The Secret Codes Restaurants Use For Their Most Important Guests

Like any other specialized world, the restaurant industry has its own unique jargon and language. For example, "front of house" is a term used to describe workers that are customer-facing, whereas "back of house" employees are behind the scenes, like chefs, cooks, and dishwashers. These restaurant codes are employed to communicate quickly and efficiently between staff members. "Five out," for example, is a fast way to communicate that there are five minutes remaining until a dish is ready to be sent out to guests.

Some codes, however, are deployed to discreetly communicate about the guests themselves. Important guests are VIPs, but very important guests are called PX, or "personne extraordinaire." They'll usually be seated in a PDR or a private dining room.  Even within the world of the wealthy, there is a hierarchy: A step above PX is PPX, which stands for the fancy French term "particulièrement extraordinaire." The 1% of diners are called WTW, shorthand to signal that these select few are to be given whatever their hearts desire.

According to The Cut, WTW guests at fancy restaurants may be decked out in expensive designer clothing (The author of The Cut piece, E. Alex Jung, watched a young boy wearing Thom Browne enter one such establishment.), but their tastes are a bit simpler. Some restaurants that serve billionaires also serve "food that resembles a children's menu: burgers, crab cakes, spaghetti, chocolate sundaes."

Having deep pockets to spend and the label of PX, PPX, or WTW may get you special treatment among the wait staff, but that distinction doesn't give a free license for even the most important diners to act however they want. One person who proved just that was celebrity TV host James Corden, whose rude behavior toward waitstaff got him "86'd," an industry term for something that's no longer in stock that was in this case used to mean him getting kicked out of and banned from the restaurant. 

Another rule important guests likely will have to follow like any other plebian diner is to adhere to a restaurant dress code, although some might try to avoid it, like Rita Ora, who was turned away from a Gordon Ramsay restaurant for her clothing. The moral of the story? A "person extraordinaire" can still be extraordinarily rude, and that certainly will not get you whatever you want.