Misrepresentation of menu items -- what do you do?

[Ling]

A few years ago, I ordered a dish from a restaurant because one of the ingredients listed was "heirloom tomatoes". (I forget what the dish was...probably some sort of salad.) Anyway, I got really excited because I had been reading about heirloom tomatoes online and recently watched some sort of FoodTV show where they featured heirloom tomatoes, and had never tasted them before. I was, by this time, familiar with quite a few of the heirloom varieties...how they're grown, what they look like, etc.

So I get my salad, and lo and behold it came with slivers of out-of-season, mealy, flavourless, pinkish tomatoes. I was a bit upset, and managed to shyly sputter, "I-I-thought the salad came with heirloom tomatoes?" to the waiter, to which he dead-pans, "There are a few types of heirloom tomatoes."

Now I didn't quite know what he meant by that (he was probably suggesting that the tomatoes on my plate were some sort of heirloom variety that I didn't know about) but I didn't know what to do. Obviously, I couldn't have been 100% sure about the variety, but they tasted and looked exactly like the regular old field tomatoes you get at Safeway.

Anyway, there wasn't much I could do after what the waiter said. What would you have done?

[tim]

HI,

I had a tablemate who asked me about her tough "veal medallions" because of my experience in meat cutting. Her very large medallion was triangular with a round bone in the middle. I explained that it was a veal sirloin and hoped that her teeth would last the evening.

She questioned the waiter who assurred her that they were cut from the tenderloin. She quoted me for emphasis and asked to speak to the owner. The owner sought me out and patiently (think condescention!) explained that their chef cut the veal tenderloins a special way for plate presentation.

We have never returned.

Tim

Edited May 27, 2006 by tim (log)

[glossyp]

Fellow eGulleteer, oneidaone and myself stopped in at the Mermaid Bar (perhaps the fact that no alcohol is served there should have tipped us off that they take liberties with descriptions ) inside our local Neiman Marcus for a light lunch. I ordered the Orange Souffle with Chicken Salad thinking that this would make a tasty meal. When the plate was presented, the 'souffle' was in fact a small molded gelatin of a creamy peach hue with mandarin orange segments suspended in the chilled and congealed mound. I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure whether or not a gelatin mold can rightly be called a souffle. I do know it was definitely not what I was expecting.