New Orelans - No, absolutely not. The New Orleans blue bloods, society ladies and landed gentry who frequent Friday lunch at Galatoire's do not throw food or get out of control.
But then, muses Melvin Rodrigue, the restaurant's general manager, "I guess that depends on how you define 'out of control'."
Alas, the Friday patrons of 101-year-old Galatoire's are like one big family, one that not only survived but also thrives probably better than any other institution in the Big Easy 15 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.
So popular is Friday lunch that all 24 tables are taken by 11 am by people who lined up early in the day. One woman said she paid $200 (about R1 400) and used top contacts to secure a big table for her birthday. No reservations are accepted.
For the fabled Friday lunches before Christmas and Mardi Gras, the ones where food reportedly flies, regulars would pay students, their gardeners or homeless people to line up for them starting on Tuesday.
Rodrigue saw opportunity and decided to auction off the 24 tables for pre-Christmas lunch, earning $60 000 for charity and cleaning up the sidewalk in the process.
Although the regulars love Galatoire's on Friday because it is like a private club where they select their favourite waiter week after week, anyone can frequent Friday lunch.
All one needs is six free hours, an understanding boss, a forgiving spouse and stealth tactics to get a table. The regulars definitely have the inside track.
Take Louisiana sugar cane plantation owner Martha Anne Foster, who came to Galatoire's to learn her manners when she was 14 and now comes on Fridays "just to have fun" 40 years later.
"How has it changed? Not a whole heck of a lot," said Foster, who has been served by her waiter, Richard, since 1985, a man who knows a Bourbon Old Fashioned cocktail will not sit well with his patroness late in the lunch.
"Your waiters help you pace yourself," said Foster. "If you don't do it, they do."
Pacing is crucial because many patrons of Galatoire's drink with abandon. By around 1.30 pm, two hours into the lunch, voices rise, laughter bellows, tables of two turn into tables of six, aisles disappear and off-key renditions of "Happy Birthday" ring out every 10 minutes.
Somehow, it all ebbs and flows like the Mississippi River winding its way around the Crescent City.
"Everyone is polite, even when they fall down," said waiter FX Bege. "I have never seen an altercation. Although some sexual things have happened."
In a room with powerful men and beautiful Southern women, flirtation abounds and is usually preceded by a complimentary bottle of wine or round of drinks.
The waiters play willing cupids. Midway through the lunch, an older gentlemen asks Bege to put the bill of two young women seated at another table on his tab, "and add 20 percent."
Another table of three 40-something married women complains about their bad day at Galatoire's: "We've never had to pay for our alcohol before," scoffed one.
Oh, and then there's the food. The French fare with a Louisiana twist seems to be more of an excuse to keep drinking through the afternoon than a reason to come to Galatoire's.
Regulars often eat the same thing week after week, like the medley of crab and shrimp appetisers, fried eggplant, the souffle potatoes with Bearnaise sauce and trout amandine. Menus are taboo.
"The second or third time I came here, Richard told me, 'You don't get a menu,'" said Foster's fiance, Boston architect Andrew Sammataro. "That's when you know you've arrived."
Has the mood dimmed at all at Galatoire's as New Orleans struggles to clean up, rebuild and bring back half its evacuated population 15 months after Katrina?
Not really, said Bege, who lives in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer on a fellow waiter's front lawn while his condo undergoes repair.
"This is like a little island where people come to just forget about everything," said Bege. "That is what amusement is all about."
Galatoire's was closed four months after Katrina and reopened with 70 percent of its staff. Now staff is nearly 100 percent and business 95 percent, unlike many French Quarter restaurants struggling to find waiters, cooks and customers.
Meanwhile, Galatoire's gears up for its pre-Christmas Friday lunch on December 22, its first since Hurricane Katrina.
"It's an all-day event. They do throw bread, they do sing Happy Birthday six hundred times," said auctioneer Ruthie Winston, contradicting Rodrigue's denial of flying food.
She recalls the pre-Christmas lunch during the snowstorm of 1989.
"I ended up at a 12-top (table) all day long. I ice skated home off Canal St And the rest I don't remember. Except that two weeks later I did emerge from my sick bed."