Watching a Restaurant Melt Down (while you eat)

[mattohara]

(There is probably already a topic for this somewhere, if so please point me to it)

My girlfriend and I had a tough time looking for a place to go out to eat on a Sunday night. We were going to hit Horizons, but they were closed, Ansill is now closed on Sundays and we were walking aroud the South Street Area. We finally chose Pad Thai because thai food sounded right.

We walked into a nearly empty restaurant and got a table for two. Everything was a bit in slow-motion from then on. Service was very slow for a relatively empty restaurant. The waiter later explained that this was because they were getting slammed with deliveries in the kitchen (at 8PM on a Sunday? I guess that's possible).

There was no bartender but I saw a magnum of Grand Marnier behind the bar and decided it looked good. I asked for a glass and the waiter (instead of waiting to talk to us more and answer questions for us) walked off to ask another waiter who was behind the bar to get us a glass. What he returned with was at least 3 times the pour I've ever had when ordering a drink in a snifter.

Our waiter was already sweating heavily at this point (possibly because he was doing all the cooking too) and he explained about the goings-on in the kitchen. He also noted that it was his second day when Karen asked him about the lychee wine. He didn't know anything about the food or drinks in the place. I ordered a Tsingtao and got a Singha.

This became doubly interesting when at some point later in the evening the only other person apparent on the floor responded to a different question with the same response, "it's my second day."

We split a duck salad. It was ok.

Then our entrees came out and Karen's was wrong. It was chicken with thai basil instead of fried tofu with thai basil. The dish was taken away and replated with what looked like an unadulterated hunk of tofu that was thrown in the fryer for 60 seconds. The whole replating and delivery took about 2 minutes.

Either everybody that was working there left suddenly or the restaurant is flailing hard. We kept our game faces on and didn't give anybody a hard time. We laughed a bit at the ineptness but mostly felt bad for the staff. The Grand Marnier was free at the end. Who knows if they felt bad or the poor guy forgot to ring it in. We tipped well (extremely well, considering).

Has anybody else ever been inside an establishment that is obviously falling apart around you while you eat?

[Beto]

Has anybody else ever been inside an establishment that is obviously falling apart around you while you eat?

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About 15 years ago, I drove up to the window at a Burger King to witness the floor inside covered with about an inch of water and the personnel walking on pallets and taking orders as if nothing was wrong.

I kept on driving.

[Holly Moore]

It's a common restaurant paradox. The emptier a restaurant, even a decent restaurant, the slower the service and the slower the kitchen. My theory is that it has something to do with adrenaline rush. Sounds like that was compounded by a very new server with very little if any training. No excuse though.

Pad Thai is listed on DiningIn.Com and it is very possible that the kitchen was getting slammed with to go orders. No excuse though.

I'm a fan of Pad Thai, though I haven't been there in a while. Hopefully it was merely a down evening.

[Marky Marc]

Their human beings, not robots. They aren't going to get everything perfect all the time and sometimes it may become a mess. They sound like they were a little understaffed. It's understandable. No excuse, my ass. I don't care who you are, you can not crank out a million meals at once and expect them to all come out perfectly every time. Be realistic.

[Busboy]

My experience as a waiter is that there needs to be a certain level of activity for everyone to get into the swing of things -- there's a rhythm you get into and service will almost always be best when a place is noticeably busy but not overwhelmed.

On a slow Sunday night you can also get a situation where the people are charged with doing two or three things at once, not all of which are their specialties. I worked at one place where on a slow night I both waited tables and cooked, because there wasn't enough business (or the owners were to cheap) to pay a cook. And, although they claimed deliveries were coming in, I've hit some Sunday nights where there clearly weren't going to be many menu selections until the deliveries came in the next day. It's amazing how many times a waiter can say "sorry we're out of that" before they finally say, "let me tell you what we do have."

