That’s really incredible. I would like to be a ‘fly on the wall’ but not a diner at a table.
no manager came over to speak to any of us, my “buddy” the somm went mia – it was really bizarre. honestly it wouldn’t stop me from me returning, lol, because it had to have been completely anomalous, but it sure left us in a quandary about the tip!
At least it makes a great story. Love the “somm went mia.” 
at the time, my friend and i were both working for an absolutely psycho chef, so the whole experience didn’t even make us angry, just befuddled, lol.
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I wasn’t doubting your veracity, I mean cold is cold and your experience leads me away from making a return visit.
I do think it’s insulting to suggest that your experience is yet more evidence of how lacking in discernment others must be. That restaurant had excellent reviews from me, food writers and friends I trust. It happened to be a convenient and friendly location for me to take MIL to lunch until her dementia got too bad for that to be an option any more That was how I initially became a regular. Service and food were both so good at lunch that my husband and I started going regularly for dinners. We both liked it a lot.
The reason I haven’t been back since probably Sept, 2014 is that I couldn’t eat much of anything for months due to histamine intolerance onset, then only food I had total control over at home for most of a year, so I have no way of knowing how bad the slippage has been, but it sounds pretty astonishingly bad.
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You could say I’m open to trying different approaches. What’s the worst that can happen? You learn and grow.
Living in a smaller town is different. In New York, for example, you’d never have to worry about buying a stale slice of cake from a bakery. Here (Baltimore), you never know. You could have a great slice of cake, or you could be buying a 5-day old slice of cake. So I came up with the brilliant idea that I’d ask “what was baked today” and buy that. I would wait for other customers to leave, of course. Some bakeries would tell me happily, some would say “we’re not sure”, but at one bakery my query wasn’t appreciated. No review was involved in this case.
Now say you post a review, “Go for the cheese danish. I haven’t found the other things to be as fresh.” In a small town, you’re probably the only cheese danish fiend who visits that establishment. Don’t be surprised if, on your next visit, you are told to buy your pastries elsewhere. It’s rare, but more likely to happen than in a large city.
When I used to read Twitter, I’d see people from NYC posting things like “this cookie I’m eating at ABC bakery right now is terrible.” I would gasp in horror; in Baltimore you could never be so brazen.
One thing I have come to appreciate about “New York mentality”: Say what’s on your mind, argue some, then get over it and move on.
i live in boston which is only slightly larger in population than baltimore. perhaps the demographics are very, very different? i can’t imagine a bakery bothering to make cheese danish if they only sell one per day.
Same here. Some friends and myself were planning a 2007 birthday trip to NYC that’d focus on a big splashy dinner at Per Se. Not so much anymore.
My trip to Babbo a few years back was actually pretty terrific. It started out badly: we’d planned on doing the tasting menu, but a few people at the table (we had an 8 person group) had dietary restrictions, and they said that the tasting was all-or-none, no alterations for individuals. But the waiter immediately stepped up and put a ‘family style’ sharing menu together for us that had most of the same food as the tasting menu, plus veggie options for a few people, and was almost exactly the same price. Our dinner went from a disaster to a triumph immediately and I was super impressed by the service.
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I’m not sure I understand where you’re coming from. If you’re not posting bad reviews on Yelp, are you telling the restaurant to their face that the food is bad, and they’re kicking you out? It sounds to me like you’re saying that in NYC, you can yell at the servers or the bakery owners and they’ll just shrug it off, but when you take that approach in Baltimore, you get kicked out of establishments. Well, yeah, I’d certainly hope so.
I do hope that if you do return, your experience is much, much better than mine. I had two bad trips.
I’m sure you, and those you trust are very discerning individuals and know your food.
I in no way meant anything I wrote personally to you.
There are a couple of posts in here that state that there exist individuals that are not as discerning, including one that names themselves as one.
I wasn’t personally offended, though I think the inference could have been made. I think it general, as with any art, folks differ in what they respond to and how they experience flavors, visuals, even service. Their disagreement with us doesn’t mean they are less discerning.
Our experiences were so much earlier than yours, it’s hard for me to make any claims in favor of the restaurant at this date.
