Stolen Restaurant Napkins Are Just a Start

As chefs have achieved celebrity status, dining out has become a theatrical event, with the setting and the props as thrilled over as the tuna tartare. Restaurants have become temples of design, filled with beautiful objects. And diners are helping themselves to more than just the bread. A lot more.

From $3 water glasses to $1,200 silver ice buckets, from vintage photographs hanging on the walls to scented candles burning in the bathrooms — if it isn’t nailed down, diners have walked off with it. Over the course of a year, restaurants around the country lose as much as 3 percent of their earnings to theft by customers who seem to be getting more brazen by the minute. Demitasse spoons, Peugeot pepper mills, imported wineglasses, Frette linens, framed artwork, serving platters, Champagne buckets. The list of stolen goods boggles the imagination. And the ways restaurateurs are coping with the phenomenon is changing the dining experience for everyone. NY Times