It’s that time of year again, when hundreds of eligible young men are released onto the rosters of eager shadchanim. How do the yeshivishe dating rituals look to the non-Jewish waiters and restaurant managers who provide the backdrop for those intense two hours? We snuck into some of New York City’s top dating venues to find out.
W
alk into The Lounge at the Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn on any given weeknight and you feel like you’re stumbling into an alternate universe. It’s one where all of the frum boys wear suits and hats and all of the girls wear black and couples sit at tables engaging in small talk while sipping drinks demurely.
On this Monday night five of the seven tables lining the room’s periphery are hosting shidduch dates. To be sure there’s some variation. One of the girls wears a bold gray; two aren’t wearing heels. Among the boys there are the hat-on-the-heads the no-hatters and the token brought-my-hat-but-took-it-off-and-placed-it-on-the-ledge guy. The girls save one are leaning back and the guys are bending forward (they all need to work on their posture). Some play with the napkin under their water others with the straw in their glass of Diet Coke.
This is nothing according to the bartender who says the night is just beginning. After 8:30 is prime time for shidduch dates and over the course of the night they’ll get 10 20 sometimes even 30 couples — so many that it seems they’re literally streaming in.
“What kind of couples?” a female regular wants to know.
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