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Weird Restaurant Blunders


roryrabbitfield

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A few years back, we brought my Grandpa to a now-closed restaurant in Tribeca for his birthday. Something he ordered was not prepared to his liking, so he complained to the waiter. The waiter killed him. :shock: We never went back.

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This is all absolutely hilarious. I especially like the "insider" stories contributed by people in the food biz.

How do we go about getting this thread moved to someplace more general so as to attract a wider audience?

Another story: My poor Mom bought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken once, the day after Thanksgiving, so as not to have to cook for all the house guests again. Long story short is there was a FAKE mouse in the bottom of the bucket, thoughtfully placed there by the teenagers who were running the place. Thing is, it looked so real, my Mom took the bucket back to KFC to show it to them and complain. The teenagers started to laugh when she returned, and showed her that it was fake, as if that makes it not a problem. We sued them; they settled out of court for $1500.

Rory Bernstein Kerber

www.RoryKerber.com

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A few years back, we brought my Grandpa to a now-closed restaurant in Tribeca for his birthday. Something he ordered was not prepared to his liking, so he complained to the waiter. The waiter killed him. :shock: We never went back.

care to elaborate on that? :shock:

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Another story: My poor Mom bought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken once, the day after Thanksgiving, so as not to have to cook for all the house guests again. Long story short is there was a FAKE mouse in the bottom of the bucket, thoughtfully placed there by the teenagers who were running the place. Thing is, it looked so real, my Mom took the bucket back to KFC to show it to them and complain. The teenagers started to laugh when she returned, and showed her that it was fake, as if that makes it not a problem. We sued them; they settled out of court for $1500.

No wonder KFC is so expensive :biggrin::biggrin::wink:

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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I was having a birthday lunch at Le Bec Fin in Philadelphia several years ago. Beautiful meal, wonderful wines.

Headed downstairs to the bathroom before leaving. As i came out, Georges Perrier emerged from what was (i guess) a lower-level kitchen - maybe a dishwashing area? He was fuming, screaming, cursing at the top of his lungs - "the f'ing dishwasher is broken again; what the f is going on around here; why am i the only f'ing person who can get anything done" and on and on and on.

He couldn't have been oblivious to the fact that there were at least 8-10 customers in the bathrooms, using the phones, hearing him carry on in the most infantile, abusive way.

I know he has a rotten temperament & all - but this was a MAJOR buzz kill. But kinda funny, too.

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Headed downstairs to the bathroom before leaving.  As i came out, Georges Perrier emerged from what was (i guess) a lower-level kitchen - maybe a dishwashing area?  He was fuming, screaming, cursing at the top of his lungs - "the f'ing dishwasher is broken again; what the f is going on around here; why am i the only f'ing person who can get anything done" and on and on and on. 

He couldn't have been oblivious to the fact that there were at least 8-10 customers in the bathrooms, using the phones, hearing him carry on in the most infantile, abusive way.

He's widely known for his abusive language and foul temper. He's the very charicature and textbook example of a screaming, pan throwing chef.

Did you see the interview with him in Philly Magazine last year? The article begins with him saying someting to the effect of "Everyone wants to F**k Georges Perrier up the ass..." :blink: Charming. He's widely known as a bit of a despot, for lack of a better phrase. This scenario doesn't surprise me in the least.

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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I read that article (It was included in Best Food Writing 2002). I loved it. I laughed my f'ing a** off!

I have never met Georges Perrier, but I would love to. For some reason, I have the ability to get along with people with his type of "expressiveness." For the life of me, I can't figure out why... :rolleyes:

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Headed downstairs to the bathroom before leaving.  As i came out,   Georges Perrier emerged from what was (i guess) a lower-level kitchen - maybe a dishwashing area?  He was fuming, screaming, cursing at the top of his lungs - "the f'ing dishwasher is broken again; what the f is going on around here; why am i the only f'ing person who can get anything done" and on and on and on. 

He couldn't have been oblivious to the fact that there were at least 8-10 customers in the bathrooms, using the phones, hearing him carry on in the most infantile, abusive way.

He's widely known for his abusive language and foul temper. He's the very charicature and textbook example of a screaming, pan throwing chef.

Did you see the interview with him in Philly Magazine last year? The article begins with him saying someting to the effect of "Everyone wants to F**k Georges Perrier up the ass..." :blink: Charming. He's widely known as a bit of a despot, for lack of a better phrase. This scenario doesn't surprise me in the least.

