Favorite restaurant owner turns into social climber, crashes in inglorious ineptitude

The BBQ Pit
1

Over Valentine’s Day, my girlfriend and I traveled halfway across the state in hopes of eating at a restaurant that is very special to us. It has fabulous food in an old, historic building, the prices are not exorbitant, and the owner is friendly and casual, seeming to care more about treating the customers like guests and feeding them in a manner to remember than extracting the last penny from their pockets.

The price list was usually more than I’d expect to pay for a normal casual dinner out, but as this was a special occasion, and I knew that the food would be excellent, I bore absolutely no grudge. We usually get out of the place with a salad course, entree, dinner wine, dessert, and coffee for about $65-$75. $20-$22 dollar entrees. High-ish middle scale for our location, but the food quality sits squarely in the upper scale. Great value.

Ah, but when we arrived, we learned to our dismay that the place had been moved down the road, away from the liberal arts college town where we knew it, and closer to the center of wealth in and around Birmingham. Annoying, but if they were in search of greener pastures, that’s fine too.

We decided to go find them. After the new owner of the old restaurant graciously provided us with directions, we took another hour or so to locate the new place.

We arrived famished and ready for a wonderful dinner.

The new place turned out to be an ENORMOUS disappointment. THe one highlight of the evening was that because we had driven so far to eat at the old restaurant, the owner took pity on us and seated us even though we did not have a reservation.

Alarm bells went off. The old place never required reservations. Still, it was gracious of her to seat us anyway.

Surprise number two: a prix fixe menu. No problem, really. I normally enjoy a prix fixe dinner at a restaurant. It usually shows that the chef has put a lot of thought into making complementary dishes, and the whole experience might be viewed as an appreciation of his/her skill. Besides, they had my favorite dish from the old restaurant (rosemary grilled lamb chops with asparagus and garlic potatoes,) so I settled down and was content. I just guessed that the owner was attempting to offer a tighter “restaurant experience” rather than merely a dinner out. That’s fine…although I wasn’t sure I was content with the newfound gestures toward formality.

Then I saw the prices. Uh oh. Substantially higher than at the old place. In fact, more than twice as high. Misgivings started to surface.

Still, I’m not cheap when it comes to food, and I’d gladly pay that much and quite a bit more if the food was extraordinary.

To make a long story short, it wasn’t. The lamb, which I know is best rare, was cold and bloody, with no texture, and no flavor. The asparagus was gray and mushy. Gone were the garlic potatoes. In their place was a mound of “saffron rice.” In reality, it looked more like Rice-a-Roni. At those prices, I want to see the filaments of saffron in the rice. My girlfriend wanted a seafod pasta. It came out waaaay past al dente, and with a few smallish shrimp.

My dessert (New York style cheesecake) was mealy and partially frozen.

The bread was cold and came out with foil-wrapped butter pats.

Bah. It was as if something had sucked all the soul and life out of this place we loved, replaced it with a pale, crass shadow of it, and charged more for the food. The place was packed, of course.

We were very disappointed. If you are willing to pay for an extremely good dinner, you ought to get a good experience and atmosphere along with it. I resent being asked to pay $150 for Portion-Paks of butter and creamer. At least serve the stuff out of a cream ewer. And it takes a lot of balls to charge $50 for a plkate of soggy penne pasta, whose ingredients cost the restaurant all of $3.50. Maybe if they were serving French cuisine done right (feather-light souffles, perfectly prepared pates, carefully matched wines, etc.) that actually required a lot of attention, skill, and patience, I wouldn’t resent it. In fact, I know I wouldn’t. But this was pasta, for chrissakes…and pasta that someone wasn’t watching very closely, at that. I’ve had much better at Olive Garden.

We’ll never go there again. I now wish the owner had turned us down flat.

I’ve considered writing the owner with my concerns, but I don’t know that it would do any good - and I doubt that I could be convinced to drop another $150 next time just to see if they took my advice.

2

By all means, write a letter. Tell them what you said here - that you made a special trip, and apparently, a rather long trip, just for their cooking and tracked them down after they moved. So on and so forth.

Who knows? They may write or call back apologizing effusively and offering a free dinner if you come back. Or maybe not. If they don’t know that they’re antagonizing former loyal customers, they may have no idea that they’re doing anything wrong. Perhaps their new location sees mostly one-off event diners - here today on vacation and gone tomorrow - that have no idea of the level of service this restaurant used to provide.

You are right - for that kind of money, you shouldn’t be getting school cafeteria butter packets.

3

Write the letter. Who knows how many other disappointed patrons did the same thing? A restaurant owner doesn’t want to disappoint his customers and will probably take your letter to heart.

4

Of course, I’m dying to know which restaurant now since I’m in your area. If you can’t or won’t say, I don’t blame you; if you do say I would eat it up! Slight pun intended.
Anyway - I would write a letter. The worst thing that can come of it? You’ll be ignored.
Rez

5

Could the prix fixe arrangement have just been for Valentine’s Day? I think a lot of places do that.

6

I forgot one thing:
What does prix fixe mean?
Thanks in advance.

7

Write yourself a cheat sheet ~ with all of the points you’ve mentioned (and the ones you didn’t) in point form.

