BarneyGrubble
(Fan of Beethoven and Latina singers)
441
For every one of those shits there are many nice guys, so you learn to ignore that.
Case in point: Many years ago, I was in Regina, Saskatchewan on business. For dinner I went to a restaurant owned by a Belgian couple; she was the chef, he was front-of-house. I had a wonderful meal there, so returned the next night. The maitre d’ was really pleased to see me again, and gave me a glass of wine on the house when I finished my first one. After a great main course he said that he could not make me eat the same (great) chocolate pâté I had the night before, and flambéed some strawberries for me; most enjoyable! Too bad I never had to return!
Then in San Francisco, a similar situation. Returning a second night for sushi, they had only a small portion left of the special I had enjoyed the day before. They comped it. The restaurant was so good that I spent over $100 on sushi for myself; this was 17 years ago.
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BarneyGrubble
(Fan of Beethoven and Latina singers)
442
While it would be great not to leave a mess, there is little a diner can do if one happens accidentally, other than boost the tip up. My husband has Parkinson’s, meaning tremors, etc. Our dining out is limited to fast food and diners, and if there is even a small mess in the latter, we raise the tip accordingly (25% tip for a small mess, 30% or more if the mess is larger).
I should note we eat only at off times (like 1:30 during the week) so as to avoid other diners noticing it too much, or being delayed because it takes us longer to eat.
I recently got asked by a server as to why I was cutting the tails off of the ‘baby’ spinach in my salad. First, it was none of his beeswax and secondly, it wasn’t ‘baby’ spinach as it was advertised, it was large leaf cut in half. I personally don’t care for brown (oxidized) lettuce or brown spinach tails. I just looked up innocently and didn’t answer. Maybe I was taking too long eating my salad?
choices:
response 1: why do you ask?
response 2: because I want.
response 3: what you did. don’t respond. Except I wouldn’t have looked up, and if I did, I would make no attempt to look innocent.
You were there so you know the tone and tenor of the exchange, but I wonder if this had also been an opportunity for the server to get feedback on a dish that could be given to the kitchen. These are both easy fixes: the product wasn’t as advertised and there was oxidisation that put you off.
So sure, none of his beeswax I guess but the experience of the diner kind of is? (Sorry, I think I read too much Tom Sietsema )
All spinach salads I have ordered in restaurants are usually perfectly fine, except for the tails. I will gladly cut them off. Browned lettuce and ribs of romaine turn me off and I’ll set aside those pieces without comment. However, if I am paying a lot for a salad and that occurs, I will comment and send it back or refuse it. I remember using an ascorbic acid solution to ‘freshen’ lettuce in food service many years ago (not my choice, it was what they did). I don’t know if that is done nowadays.
Gee, I’m such a food snob!
Michael Pollard says never to eat something your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. That’s going a bit far, but I really hate menus where every description has some word or term I don’t know, usually borrowed from some foreign language that has no relation to the dish. Oh, and I also hate cutesy terms like “nestled in”, “with just a kiss of”, and so on.
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