I love that sonofabitch. A real chef's chef...

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Further confessions from a lowly bistro.... 2 nights ago i called a guest "SIR" 3 times before it was pointed out to me that he was a she :shock:

Oh man, I just laughed so hard I got an asthma attack. :laugh:

Several years ago we went to a lovely Mediterranean restaurant in Berkeley, and as our waiter was describing the cheese course he obviously blanked on one. "It's, (loooooong pause) a cheese."

We had consumed a lot of wine at this point and couldn't stop laughing at the poor guy. We left him a nice tip.

Heather Johnson

In Good Thyme

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Further confessions from a lowly bistro.... 2 nights ago i called a guest "SIR" 3 times before it was pointed out to me that he was a she :shock:

Oh, that used to happen to me at the knife counter of Broadway Panhandler. Maybe I looked like Harvey Firestein in a baseball cap and glasses? (I'd kill to have a voice like his, though. :raz: )

(For those who don't know, HF is a the actor playing Edna Turnblad on Broadway in "Hairspray." He is kind of, um, hefty and, in that role, zaftig.)

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  • 1 year later...

I thought I'd revive this old (but new to me) thread, since I'm sure people have new tales to tell.

I don't know if this officially qualifies as a blunder, but it's a story that just kills a few friends who were in the room when it happened. We were hanging out at my place for the night and decided to order from a local Italian place that makes GREAT veggie pizza. Everyone had put their two cents in ("As long as it doesn't have ____ on it...") and I made the call. This was the exchange as they heard it:

Me: "Hi, can you tell me what's on your vegetable pizza?"

VERY LONG PAUSE DURING WHICH TIME I WAS BENT OVER AND WHEEZING WITH LAUGHTER

Me, after composing myself: "I know that. Can you tell me which ones?!?"

Yes, the high school-aged kid who answered the phone had simply replied, "Vegetables."

:laugh:

"I'm not eating it...my tongue is just looking at it!" --My then-3.5 year-old niece, who was NOT eating a piece of gum

"Wow--this is a fancy restaurant! They keep bringing us more water and we didn't even ask for it!" --My 5.75 year-old niece, about Bread Bar

"He's jumped the flounder, as you might say."

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Me: "Hi, can you tell me what's on your vegetable pizza?"

VERY LONG PAUSE DURING WHICH TIME I WAS BENT OVER AND WHEEZING WITH LAUGHTER

Me, after composing myself: "I know that. Can you tell me which ones?!?"

Yes, the high school-aged kid who answered the phone had simply replied, "Vegetables."

Beautiful. :biggrin:

I think maybe this lad was in my logic class in college.

Possibly a symantics major.

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Five years ago, in one restaurant alone I've seen all this:

1) "The Pee-Pee_chino, one part espresso, one part steamed milk, one part urine, one part jerk customer.

2) "Free ball'n Friday, where there's nothing seperating Big Jim & the Twins from the guest but a thin black apron.

3) The server who in a tight sqeeze, bent over to pickup a spoon from the floor and then farted right in the face of another table.

4) The server who opened the door to the UNLOCKED restroom to find a rotund woman changing her tampon. He then vomited at her feet and politely shut the door.

5) The chef who horribly burnt five trays of pinenuts until the sous labeled the oven in masking tape "Auschwitz". The chef was Austrian and she was none too pleased.

6) The same chef was tasting though all the new ice creams and arrived at one which she proclaimed "tastes like cum." She couldn't get it around her head why no one else in the kitchen would give her a second opinion.

7) Of course many servers did huge amounts of blow during service, but one girl did so much that she couldn't remember how to speak. Which didn't stop her from taking an order from a 4-top. After many responseless questions she ecked out a smile and fell over backwards.

I've got truck loads more but one must pace himself.

Jarad C. Slipp, One third of ???

He was a sweet and tender hooligan and he swore that he'd never, never do it again. And of course he won't (not until the next time.) -Stephen Patrick Morrissey

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Priceless...just PRICELESS!!

"I'm not eating it...my tongue is just looking at it!" --My then-3.5 year-old niece, who was NOT eating a piece of gum

"Wow--this is a fancy restaurant! They keep bringing us more water and we didn't even ask for it!" --My 5.75 year-old niece, about Bread Bar

"He's jumped the flounder, as you might say."

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At one of my first jobs in NYC I was showing some people the space for a party. This was not their first visit. In fact the bride and groom to be had seen it and this trip was to show the space to the sister.

