I love restaurants, and one of the reasons I do is that they're so democratic, welcoming everyone.

I was recently in Paris, and I accidentally found myself walking past L'Alsaco, a tiny, well-priced restaurant specializing in the food of France's Alsace region. I'd never been able to get a table there.

I wasn't hungry. I wasn't thirsty. But it was almost empty, and I wasn't going to pass up a chance.

I'd heard that the wines were fabulous, but when I went to the bar and asked for a list, I saw almost nothing of interest on it. The wines of Alsace (a region passed back and forth by warring France and Germany throughout much of modern history) are primarily white: Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Muscat, Sylvaner, and more.

I was about to order something when the owner, Claude Steger, a burly fellow who looks a little like Pope Jean Paul II but tells dirty jokes, came up and took the list out of my hands. It seems that nobody actually gets to order from it. I'm not sure why it even exists.

He said, "I have nearly 400 different wines. You tell me you need a wine for 20 Euros (about $28), I'll find you a wine for 20 Euros. If you say, 'It's not very good,' then I'll only charge you for what you drink and find you something else. Here, you can taste 10 or 12 wines if you wish and you only pay for what you drink. Anyway, you always need a different wine for your appetizer and a different wine for your choucroute (Alsatian sausage, pork, and sauerkraut specialty) and a different wine for your wife."

Everything is Alsatian here, not just the food and the wine. The cola—no joke—is called Elsass Cola. In my five days in Paris, I ended up drinking at the bar four times.

I came back home with the intention of enthusiastically recommending the place. Then I got some bad news: People who are particularly fond of Adolf Hitler apparently like to party there. Or at least they did once.

Here's a sentence from an Agence France-Presse item, written in 2001: "Last year around 50 people gathered in L'Alsaco restaurant in central Paris to mark the wartime Nazi leader's birthday."

Somebody else told a GQ reporter that L'Alsaco has a reputation for having once hosted these kinds of folks.

I really liked Claude Steger. He couldn't have been more hospitable or welcoming. And I don't exactly look not Jewish.

I wondered what the American Civil Liberties Union would say about this situation. The ACLU, in my memory, spends most of its time and money defending the right of Nazis and their like to have a good time.

For all I know, the Nazi disciples came in quietly, ate their choucroute silently, and never even whispered "Heil Hitler!" Maybe there wasn't a skinhead among them, or if there happened to be one, he was simply a balding accountant who had decided to shave his head.

Nevertheless, I don't think I'll be returning to the restaurant.

You can go if you wish. I won't hold it against you. If you do, I recommend the 1997 Rangen de Thann Clos st.-Theobald Gewurztraminer from Schoffit.

You won't find me there. Restaurants can't always choose the people who eat in them. I've often turned in my seat during meals and seen customers I wish had dined elsewhere, but I've never before had to worry that the ghost of Adolf Hitler would be looking back at me.

I recently did something dumb. When a Washington, D.C.,-area restaurant insisted that I confirm my reservation with a credit card and agree to a penalty of $50 per person if I failed to cancel within a specific period of time, I accepted the terms.

I signed on the dotted line—well, in this case, I agreed electronically.

My plan was to visit an old college roommate. Others were joining us. Less than 48 hours before we were to sit down to dinner, he came down with a kidney stone and was incapacitated. The trip, a mini-reunion for five friends, had to be cancelled.

The reservation was much harder to call off. A new car would have been easier to return.

I found the website and read the cancellation policy—it seemed to indicate that calling 24 hours in advance was fine. No problem. I called, the cancellation was accepted, and I was assured no penalty would ensue. The next day I received an e-mail from the assistant to the restaurant manager, saying I would be charged $250.

My reservation was for five, and it turned out that a reservation for five or more had different rules. Cancellation in this case was 72 hours in advance. Yes, I had read that. Yes, it was in the fine print of my agreement. However, I'd made the reservation several months earlier, and I'd forgotten. After all, it wasn't like I was buying a house. I was going out for pasta.

What a mess.

Here's a rule: Unless you're a lawyer and wish to enter into protracted negotiations, don't sign a contract to dine at a restaurant. Don't think about it. Don't consider it. Just don't do it.

Contracts are binding agreements that are supposed to benefit both sides. This sort of contract is of value only to the restaurant. It does you no good.

After five or six phone calls and a couple of e-mails, I finally reached the manager of the restaurant—Maestro at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. He asked a lot of questions: Who did I speak to? Why did I cancel? He said he'd get back to me. Much to my surprise, he did. He said that under the circumstances, a friend's illness, he would waive the penalty. His name was Emanuele Fissore. He could not have been more pleasant.

After we cleared that up, I identified myself as a food writer and asked him why he put customers through such horror.

He said he hated to do it. I believed him. He told me the no-show rate at Maestro had become excessive. He said his restaurant was small, and on some nights 25-30 customers would neither show up nor call to cancel.

