"When restaurants have close, banquette style seating—mostly all that’s available in this dining room—the hosts need to take a course in “Men’s Room Urinal Etiquette” when they decide the order in which they fill up the tables. I will never understand why, in a totally empty and quiet restaurant, they seat the first two, unrelated couples at tables right next to each other. If there is some logical reason why this makes sense, since it seems to happen often, I am all ears to hear that reason. Is it the intent to try to force friendships with customers like in a cruise ship dining room? Make note that at least this diner doesn’t like that at all—in either restaurants OR cruise ships! Had we had been the second table seated and not the first, I would have politely requested another table. *shrug* Obviously in this case, that oddity didn’t affect my 5-star review of Beatrice. Everything else was perfect! From the easy, ample parking unique to many places in Oak Cliff, to the atmosphere, service, drinks and food… it was all fantastic! I tried the bread basket, seafood gumbo, fried chicken and bacon brussels. All were perfect! I will say having the shell-on crab in the gumbo with a provided shell-cracker was a nice touch, but the amount of work (and mess! it was to get the minimal amount of crab out of the rubbery, hard to crack shells was really not worth the effort and mess, especially in a white tablecloth restaurant. Fortunately I was able to get warm, wet towels delivered to clean up the mess that I made… since it would have been a major event to squeeze between the banquette next to me (that had people seated so close in order to clean up in the restroom. I will be back! The “patio seafood boils” sound fun! (Normally I post photos of my food, but it felt awkward taking photos with two strangers sitting right next to me being unusually and awkwardly quiet. I assume since they didn’t want us unintentionally eavesdropping on their conversation."