As we were going very some details, they both looked at eachother in a mixture of shock and god knows what, and then calmly said, there is a mouse over there. To my complete horror, a small little mouse was crawling, and rather slowly i might add, across the floor. I dont think that I have ever been so speechless in my entire life. Words like > " well that doesnt happen often " crossed my mind, but in the end all i could do was apologize,,,,,,,,, needless to say they didnt book their $20,000 :unsure:

"Is there anything here that wasn't brutally slaughtered" Lisa Simpson at a BBQ

"I think that the veal might have died from lonliness"

Homer

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1) "The Pee-Pee_chino, one part espresso, one part steamed milk, one part urine, one part jerk customer.

Similar to "Spit of the Day"--one part soup of the day, one part jerk customer...you know the rest. I've tried to mentally block most of my restaurant stories, but your hilarious list is dredging them up.

I was a server for a summer in college and have been the perfect restaurant customer and a big tipper ever since.

:wink:

Jamie

EDIT: spellin'

Edited by picaman (log)

See! Antony, that revels long o' nights,

Is notwithstanding up.

Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene ii

biowebsite

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My weirdest experience was listening to the chef yell at the top of his lungs (and throw pans around the kitchen) from a packed dining room. It was incredible the way everyone froze: Forks halfway to their lips, heads tilted towards friends, or in a resting posture..............nobody moved until the (short) tirade was over, and then the volume of the room slooowly went up again as the diners tried to pretend nothing happened. I think this happened three or four times during the course of a two-hour meal. Never went back there again. It opened last week under new management .

I'm a canning clean freak because there's no sorry large enough to cover the, "Oops! I gave you botulism" regrets.

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Some favorite moments from my childhood, growing up in a family in the restaurant/hotel business.....

During a gueridon service (waiter cooking tableside on a trolley), the waiter got a bit too heavy handed with the brandy. The ensuing flames set off the the fire sprinkler system above, which promptly hosed down a full house of Saturday night diners.

To kick off a Hawaiian "luau" themed dinner, two waiters dressed in grass skirts arrived in the dining room with a very large roasted pig on a sort of stretcher/plank thingie. One of the waiters had insufficiently adjusted his skirt, which fell to his ankles as he walked across the dining room. The waiter valiantly held up his end of the plank, and continued across the packed dining room in his tighty-whities.

An obnoxious celebrity customer repeatedly complained that his food was not hot enough, no matter how hot it was upon arrival at the table. The frustrated chef finally put a cast iron skillet in the salamander on high heat for twenty minutes. He then put the food in the white-hot skillet, and personally carried it to the table with gloves (some kind of asbestos pot holder things used for grilling). He calmly set the skillet in front of the customer, and as it burned through the tablecloth with smoke rising from below, he politely asked with a smile, "Sir, is that hot enough?".

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My weirdest experience was listening to the chef yell at the top of his lungs (and throw pans around the kitchen) from a packed dining room.  It was incredible the way everyone froze: Forks halfway to their lips, heads tilted towards friends, or in a resting posture..............nobody moved until the (short) tirade was over, and then the volume of the room slooowly went up again as the diners tried to pretend nothing happened.  I think this happened three or four times during the course of a two-hour meal.  Never went back there again.

Years ago, my parents, brother and I went to a restaurant somewhere in Midtown Manhattan, I think, where a similar thing happened. The waiter brought a main dish I hadn't ordered. I mentioned I hadn't ordered it but liked the look of it and said it was fine and to please give it to me instead of what I had ordered. The chef (or sous chef or whoever) screamed at the poor waiter, who insisted on also giving me the main dish that I had ordered, though I tried to refuse it on the grounds that it was way too much to eat. All the food was quite good, and we would have wanted to return, except that, in good conscience, we could never again patronize a restaurant where the workers were so mistreated.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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This is not a blunder as such, but it has to have a niche somewhere, I guess. Valentine's Day. SO and I are having an early dinner. The owner/chef and his wife were working. A man walks in with a big bouquet, and walks over to the owner's wife, who looks very startled, but accepts the flowers. He says "Wait, I have something else for you," and hands her an envelope, then says "You have been served with divorce papers," and exits, stage right. SO and I look at each other, and prop our mouths back shut. She goes into the kitchen, where an A-1 screaming match, complete with a lot of broken dishes, ensues. Put us straight out of the mood for dinner, I tell you. Our poor waiter told us to just go ahead and forget the check, that it was on the chef! Talk about your thoroughly demented chef-type behavior...

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