decorate the front of ‘21’ could talk — they’d probably be able to rattle off the names of the 5,000 or so house account holders who dine there regularly.
“The main perk to me is the convenience,” says ‘21’ regular Herb Yost, 50, an advertising sales executive from Philadelphia who says he eats there several times a month — sometimes, several days a week. “I like getting treated like a family member, and sometimes when I bring a guest, the treatment is pretty impressive.”
But while ‘21’ sends diners monthly statements seeking payment, it also tips its top hat to modernity. Every account has a credit card on file, which is billed if a client hasn’t paid in about 60 days.
“Over the years, we’ve pared down the number,” says ‘21’ general manager Bryan McGuire. “We’ve always looked on it as a privilege for a regular diner. We would hope that somebody who had one would use it with frequency.”
An added perk to a ‘21’ house account is the ability to get a table almost any day on short notice, and the royal treatment when you arrive. “We’re not a private club, but we usually get to know our house account customers pretty well,” McGuire says.
Meanwhile, Michael’s, the power-lunch spot where media titans dine regularly, only about six house accounts left. “We stopped offering them about a year ago,” says Michael’s general manager Steve Millington.
The problem, he says, was tracking down deadbeat diners who, usually unintentionally, would forget to pay their bills.
“It was difficult to keep up with people,” says Millington. “They would change jobs or addresses, and we would have to find out where they were. It was a nice system when it worked. But . . . there was a lot of communication strangeness.”
Midtown’s Fresco By Scotto is among those restaurants that have cut down on their house accounts, even the kind backed by a credit card.
“Nobody can afford to give away food like they did years ago,” says “Good Day New York” host Rosanna Scotto, whose family runs the restaurant. “You really have to know that they are reputable and not taking you for a ride.”
Her mother, Marion, says that they keep fewer than a dozen credit cards on file for regular customers.
Classic Second Avenue
steakhouse The Palm, which once relied heavily on house accounts, opted instead for a frequent-eater program. The 837 Club rewards regulars with a free lobster on their birthdays and big spenders might snag gift certificates or an all-expense paid vacation to France.
“In the old days we had a box that had everybody’s name on it,” says Al Serpagli, executive director of the original Palm steakhouse. “Back then, all they’d have to do was sign the back of their check and you’d put it in their slot. At the end of the month you’d send them a bill.
“Was it settled every month?”
He chuckles. “Not really.”
“House accounts were something that was used mostly by the older customers,” Serpagli adds. “Our new customers have all kinds of credit cards.”
Which is precisely why, 20 years ago, Williamsburg steak mecca and longtime cash-only establishment Peter Luger took the bold step of creating its own charge card, which can only be used at the famed restaurant. Doing so meant frequent-visiting carnivores no longer had to carry up to hundreds of dollars in cash with them or make a quick visit to the ATM.
“My dad bought the place in 1950 from the Luger family and they were very set in their ways,” says co-owner Marilyn Spira. “We’ve always pursued their way of doing things, but the world has changed and that kind of economy doesn’t exist anymore. People expect to use their credit cards. So we came up with our own. It enables us to take the money that we’d be throwing away on credit card fees. We have a very high-cost product we sell and we want to be affordable, and this gives us a little extra slack.”
dkaplan@nypost.com