Call the restaurant and ask to speak to the manager/owner. Ask her if she has ten minutes to spare ~ if not, ask when would be a good time to call. Then spew each point out … After you’ve expressed each point, highlight it or tick it or something on your cheat sheet (to make sure you’ve gotten every point across).

Sounds like they were hurting for cash in the old place and are trying to bring themselves up a notch. Sometimes, that just doesn’t work. If they weren’t hurting, they’ve missed what made the first restaurant a success.

Restaurant owners actually appreciate very detailed critiques. I have a friend whose husband works at a radio station, selling advertising. SO many times, his customers (restaurant owners) ask him to come in for a meal and give a real hard critique on what he sees as “wrong”. I mean straight down to the font on the menu.

Best case scenario, she’ll offer an “on the house” dinner, compliments of an extremely grateful business owner. Worse case scenario, you’ll feel less ripped off when you get it off your chest. As a bonus, you may have saved a few other “regulars” from driving cross-state only to be welcomed by disapointment.

I’m curious ~ What kind of restaurant is in the place of the old one? You never know. That might be your new (old) hang-out. Hopefully, Valentines Day finished with a BANG! anyway ;).

8

Put me in the “write a letter” camp. But be sure to keep it courteous. I know that when I owned a business I wanted to know why and how I lost business.

9

I’m a firm believer in making my opinions known, even if nothing comes of it. Tell them they’ve lost a customer and exactly why. Doesn’t cost you a thing except a few minutes and maybe a stamp, and you just might end up doing some good.

10

You should write a letter, but I have found that on holidays, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, etc. people go to restaurants who normally don’t. This creates a situation in which many patrons might not recognize the loss of quality, and in which the restaurant has no real incentive to provide a quality dining experience, because these folks are not regular customers. A good establishment would not take advantage of this, but some will.

11

It means fixed price. You usually are given a choice of one appetizer, one entree, and one dessert from a list of 3 or 4, all for the same total price. Sometimes places will have, for example, a $30 prix fixe choice, and one for $50 with better and/or more options.

12

The old restaurant was unassumingly-named Montevallo Grill, and it was located in downtown Montevallo, not far from the college. The new restaurant, which was moved to downtown Helena (a haven for the central Alabama wealthy in its own right, as well as being much closer to the wealth of Birmingham) is called - rather snottily, IMO - The Grille.

A ridiculous name change. People always think that the addition of the antiquated “e” at the end makes a place seem higher-class. In this particular case, it makes me think they’re selling auto body parts.

Good point. I had not considered that possibility.

Rez, a prix fixe dinner has a fixed price. You order an entree, and the appetizer, salad, dessert, and entree courses are included in the price. In this case, the price did not include wine with dinner, but included coffee with dessert. In some cases, as has been pointed out, a prix fixe menu is a way to feed large numbers of people with the hassle of an extensive menu. A lot of restaurants trot them out for holidays. In other cases, the style is used as a vehicle to showcase the chef’s talent. You get less choice, but you’re guaranteed that the courses are nicely complementary. I was hoping that the stellar chef of the Montevallo Grill had desired to tighten up the experience and really fly her colors, but this was apparently not the case.

That’s really a ridiculously good idea. You guys have just about convinced me to write a letter. I’d be strongly hesitant to actually go back there to find out if it had any effect, but I did once love the food…

How ironic that people go out on these days to try to have a “special” experience, and some restaurants provide precisely the opposite experience by skimping on the food quality, among other things.

This is why I need to run a restaurant someday. I’m sure I’ll be lambasted and criticized at first, but damn it, I know what the quality of food should be, and I’d never allow my place to skimp on it. All it really takes is attention…keep track of your overhead expenditures, and price accordingly.

13

Also post your review here and here. (Disclaimer: I’m not associated with either site.)

14

Thanks. I was thinking Montevallo (having attended some years of college there I can usually sniff it out when people talk about it, even when they don’t use the name!).

And thanks, too, on the definition of the prix fixe menu. I would be willing to bet it was strictly a holiday menu.

Write that letter! I like the idea of calling as well, but you do run the risk of 1) putting the owner on the immediate defensive, and 2) getting flustered if you are not good at confrontation (diplomatic or not).

15

I know that around here, restaurants that normally don’t require reservations (some that normally don’t even * take * them) will require reservations for Valentine’s day (and will be booked a month in advance). Almost all the eateries in town suspend the normal menu on the night of the 14th and trot out a slightly overpriced prix fixe menu.

There was an article in the local paper a few years ago about the trend to prix fixe menues on V-day. Restauranteurs were trying to guarantee they could make a profit on that day. V-day is usually a poor day for the restaurant, as they tend to get stuck with a room full of boorish, low-tipping, sticker-shocked two-tops that they can’t turn over.

16

I could’ve done without your “eat the rich” attitude, but still a nice post.

17

Man, if there was ever an example of username being direct opposite of the post, this is it!

Seems strange that somebody named Ogre would throw around terms like prix fixe, al dente, and filaments of saffron. I thought he’d post something like “Me go to restaurant. Food sucks. Me bust chef’s head open.”

18

Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a two-top?

God, I hope that wasn’t tube-top.

DD

19

A table with two diners at it.

Restaurants usually hate them because on a normal night they seat parties of four – which buy twice as much food and drink.