Gray and Grizzled Food Fan

1) Shameless steering towards expensive items or add-ons. I’m willing to pay a lot, but I’m not willing to feel screwed.

2) Race-pouring glasses of wine to push extra bottles. I like to drink, but not to relive college hazing rituals with good wine.

3) Failing to address and correct pacing problems. Hurry up and wait is a nauseating and enervating way to get through a meal. I can’t go back and talk to the line cooks and runners, nor should I have to.

4) Not listening: Failing to bring coffee after dessert or salad after mains, when it’s been ordered that way. Overshooting a stated price range for wine. Serving the whole table according to one person’s dietary restrictions. Any and all of these result from closed ears and open mouths. A little listening speaks volumes about competence and respect.

5) Waiter wanting to be elsewhere, and showing it: If a server wants to be somewhere else, so should you. If he isn’t a knowing and enthusiastic fan of the food, setting and style of the place, why should you be?

In bed and at table, communicating what you want is the key to total satisfaction.  In a great restaurant, you’ll rarely have to ask, because they’ll already know–Think of Judi Dench’s speech in “Gosford Park–and you’ll never have to beg, because they’ll always say yes. Nonetheless, if you do speak up, chances are your experience will be even more satisfying. In short, in a great dining room, you’ll get as much and more than you paid for.

That said, most of us don’t eat in great restaurants that often. So let’s move on to merely good restaurants. Here service and food problems will arise from time to time. When they do, you should always try to resolve them during the meal. It’s much easier for a restaurant to overcome a slight dip in an evening’s experience than redeem itself with apologies or favors after the fact; it’s also better for you. Early intervention makes for a far happier meal and a bileless, bitterness-free morning after. If you’re concerned about making a scene, you can always excuse yourself and speak with the manager discreetly, saving your guests an unsavory experience and maybe saving the night.

If your attempts at correction are rebuffed or insufficiently addressed, a letter to the restaurant’s director of service is definitely in order. I firmly believe that letters are better than phone calls, as you’re more likely to articulate your concerns clearly and concretely on paper. If you do write, your letter should be as precise as possible, and refrain from name-calling, profanity and lazy adjectives. It should also be framed in terms of how things could have been better. Think of it as a suggestion letter, not as a rant. Chances are, you’ll get results.

CAVEAT AND REALITY CHECK:

In New York, restaurant service directors are among the few people that will listen to you and strive to do a better job next time. Can you ask that of an awkward hookup, a taxi driver, an airline reservationist? Restaurants can make the world feel perfect and you feel taken care of for a few hours. Nonetheless, the world isn’t perfect and ultimately, you need to take care of yourself. Don’t abuse the restaurant’s trust. This is not a chance to weasel a free meal out of a place. Complaints are about correcting a problem, not playing the ambulance-chaser lottery. Yes, better restaurants are more likely to respond. They’re also less likely to have had a legitimate problem in the first place, so be honest with yourself and the place to which, ultimately, you want to return.

1) Broccoli in the supermodel’s teeth: If a place is beautiful and perfect, except…, let them know. Maybe the stairs leading to the bathroom are dangerously dark, or the organic toilet paper could sand Masa’s bar, or the servers are mispronouncing all the dish names, or they spelled “pintxos” as “pinxtos” on the menu.

Most problems are fixable, and a place would rather know sooner than never see you again.  Put another way, this is like telling a friend that his fly’s unzipped or that her underwear is tucked into her dress. Initial embarrassment will quickly turn to gratitude at a problem identified and solved.

2) Bad food preparation or bad ingredients: Failure to correct doneness problems or repeated problems over several courses. Accidents happen, so do patterns.  Same goes for off tastes and textures, including aging oysters and gritty greens.

3) Ill-willed or Incompetent Service: See other posts on topic. In short, two questions. I) Was the server advocating for you in the front and back of house? II) Did your server display the professionalism, i.e., hard skills, consonant with the level of dining offered by the restaurant?

4) Food Poisoning (Call!): You awaken with symptoms of food poisoning traceable to your meal. Hop off the pot. Drink some ginger ale. Let the restaurant know by phone as soon as possible. This is not the time to hone your mastery of the epistolary arts. Help others to be spared your experience, and consider this service sufficient reward. That said, chances are good that you’ll be more than adequately compensated by a grateful restaurant.

5) Acknowledge a Wonderful Experience: Slamming a place is dangerously easy. It’s also okay to share the joy. If you can articulate what you liked, you may just get it again, whether it be warm gougères, a Spanish newspaper at the bar, or the greatest waitress to ever come out of Kansas.

Sobremesa: A few more thoughts

Ultimately, you should leave a restaurant feeling happy and restored, thus the word “restaurant.” If you entered unhappy, perhaps you shouldn’t expect a miracle to take place in two hours. If your mood falls during and due to the dining experience, something is probably wrong. After making sure it’s not just you, articulate what was wrong and what could have been done better. If the concerns are concrete and can be turned into suggestions, why not communicate them to the only people capable of offering redress? You can improve your future experience and that of others.