[tino27]

This is certainly not an indictment of Arby's or fast food restaurants in general, but there was this specific Arby's that co-workers and I would frequent every so often on our lunch break. It actually wasn't for the food, but for the floor show. The day manager took it upon herself to correct employee's incorrect behavior by screaming at them ... in front of the customers. We never could figure out which was worse: the quality of the employees she had presumably hired or her very unprofessional managerial bedside manner.

The obviously high turnover rate was seemingly only apparent to the customers.

[jgm]

I've never been in a restaurant that was obviously falling apart around me (but sometimes I've wondered), but a local place, owned and staffed by people for whom English is a second language, has a "show" every afternoon around 2:30. The family, which is essentially the staff, gets into a gigantic argument in their native tongue. The argument is carried on in all parts of the restaurant, with people shouting to each other if necessary, and gesturing when making a point. Needless to say, getting one's coffee refilled at this time is out of the question.

Once, when curiosity was getting the better of me, I took a X-speaking friend there so that she could eavesdrop and tell me what was going on. She listened for awhile, became very red in the face, then turned very pale, and all she would say was "Believe me, you don't want to know."

[Alcibiades]

I was managing a New Year's Day brunch at a fairly small dining room and the toilet exploded covering the entire restaurant's floor in odious water. That was a failure.

Another time I was serving lunch and the ceiling collapsed on a three-top, completely covering the guests in wet plaster. That, too, was a failure.

[Jeff L]

Burger King, Arby's...am I in E-Gullet or the twilight zone

Edited May 22, 2007 by Jeff L (log)

[slkinsey]

To respond to Matt's original situation. I've noticed an almost complete turnover in personnel at NYC Chinese restaurants a time or two. Apparently it's not uncommon for a family to sell their restaurant wholesale to another family, stick around for a little while to train the new guys how various dishes have been made there, and then split. A changeover like this might explain the poor service as well as the seeming dearth of people who had worked there more than two days.

[mattohara]

Their human beings, not robots. They aren't going to get everything perfect all the time and sometimes it may become a mess. They sound like they were a little understaffed. It's understandable. No excuse, my ass. I don't care who you are, you can not crank out a million meals at once and expect them to all come out perfectly every time. Be realistic.

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marc, there's no stress here. i felt genuinely bad for the guys and we gave them a nice tip anyway. i'm a waiter myself, i'm nothing if not empathetic.

this was beyond a normal bad experience or meal though, this was a disaster and there were only three other tables in the restaurant. i was just pondering the idea that maybe something really bad happened recently, like the chef walking out or all the trained waiters walking out.

holly i had not thought of the possibility that "deliveries" were for takeout customers. i was thinking it was vendors delivering food at 8 on a sunday night. your explanation is a lot more plausible cause i did see a guy walk out with three huge bags.

i think there a some really good fiction short-stories in here somewhere.

[Lisa1349]

Not a full melt down, but at Bertucci's in Plymouth Meeting we were in a section with a new waiter who was bady in the weeds. After waiting a ridiculously long time to receive drink orders, the waiter appears carrying over 25 drinks on one large tray. Drinks for the whole section. The tray tipped over as he walked past a pregnant woman. Who was wearing white. The waiter kept slipping in the puddle and couldn't get up. When he was able to stand he walked out the back door never to be seen again. Hysterical.

[rooftop1000]

Burger King, Arby's...am I in E-Gullet or the twilight zone

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So we were at Red Lobster one night,...(I promise only once) with our Christmas gift certificate.

Our waitress dropped one of our apps on the floor and the plate shattered, she told us not to worry she was going to raise hell in the kitchen . Well someone cleaned up the floor and we ate our one app and our biscuits and drank our drinks and watched the bus people pile all the dirty dishes on the table next ours and then eventually our mains came out of the kitchen with another waitress. Our waitress had quit. After we were charged for the dropped app the manager said the order was put back into the kitchen....yeah And? we never got it...he eventually took it off the bill. Fun Stuff, the service was better than the food though

Tracey

Edited May 25, 2007 by rooftop1000 (log)