I actually prefer a table. I hate having to slide in when there are more than two of us. Comfort is a mixed bag. I have been places where the booths are so bad that I sink in and have trouble reaching the table. ( I am 5 foot 2.) I also hate being stuck in the corner.

Personally, I prefer booths -- provided that the space between you and your dining companion isn't so tight that you keep pushing your table back and forth to have some breathing room. As to why most restaurants also have tables and chairs, I think it depends on the layout. Booths go against a wall. Tables fill up open areas.

No comparison, a booth. Booth- comfortable, relaxing, easy going; , table-stiif, upright, formal, uncomfortable.

I'm big and tall, and I prefer tables. A regular chair is usually better for my back than a booth, and I like to sit further away from the table than most. I'm not a big fan of sliding into a booth, and I particularly dislike booths where the table is bolted to the floor.

The good news (for me) is that booths do seem to be more popular overall, so when I request a table I can usually get one without a problem.

BOOTH! A booth provides a mental privacy, your own space in a obviously shared environment. I have waited for a booth to free up while there were plenty of tables to sit immediately.

Booth, as long as:
a. There is not a canyon between me and the edge of the table.
b. The seat is firm enough that my butt doesn't hit the floor.
c. The person on the opposite side of my backrest isn't constantly fidgeting.

Tables afford the restaurant flexibility when it comes to parties of more than 4 (or with some booths, 6). Nobody likes being the 5th wheel at a booth (no room), and if you have a party of 8, splitting up isn't very much fun.

I like booths as long as they are firm and I am not trapped, so I would say I really only like them if there are two of us.

I despise banquette seating, where one is expected to sit almost next to a perfect stranger. A foot of separation is not enough.

Table for me every time. Booths are okay if they have a moveable table but usually the table, if affixed, cuts right across my stomach. I am by no means the man I was at 30, 30 years ago,!!
My captcha says it all
3,000 venues .... and I ate something in every one!

Tables are more flexible. A restaurant can move them together for a large party.

Table. And on larger than a four-top, the end of the table. I have space issues.

I hate booths! Too many are straight up backs (90 deg. seating) and grossly uncomfortable. The relationship of seat height, table height, back to table spacing is usually fixed and never correct. Like everything else - one size does not fit all!!

I'll wait for a table thank you. I can move it around, change to position to my liking for before eating, actual dining, and post eating times.

Booths should be outlawed!!

It's a little harder to see and be seen in a booth. Plus, the corner where the seat and the back meet are often not kept tidy, to the point of being gross. That being said, in a very clean establishment, I prefer the coziness of a booth.

I would like a restaurant where I can eat in a bed.

Every have one of those situations where a little kid is standing up in the booth that backs up to yours, staring over at you? Maybe I should've saved that comment for a post about kids in restaurants.

Booths! I want privacy! I don't want to eat with strangers and I don't want the restaurant watching me eat.

RoCK - LOL!

Nostalgia is a booth in a soda parlor, its vinyl seats held together by duct tape, and a doe-eyed teen-age beauty gazing across her malted at you

The worst booths are those half-circle ones that make you feel like you are re-creating the "Last Supper."

For me, over all I prefer a booth. However, a variety of factors come into play with booth vs table. One, it depends on who I am dining with. I am not big on forced intimacy with people I don't know that well, so I would prefer a table in that case. If I am dining with my father for example, I know he is uncomfortable in a booth. So if we had no other choice, I would be worried about him through out the meal.

Party size definitely is an issue. Even with people I care about, it is a tad daunting stuffing a party of 6 into a booth. Then you have the whole left hand versus right hand thing going on. Oh, and if you have a dining companion who has a history of often getting up from the table.

And I agree with Donna Beth on the "clean factor" of the establishment. I have seen quite a few diners where I would be worried if I would be permanently stuck to the seat.

Very true Bob. Or they make you feel like you are in a mafia movie, and at any minute, someone could take you out.

I prefer tables. More elbow room and also no strangers sitting back-to-back with you. There are so many booths that are constructed poorly and you feel the person behind you shifting in their seat or leaning into the back of the booth (or the person next to you, for that matter!). Plus, children leaning over the back of the booth is so annoying (this has happened to me at all types of restaurants, from Applebee's to upscale places).

Booths are ALWAYS my preference. Except when the seats are lumpy, or the kid next to you is bouncing against the back and his parents won't stop him, or if it is a weird L-shaped configuration in the corner, or I can't sit and breathe at the same time because it is too tight.

Booths have always been my favorite. Not those curved thing, where I begin to feel that I'm being held prisoner and my claustrophobia kicks in. (Truly the definition of unattractive) However, as my friends get older, more & more, I have to listen to complaints about back problems. And, I say this as a dotting grandmother - I cannot STAND to have al kid hanging over the back of the booth at me. Were the parents raised in a barn??

The preference for booths originates with our dog ancestors (the stage just before monkey ancestors). Booths evolved from foxholes. They sooth the flight for life endorphines(liberal version of flight or fight endorphines). They make us feel hunkered, protected.
Unless you're one of the puppies stuck between the wall and the fat guy's elbow. Then tables start to look good, like the plateaus on which your ancestors used to sit and howl at the moon.
And in the Old Days, any kid stupid enough to hang over the back of your foxhole became dinner.