He said this caused two problems. One was obvious—loss of income. The second was trickier. Customers who wanted an 8 p.m. reservation but could only get a 6:30 p.m. reservation would be eating at a time they didn't want and notice all kinds of empty tables around them when 8 p.m. came around. They'd feel mistreated. "So much frustration," Fissore said. "Why can't people just call and say, 'I can't come.'?"

I ended up feeling worse for Fissore than I did for myself. That's unusual. He seemed passionate about making his restaurant great and his customers happy.

Still, as much as I want to eat at Maestro, which has a wonderful reputation, I'm not going through that again. And I recommend you don't, either. When a restaurant demands that you guarantee with a credit card, just say no and eat somewhere else.

By the way, Fissore told me he had just come from a visit to his dermatologist. He got caught in traffic. He was 15 minutes late.

"They had already charged me for a missed visit," he said. "I said, 'I'm here! I'm here!' "

Don't get me started on dermatologists, the pickpockets of the medical profession. I've yet to meet one who cared about his customers as much as Fissore seems to care about his.

Winemakers claim to hate the 100-point scoring system used by critics, even though it works well. Their complaint is that wine is so magnificent it transcends analysis by numbers.

They never say a word against critics who utilize another kind of system, one that forecasts when a wine is going to be ready to drink. My complaint is that such a prediction is nonsense.

You see it all the time. The name of the wine, followed by something like, "Best from 2009-2014."

Basically, the critics have no idea. They're guessing. Most wines—maybe 99 percent—either don't age or get worse with time. And of the ones that are predicted to improve with age, an awful lot of them don't.

The only exceptions are wines with history. Those that have consistently reached maturity (defined by secondary flavors, sediment, and other good stuff) can reasonably be expected to do so again. Thus, wine critics can calculate the aging potential of classic wines such as Bordeaux, vintage Champagne, and Grand Cru Burgundy.

Probably the most puzzling and indecipherable of all wines are California Cabernet Sauvignons, which appear to have the potential to age beautifully but rarely do. They are excellent when young, possibly even better after hanging around for a couple of years, and then they tend to lose their luscious flavors with time.

Occasionally, they demonstrate a uncanny ability to not change at all, a phenomenon also seen in vampires and socialites. Vintage port is even sturdier—I believe the true definition of infinity is the length of time it takes a vintage port to mature. If you're tempted to become a collector of pricy red Bordeaux, remember that they are seldom worth drinking unless a quarter-century has passed or if somebody else is picking up the check.

Alain Ducasse has just re-opened Rech, a hoary old Paris seafood restaurant that has always been more beloved than admired. You have to give him credit for courage. When old classics are stripped down, re-conditioned, and brought back, most everybody is enthusiastically ready to point out what the new owners did wrong.

In the case of the food, almost nothing. The open kitchen upstairs does a fine job cooking fish. Oddly enough, Rech is also famous for Camembert cheese—does anybody seek that out anymore—and huge, fresh, clunky éclairs that appeal to Parisians in the same way as foot-long hot dogs thrill us. Both the cheese and the dogs were just fine.

The place looks wonderful. Old photographs. Pewter-and-wood bar. Stained glass. Armchairs.

The service was very Parisian: It stunk.

The captain immediately asked if we would like a house specialty, Chablis poured from an ultra-large bottle. I said we would not—this was lunch, and I was worried that the bottle might have been opened the day before.

I requested the wine list. I got nothing. No wine. No water. I suspect we were declared persona non beverage. (That's French, isn't it?)

During out first course of oysters, we slurped down the liquid like parched travelers crawling across a desert. I envied my friend's second course—soup. I had fish, prepared in a somewhat dry manner, and choked it down.

I announced to my friend that I was taking our glasses to the bathroom and filling fill them with cold tap water. He said I wouldn't dare. I had just gotten up when the captain came over and asked if everything was all right.

I croaked, "We're a little thirsty." He got the point.

The wine list isn't bad, should you be fortunate enough to obtain it.

Our lunch came to 148 Euros (just over $200). The check presented to me came to 260 Euros (about $365). When I pointed out the outrageous error, nobody was particularly apologetic.

That did it. Infuriated, I went into a state of what I call my High European Dudgeon.

I've perfected the act. It's my specialty. It works best in snooty cities such as Paris and London. It's artificial rage. I hate to brag, but I am very, very good at it.

By the time we left, the captain was following us out the door, begging for mercy. We were the finest gentlemen it had been his pleasure to serve, and we were welcome back anytime, and when we did would we please wipe our shoes on his back. Anyway, it was something like that.

When it comes to Parisians, I don't speak their language. But I sure understand them.

A follow-up story on the death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock in an automobile accident mentioned that he had a blood-alcohol level of .157, almost twice the state of Missouri's limit of .08 percent for persons operating a vehicle.