What you describe is completely outside any reasonable expectations by any stretch.
2:
Not quite sure what you are inferring. Maybe, how can they know it was me from an online review? If you’re a regular at some place and have strong preferences, they can easily identify you as a reviewer. It’s not rocket science.
Only been to Boston once. It felt much larger than Baltimore. Maybe the metro area is larger or it’s more densely populated.
Our thought processes are likely very different. I don’t understand how you arrive at your interpretations. I gave two examples, one was with direct interaction, one was with a review. Thanks for speaking your mind, though.
our metro area is actually slightly smaller, but, yes, we are more densely populated than baltimore.
doesn’t “freshness” of product wax and wane? why do you frequent places that sell stale food? why would you wait to be alone in the shop to ask what was baked “today”? what is the harm or shame in asking that? many baked goods are perfectly fine after several days – notably cookies and cupcakes. croissants and baguettes, not so much.
i guess i don’t understand the whole approach. i am very careful to keep my on-line and personal identities separate, but i have a professional stake in that. even so, i should think you’d like to continue to frequent places you enjoy so why make your reviews contentious?
Because you said this:
“One thing I have come to appreciate about “New York mentality”: Say what’s on your mind, argue some, then get over it and move on.”
and:
“Here (Baltimore), you never know… at one bakery my query wasn’t appreciated.”
That tells me that you’re used to different approaches of how to deal with businesses in NYC versus Baltimore. That’s fine, and if you’re used to being able to take a more argumentative approach, I can understand that it’d be a bit awkward to adjust.
I don’t see how that applies, especially when folks reading our comments are more concerned than the average diner with matters of deliciousness and quality of experience.
It’s possible for two things to be true here; the differences between people are not necessarily due to lack of discernment, and some people are not as picky or even interested in food variety and preparation as others are.
Those last folks are not typically posting and reading where you and I and everyone else in this thread is.
Tastes differ. For example, I am not a steak lover. A difficult concept for many to grasp. I’m a guy, I eat meat, and plenty of it, but steak, for me is boring. Not that I Don’t eat it. I do. But 30 bites of the same thing is, to me boring. So I don’t think I am the right person to give criticism on the steak they serve at restaurants.
A friend who Loves steak, and little else, would seem like a good resource for seeking out a good review of a good steak place. But, as much as he loves his steak, he doesn’t care how it’s done. He prefers well done, but anything over medium is fine, just as long as it’s a plain steak. No sauce. No nothing. Not a good critic. Just happy to have a hunk of plain meat with nothing in the way. 7 days a week. Lunch is a burger. Anywhere. Plain. No toppings. Just the burger. Again, not a good resource for criticism. But considers himself a “foodie”.
I was sitting at dinner with the family at a very casual, but popular spot and a blackboard special was soft shell crabs. Choice of fried with fries and some other little side, or sautéed “francaise”. It’s dinner, not lunch, so I go for the francaise.
I get served a sauce that is basically seafood base from the industrial factory supply house in a corn starch/flour thickened water sauce. Nothing on this plate is francaise. No wine, no lemon.
It needed salt too, but all in all wasn’t inedible. It was ok actually. But how do I write a good review of the restaurant if what they say isn’t what they serve.
I don’t consider francaise to require much culinary skill, but I’ve been proven wrong. Apparently if a dish needs to actually be cooked and not simply assembled, a serviceable amount of culinary skill must be employed.
Since this was, as I stated, edible, but simply was not francaise, how does one proceed to write a review?
I wouldn’t.
If I did, I’d say it wasn’t a bad dish, even though it wasn’t beret worthy.
I “can’t even” with someone who eats plain well done meat and compare him to anyone reading this.
BTW I think I’m quite discriminating And I don’t think I’m any luckier than anyone else. For a ‘nice’ meal out I do a fair amount of research and on CH I learned over the years whose taste was similar to mine.
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Finding someone who shares your taste in something is a wonderful thing.
Finding someone who has dissimilar tastes to yours, could also prove beneficial.
Finding something you actually like and enjoy, priceless.
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