I expect paper napkins when I’m eating at a hole-in-the-wall that serves the best Chinese food in town. Uneven table legs propped up by coasters, half-filled ketchup bottles and packaged jams are part of the family diner experience. At this kind of restaurant, as long as the food is good and the wait staff friendly, I’m a happy customer.
But fine dining establishments? Designer decor, mood lighting and a host draping a napkin across my lap are little more than posing when the details scream lunchtime deli. (On second thought, let me deal with the napkin myself. It creeps me out to have a stranger that near my bikini line.)
When I’m at a chi-chi restaurant, the following are the equivalent of finding gum under the table. It’s all nice on the crisp linen surface until they…
- Serve butter in foil packets: I don’t need my dairy piped into ramekins, but if I have to unwrap my butter I wonder what other prepackaged items are making their way onto the menu. (Sugar packets fall under this category, too.)
- Recycle my cutlery: I cringe when servers clear my plate and place my used utensils on the table for the next course. Setting them delicately on the butter plate is no better.
- Neglect the bathrooms: Cracked toilet handles, chipped sinks and stall doors with broken locks make me lose my appetite. One-ply toilet paper is equally unimpressive.
- End the evening with cheap mints: I always feel cheated when a big bill comes with industrial white and red (or green) striped mints. I’d rather have nothing than the disappointment of bad candy.
Am I the only one who finds this kind of thing unacceptable when dinner for two blows the week’s grocery budget? What little things knock a high-end restaurant off its high horse for you?
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah, pet peeves – I have pages of them! I share your woes but the cutlery thing is way, way up there for me.
I’ve worked in lots of restaurants (heck, I sort of own one!) and I know that the dishwashing can be immense. That said, giving me fresh cutlery is not going to change things that much.
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I think that a neglected bathroom means a neglected kitchen. -kem
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Funny, I find the converse (inverse? reverse?) equally disturbing: when all the visual details seem perfect (beautiful dining room, sparkling bathrooms, clean cutlery)… but then some mammoth kitchen disaster gets revealed.
I ate in a gorgeous Singaporean restaurant last year, and as the waiter carried my beef short rib with port wine sauce towards our table, he literally left a trail of sauce in his wake — all over the dining room floor, our tablecloth, and my shoes. Someone in the kitchen thought it was a good idea to fill the plate with enough sauce to drown a whole cow.
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I am definitely on board about the cutlery. That just seems so uncouth.
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“Uncouth” Gawd, I love that word. I think I’ll use it every day for a week since I had sort of forgotten it.
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Vegetables that are obviously frozen and re-heated…
Really cheap wine glasses. I don’t need crystal but I also don’t want to be afraid to pick it up by the stem in case it snaps.
I too, prefer to put my own napkin on my own lap…
Those stupid cheap silver teapots that will not pour on anything BUT the surrounding table, and creamers in little plastic cups with paper tops…
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Bad coffee…coffee that tastes like the same cheap pre-portioned stuff I can get at the chain diner. If you can cook a great meal, you should be able to make a decent pot of coffee.
)
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Dana, it seems I have a long list of peeves, too.
Kem, my thoughts exactly!
Cheryl, I’ve never had anyone slop food on me, but perhaps it’s just a matter of time.
Diva, I’m with you on the cheap glassware and stainless steel tea pots. I also hate when wait staff don’t know the difference between herbal teas and flavoured black teas. Sigh…
Judy — bad coffee has taken the shine off many a fine dining experience for me. You’d think it would be relatively easy to make good coffee these days.
As I said, the devil is in the details.
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When the waiter mispronounces menu items – this happens most often with french menu items. However, I have yet to run across a waiter who knows the correct pronounciation of “bruschetta.”
Also, when a waiter does not answer questions about ingredients in a particular dish (I ask for allergy reasons, I’m not a restaurant spy). By “does not answer,” I mean, either, they guess, or they give wrong information, or they come back and say the chef doesn’t know the answer either. These have all happened to me!
Here are two final reasons to gong a restaurant:
Substituting raw spinach in an arugula salad (do they really think I don’t know the difference?) – when pointed out, they just shrug!
Dirty silverware and glasses (even just spots!)come on people!!!
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Hathead, it’s appalling that the chef wouldn’t know what ingredients were in a dish. Pre-packaged food making its way to the table?
I’m with you 100% on all your points, although I’m probably guilty about mispronouncing “bruschetta” myself.
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I am a bit of a tea purist so tea complaints are probably my major pet peeve.
Tea that tastes ilke coffee is a major issue, and I have run into it in all levels of restaurants. Also iced tea that is sour tasting, this is usually because the equipment that made the tea was not well cleaned, and none of the staff like tea so no one tastes it.
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Brierlry, for these reasons I often skip tea at restaurants. And as Diva points out, the dribbly tea pots are horrid.
If it makes you feel any better, restaurant coffee isn’t always much better. Strange how high-end restaurants can drop the ball on beverages.
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i don’t believe the food was pre-packaged.
most likely the food was prepped by someone else, or they used an ingredient from a can or package with the packaging no longer available to refer to, or they just don’t feel like answering the question. my vote is for the last reason.
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Hathead, “they just don’t feel like answering the question” might be the scariest possibility of all.
Makes me wonder what else they don’t care about. Food safety?
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