The final paragraph in the Associated Press story read: "Last Friday, the team announced that it had banned alcohol from the clubhouse."

Am I the only person who thought, "Why would they allow alcohol in a baseball clubhouse in the first place?"

Maybe steroids aren't the most dangerous problem in the major leagues.

More than bistros, patisseries, or fromageries, the establishments that most evoked Paris for me were the brasseries.

They were always oversized. And they were usually monumental.

Mountains of oysters. Plenty of beer—"brasserie" means brewery in French. Workmen in soiled overalls and swells with gaudy scarves around their neck sitting side-by-side—the last vestige of the democratic principles of the short-lived French Revolution. One and all drank Riesling and ate sausages and sauerkraut.

Today, brasseries evoke chain restaurants. They are to France what Applebee's restaurants are to America. They are to be avoided.

A little more than a week ago I dined at Brasserie Wepler, which has been on the Place de Clichy since 1892. I did so reluctantly, after a friend living in Paris said Wepler had remained proudly independent. Anyway, it was a Sunday, and we couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

I ordered a few classic dishes.

It might have been the worst meal I've ever had in France.

The first course was onion soup with a thin broth that evoked the suffering endured by starving refugees after the various world wars. It was covered with a melted product that I was able to identify as cheese only because of my extensive dining experience.

The second course, bavette de boeuf, should have been skirt steak but instead was a square of damp meat that resisted my knife, despite being both mushy and overcooked. It was topped with a mound of an onion-like product almost as wet as the steak.

Finally, dessert. I went for the oeufs a la neige—supposedly stiff poached egg whites in vanilla custard. What I got was a marshmallow-like blob topped with gooey, gummy, gratuitous orange bits that stuck in my teeth. The custard wasn't bad.

My well-dressed waiter, whose appearance far surpassed that of the food, may or may not have noticed that I had only two or three bites of each dish before pushing it aside.

My happiness was of no concern to him. I would not have expected otherwise. I was, after all, in Paris.

Wepler was at one time a legend, a gathering spot for the artistic and bohemian denizens of the neighborhood. Customers included Picasso, Modigliani, and Truffaut.

Times have changed.

Sitting across the room from me was Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I've known Sam since he was a baby. I wheeled him through New York's Upper West Side when he was a toddler. I treated him to his first restaurant hamburger.

He's 17 now, old enough to make smart decisions.

So you might understand my disappointment when he told me he had just gotten a part-time job as a supermarket cashier.

All I could do was sputter. "Why? Why? Why?" It's terrible when the children you love go bad.

Some people cross the street on dark nights when they see gangs of youths carrying semi-automatic weapons walking their way. As for me, I'll do anything to avoid getting in a checkout line at a supermarket.

I've started going to a local Stop & Shop because it has a few self-service checkout lines. They don't work particularly well. They have mechanical voices that criticize me constantly. I'm not scanning quickly enough. I've caused a bottleneck at the end of the belt. I haven't put my coupon in the used coupon slot. (Yes I have!)

Still, I prefer mechanized cashiers to the real ones. They never smile. They snap if you slide your credit card in those little scanning devises the wrong way, which I always do. They yell to hurry up and push the button that says "credit" or "debit." They carp if you lay your coupons on the moving belt. If you've saved $2.73 by buying specials-of-the-week, they humiliate you by saying as loud as they can, "Your savings today was two dollars and seventy-three cents." I'm always looking around to see if somebody I know is sneering at me.

I asked Sam if he was like every other supermarket cashier, intent only on tormenting hapless customers.

He said he always tried to smile, have fun, and chat. And he surprised me by saying that being a cashier was such a difficult job that he preferred being a bagger.

"The time goes faster," he said.

He told me that to be a cashier he had to undergo three weeks of training and take a two-hour test. For that he gets $8 an hour. (Even bloggers make more than that.)

He said he puts up with a lot. Monotony. Standing in one place. Customers trying to get something for free if they've had to wait too long in line. Customers yelling at him for not starting the conveyor belt moving at the perfect moment. Customers who don't bother using those little plastic dividers and then complain if part of their order gets confused with that of the person in front of them.

"They get mad and say, 'I thought you had the common sense to know that was part of my order, not hers.' It's stressful. Everybody is in a rush, and very seldom does everything go smoothly. Everything is so specific there's always something to throw off the checkout process. Something goes wrong. Always."

He said the worst customers were those who made a call on their cellphones when they got in line and continued to talk while checking out.

I countered.

"How about the cashiers who ignore customers and chat with the baggers?"

"I do that sometimes," he admitted. "I guess that could be annoying."

We finally got to the most essential point, the clash that inevitably occurs between teenage cashier and aging customer. I told him so much attitude was more than I could take.

"I think we know that as teenagers, we're supposed to be mean," he said. "It's the reputation teenagers have, so we think it's acceptable to be that way. We know we can get away with it—because we're teenagers, we're allowed to be pissed off all the time."