Not a fan of booths at all and I will usually request a table, even if taken to a booth without being asked my preference. Besides the things everyone else has mentioned, I want elbow room, leg room, personal space... I don't find that in booths. If I have to sit next to someone I feel very claustrophobic. My last encounter with a booth was in my small hometown at Christmas. There were two small children leaning over the wall staring at me, while the mother seemed not to notice. I took that opportunity to loudly fill my sister in on the hooker and crime problems of Baltimore. Did I say loudly? Mom didn't notice. I hope the kids went home and said "hooker" because I said it a LOT. ;-)

sure, it was passive aggressive....

I am not getting the link between booths and privacy, which a number of posters mention. In my experience, sitting in a booth can subject a person to way too much information about diners in adjacent booths. As an example, my boys were horrified to hear, in the Carolina Coffee Shop in Chapel Hill, an elderly woman regale her dining companion with a story that included the following, delivered in a lovely Southern accent, "I was standing there in my underthings, with my hair all wet."

, "I was standing there in my underthings, with my hair all wet.\

Worst porn ever.

We're all so different. For instance, I don't think there is such a thing as "too much information." And so, the Chapel Hill incident that SWPaT describes would have made my evening. I mean, people are funny.

But I think we're conflating booth seating, which I think of private (unless it's the Brown Derby and I'm William Holden) with banquette seating, which can be awkward.

Here's my pet peeve, and I hope it's original -- if you are seated at a banquette, and if you've put your coat on the neighboring table's vacant seating, please do not act put out (I mean, really offended and exaperated) when someone is seated there.

I greatly dislike booths. 9 out of 10 times I'm stuck with a booth and am wearing a skirt that won't do well with the slide across the seat maneuver. Then I sit and fidget all through the meal. I'm of medium height but rarely is a booth's height/depth away from table right for me. And frankly if I'm dining with my sweetie, unless we sit on the same side then it's difficult to hold hands or whisper something private into his ear. Give me a table please!

Summer- you are my new hero. May I borrow that strategy?

Tables are so exposed. I love booths, especially u-shaped booths...when I lived in Southern Cali in my mid-twenties, I was struck by how many restaurants and bars had u-shaped booths there. To me they seemed swanky, chic and reto. I'm sort of new to Baltimore -- are there any u-shaped booths here?

Absolutely, FLIRV. :-)

I'm pretty indifferent. Comfort level is always a variable whether you have a table or a booth. I do like that booths ofter more of an opportunity to spread out, and I can sit cuddled up to my wife and hold her hand or work together on a crossword until the food comes. Tables just feel classier, I guess, and they do give the server more maneuvering room. I do dislike the banquette seating that has a booth style seat on one side of the table and a chair on the other. I've never been able to find a comfortable arrangement with one of those.

"But I think we're conflating booth seating, which I think of private (unless it's the Brown Derby and I'm William Holden) with banquette seating, which can be awkward."

Sunshine Kid
One of my favorite episodes and if I remember correctly it is the same one with the burning nose!!!

k-bean, try rocket to venus in hampden for u shaped booths.

EL,

What restaurant is featured in this picture? I have friend who adores Betty Boop and would die at the sight of this. Thanks!

CantonK,
It looks like the pikes diner on Reisterstown rd. It's a diner in the old Pikes Movie Theater.

Wow, lots of comments, and herewith a few of mine:
1. Banquette Peeve: too small tables, whether at Tapas Teatro or Petit Louis; suddenly you're scrambling to fit yet another plate or keep the newer arrivals from knocking over your wine. Sure, I know why, don't have to like it though.
{note to self: open my own bistro with bigger tables, and more space between; how hard could it be?}

2. Booths: [a] the plural should be spelled boothes; it just sounds cooler. [b] I adore the ones with the 2 bench seats facing each other.
[c] Not keen on the U-boat; in fact I agree these should either be outlawed, or re-built to my specs [see "b"].

3. Banquette seating: i like it except for the problem described in [1]. You can always eat at home. The point of going out is to be amongst our formerly dog- or monkey-like fellows. True, you don't want to be squeezed together like our formerly sardine-like ancestors {I read these came well before the dogs, somewhat after our creme-brulee-resembling beginnings}. But I veer.

In conclusion, I believe that Goddess gave us elbows in order to establish proper space while dining out, as well as to lean on a BIG-ENOUGH table.
Without said elbows, we may as well go back to the now-well-established sardine days, {I am pretty sure H.L. Mencken wrote a memoir on this very theme}, including all the smells that would entail {again with the Mencken}.

In as much seriousness as I can muster, I vote to support opposing boothes {Surely!} first,
tables second, and,
those awkward no-back sofa things Never.

Did I mention alfresco....in a boat....on the bay....in the shade...in a U....
{thanks & apologies to Flip Wilson}.

I can already sense the brickbats a-coming {here come the Judge, here come the Judge}.

endorser ball: agree with me or I'll cry!

Maybe I prefer booths because I do NOT go out to "see and be seen." Plus I can never forget the time we were seated at a table at Jeannier's and a server spilled an entire huge tray of food down my mother-in-law's back. If we had been in a booth she (and her silk skirt) would have been spared.

Captcha: The wetmore. Yes, it was.

@ Dahlink: ouch!! I'm betting there was never a booth big enough for that server to dive below. What a bummer. What a backer! If you Had been in a U-booth, maybe the damage would have been more evenly distributed. Free dessert for everyone!

Capthca: of washroom. Yes, posthaste.

Are we talkin' John Wilkes or Edwin?

we're talkin' Shirley, you yellow-bellied sapsucker!

Captcha: the crabby -- talk about instant feedback.

This captcha really belongs over on the "Flirting" post.

feelers decision-making

That was rude.

I strictly recommend not to hold back until you get enough amount of money to order goods! You should take the business loans or short term loan and feel fine