I was a server at Denny’s while they still sold pie. Angry waitress up and quit, last official moment as an employee was a cream pie into the face of the manager out on the floor. Got her pretty good.
Oh my god. I forgot the best and weirdest experience I ever had at a restaurant.
Last year we went to California and had dinner in Carmel in one of the loveliest Greek restaurants I had ever had. It was just us and one other couple, the food was excellent, the weather was perfect, we had a beautiful view of the cutest little town.
Midway through the meal the owner comes out and announces, “Our cook would like to sing for you!” We’re like, ok, sure.
The cook comes out and starts singing. He sings a beautiful song in Greek. Us and the other couple put down our forks and just listen, I mean his voice is like an angel. This fat little dumpy man was singing his heart out.
He finishes his song, and I nearly have tears in my eyes. I look over and see the other couple is similarly touched. All four of us clap and thank him profusely.
Then the cook turns and talks to the owner and they both disappear in the back. A minute later I see him, sans apron, walking to his car with the owner, with a huge bottle of olive oil in his arms. He talks to the owner, gets in the car and drives away. 
It was a very surreal but lovely experience. But to this day we joke that maybe it was his last day, before going back to the old country, with his bottle of olive oil. Maybe he was off to get shot, and the olive oil was for his wife! Maybe it was his swan song. Etc.
There’s a worser level, found in many small-chain “steak houses,” especially those with a family or “cowboy” sort of ambience.
The actual slabs of cow can be pretty good*, but almost all of the cut-meat dishes like “tri-tip sandwiches” or “_____ medallions” come from Sysco-level providers and are pre-prepared, mostly-cooked standbys. They open the package, do a little finish cooking and dressing, and plate it. You can taste it. The meat has that slightly gamy, off taste of having been fridged or frozen after cooking. Not really what you expect (or, probably, paid for) from a place with “steak” in the name.
(But then, pretty much any time you go into a mid-level restaurant and they have a six-page menu with fifty fancy items, you can be sure a good portion of them are coming out of restaurant-service packages.)
*Although I’ve gotten very selective about ordering beef any more. The cost has risen so dramatically, with restaurants caught between their cost and what the menu will permit, that cuts have gotten cheaper and smaller. Smaller is okay, but it’s often done as “thinner” - so the steak looks just as big but is too thin to cook correctly. I’d rather have a smaller-diameter cut that’s proper thickness for cooking, but since it would look small and cheap, most restaurants aren’t doing it that way. I gave up when “strip steaks” started looking an awful lot like what we used to call “minute steaks” - about a quarter inch thick.
Ohhhh. Same steak house as the microwaved Filet (a real shame, looked like a good piece of meat). Same meal, I ordered a Rib-eye. Oh it was BIG. And 1/4 inch thick.
This was not some family cowboy themed chain restaurant either.
My mother had a waitress follow her out into the adjacent mall and into the grocery store to inquire why she didn’t leave a bigger tip (she left a standard 20%), the service wasn’t worth more than that…
Are you sure she actually left 20%, and that’s what the server received? Because it seems very unlikely anyone would go to such lengths if that were the case. But at least two plausible alternative scenarios seem likely to me in that case:
A: Your mom did the math wrong and left less than she thought she did.
B: If it was a cash tip, someone may have stolen some or all of it before the server got it. When I worked in a restaurant, one of the bussers got caught doing exactly that. He was smart enough not to take entire tips, since that would be more suspicious, but instead was skimming a few bucks off many different tables. Interestingly, the way he was caught was via a sting operation set up by one of the managers after the suspicion was reported to them (of course he was fired immediately).
A quarter inch thick?! That’s like 3 Steak-umms stacked up flat.
“Allow me to introduce myself: the Blue Raja, Master of Silverware. Forks a speciality.”
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I was in China, my girlfriend ordered an omelette. There was a fly cooked into it. We called the waitress over and pointed to the fly. She took a pair of chopsticks and removed the fly with an expression like, “why couldn’t you have done that yourself?” and walked off.
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I went to a fancy French bistrot. Had a pretty good chateaubriand then ordered dessert. It was a mousse and it was frozen solid. I called over the maitre d’ and complained that it was frozen and not fresh. He rolled his eyes and took it away from the table. I then sat there for 20 minutes and he finally reappeared with the same mousse, now thawed out. The place went out of business about a month later.
As I said, we used to buy steak sliced about that thin, as “minute steak.” Cooked fast, tasty with breakfast or on a sandwich, often sold by diners under that name and with no fancy pretensions.
But slicing good cuts that thin so that they still fill a plate just means you’re getting an overcooked slice of cow for what you used to pay for a steak.
I am sure. My Mom, like her three daughters, worked as a server many times and would never slight a tip - 20% is usually our minimum for passable service. We usually all tip on the extremely generous side. For GREAT service, we go all out. Not a cash tip, left on debit.
The server was just really rude, entitled, and (apparently) not working there very long.
Oh, I have a few:
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There was the time I got edumacated on proper table manners by an Ihop waiter. I’d set my knife and fork neatly next to each other on my plate to indicate it could be bussed. He came by, asked it was okay to take my plate and told me that if I wanted my plate taken away I should cross the knife and fork. I just glowered at him as he pompously walked away.
