Jesus, Alpha, it’s time to change my restaurant habits. That site is useful.
Nooo! My corner pizza place has VERMIN! The other pizza place on my block is CROSS CONTAMINATED!
Fucking lord.
Don’t get carried away with that website. Most restaurants have minor “health-infractions.” You’d never be able to order Chinese take-out again.
A co-worker of mine refuses to eat at any restaurant that has had ANY infraction of any sort in the past. Which means she has about 3 NY restaurants to choose from. Her loss…
We used to have one near my work. I went there on lunch break one day. Ordered my drink and an appetizer. The waitress breezes by and drops my drink on the table without slowing down. I sit there…I fall asleep…I wake up thirsty…No refill…I fall back asleep…I wake up again…I go and find the hostess and ask her for a refill…I wait…get refill, and waitress, guiltily asks me if my diet coke was ok…I wait…Sleep…wake up and go find hostess for another refill…
Finally, my food came…after over an hour and a half…good thing I’m salary…I go find the hostess again for another refill…I wait for the check…I put my american express card out on the table…wait…finally, someone else with flair walks by and asks if I want him to run my card…I tell him yes…wait…wait…I get the ticket back, its for $53. for an appetizer and a coke…apparently the lasts residents of my table skipped out, or died of old age or something…I’m seeing red at this point. I track the guy down in the kitchen who ran my card, and explain that I only ordered an appetizer and a coke…He finds the manager, who is on the phone…we wait…the guy realizes that I am about to lose it, and says “you had to wait a while for you food didn’t you?” I glare at him…“Ok, I’ll take the charge off, you just take care of the tip”…So I tip the waitress my standard 15% of the ticket,…lets see…15% of NOTHING is NOTHING. I walk out. Good lord, I like thier food, but this was beyond bad.
I’ve only eaten at the TGIF’s here in Waco twice. That’s all I’ll ever eat too.
The first time wasn’t so bad, from what I remembered.
The second and last time was terrible. After we were seated, it took forever for our waiter to get to us. The table we were sitting at had a good view, straight back to the bathrooms, which means we could see what all the waiters were doing except when they went to the bar or whatever. I’ve had slow waiters, and I’m usually patient. Especially if it’s busy, and the restuarant is understaffed. No biggy, I’m usually eating at a restaurant when I’m not really in a hurry anyway.
Our glasses never get filled. Our order took forever, and it seems like we had to send the first round of something back. The slow waiter wouldn’t have been a problem, but there were plenty of waitstaff, and people with kids who sat after us got their food before us, got refills. We must have gotten the worst waiter in the place. Oh well, I solved that problem by never going there again.
I stopped for drinks at that TGIF once. I paid with a card but left the tip on the table. I found out when I got my credit card bill that the bartender added an extra tip for himself on to the credit slip --even though I had put a line or ON TABLE or something like that in the TIP spot. I called up the manager and gave them the bartenders name. I’m not sure if anything was done about it, but I’ll never go back there again.
I don’t get overly excited about restaurant inspection results. I mean, for major violations like no soap or towels in employee toilet–YIPES–I get creeped out and stay the hell away. But for a lot of other things, I sort of shrug. Given the cat and dog hair and god knows what else I ingest on a daily basis in my own house, I am pretty laid back. Thank god no one comes to inspect the Cranky Kitchen.
There is a restaurant right near my house which has had PERFECT inspections for four years running. They’ve had newspaper articles written about them for this, and they always smugly tack up the latest inspections (of other joints) that are regularly printed in the paper, with a note saying “Do you know what they’re doing where YOU’RE eating?”.