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Hubby and I like to eat at fine dining on occasion. Once we went to the famous Colvin Run Tavern that everybody in the D.C. area raves about. I wasn’t very impressed. We wanted a nice dinner with wine. We were seated without menus and the sommolier quickly came over and asked if we wanted wine. He didn’t offer wine menus, either, so we didn’t know what they had, let alone what would pair with the meals we didn’t know we were having yet. We were both like “… we don’t know yet”. The service was mediocre from that point on.
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The time we had dinner at Craftsteak, Tom Coliccio’s place in Vegas. We had trouble understanding the menu, mostly because the waiter kept kibbitzing instead of letting us read it over. He advised us to order two proteins, so we each ordered a type of steak, a veggie side dish and salad starters. We were not happy when they brought our entrees - family style, HUGE steaks, enough to feed six people. The food was terrific, but we were annoyed that we’d wasted so much food and the waiter had misdirected us. We couldn’t figure out what was going on with that.
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On the other side of the coin, there was a weirdly pleasant experience: Our second time dining at Cyrus in Healdsburg (since closed). It had been a few years since we’d been there and they seem to have remodelled because we couldn’t see the front door. We’d only walked along the one wall where we thought the front door used to be, when someone in a smart, formal uniform called out and asked if we were Mr. and Mrs. (ourname). We said yes, so he replied to follow him and he’d help us. We went around the corner and he led us through a bar area straight to our seats. Mid-way through the meal I realized that this man who had apparently been watching for us through the windows and came out to retrieve us was the maitre’d. I adore Cyrus because of service like that, both times we’d been there were amazingly wonderful. I’m sad that they’re closed.
Ah yes, that reminds me of a business trip to Louisville, Kentucky.
There was an Eddie Martini’s across the street from my hotel and since I’d gotten in late decided to just walk over there for dinner. After sitting at the bar and ordering a steak, the bartender asked if I wanted any side dishes. He ran down the list and I asked for hash browns and asparagus.
20 minutes later, out comes my steak, along with enough hash browns and asparagus to feed a dozen people! The bartender had neglected to mention that all the sides were “family-style” and quite generous.
Since this is the Pit, I’d like to say a big Fuck Ya Very Much to each and every restaurant that can’t present a clear menu. If you can’t tell what dish comes complete, or which sides you have to order, or the size of sides isn’t specified, or in general if you have to have the waiter walk you through each and every section to make sure you get what you want/think you’re going to get… roll up that leatherette-covered puppy and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Some restaurants just make this process unnecessarily difficult by scattering things around the pages. Some make it impossible, and I don’t think it’s from some crafty way to get people to over-order. It’s just a case of “Well, WE know that” and diners never give any useful feedback.
I appreciate your rant, but in this case I think the menu was clear, I just didn’t look at it. I asked the bartender about their steaks, he took my order and asked me about side dishes. Now in an ideal world he might have mentioned to a single guy sitting alone at the bar that he had just ordered enough food to feed everyone at the bar, but I can’t blame the menu.
I was just using your experience as a soapbox. However, I still think the menu had to be at fault if a reasonable perusal didn’t indicate portion sizes - just “individual” or “family” or “shared” for sides is enough, if it’s there and readable.
Most menus can be improved, and the really good ones are done by a service that works with the chef and restaurant to make them so. But I can’t count the times I’ve spent several minutes scouring a menu, trying to figure out simple things like whether entrees are separate (and which ones, since some list their sides), and appetizer/side sizes, and so forth - and the info is just not there. Using a shitty menu to set up a high-pressure sale by the waiter is a crapola tactic.
Hmmmm I was always taught that this was the other way around; Crossed cutlery means leave it alone, I’m not done, while side-by-side means “I’m done”.
In a quick read of etiquette styles, I see that I was taught “continental style”, (which makes sense, from my recent British ancestry)
Well, then your complaint is invalid. If the kitchen isn’t closed to new orders, then you have to take new orders. If your business is run that stupidly, that you don’t start shutting down the kitchen, that’s the manager/owners’s problem.
It seems a lot of you want to take it out on the customer who is only doing what they are allowed to do, while your real complaint is with your manager or owner who won’t pay you after you do your job, since you’ll wind up being late.
My dad does overtime at his job (a warehouse), sometimes. Does he hold it against the customers when it happens? No. He either gets overtime, or works out a schedule so he gets to go home early another day. And his top boss is fucking psychopath–he’s just following the law.
It’s also a horrible thing to do and illegal. I’d assumed you had realized that, and said you never did it because you had some sense of ethics. But the more you defend it, the more it seems like you think that action would have been okay, and not just a stupid thing you came up with in the heat of the moment–you know, imaginary catharsis.
Like if our assailants had just thought about throwing things at people. What the fuck, guys? Do you think throwing shit at people is remotely acceptable? That’s the type of stuff that gets you put into anger management classes.
I’m not defending it at all, but if the fuckwad ass-posse that likes to throw temper tantrums over my posts does so, I can have just as much fun pointing out their inability to read for comprehension.
No, I didn’t do it. I didn’t say I came close to. I made a joke about having thought about it - ten years ago. And all the pissy little girls still coping with hormonal upset just squealed and clapped their faces and OMFGed all around for a while.
So if pointing out that it was harmless, and not some kind of killer toxic gas attack intended to slaughter thousands because a restaurant owner was unspeakably rude (and had a history being that way)… well. Call it “defense” if you like, and go rave about it over on the horsie board.