I can’t recall if I ever have sent a meal back, but I hardly dine out at all.
Closest I can remember was walking off before paying for half an order of drinks and muffins - I ordered everything our group wanted, the woman serving me made the coffees, put them on the tray, then said that the hot chocolate machine wasn’t working, and there was some sort of problem with the tea, but the place on the other side of the building (same franchise) would be able to sell us the missing items.
I told her she should have mentioned this when I ordered, not when she had completed the half of our order that was possible - she shrugged and asked for payment, so I shrugged and walked away.
I eat out pretty frequently. I’m an amazingly picky eater, but also pretty shy and conflict-adverse; I don’t recall ever sending anything back.
Usually, I’ll chalk a dish I don’t like up to the risk you take ordering a new dish, or in an unfamiliar restaurant, and just not eat it. I suppose I’d send back something that came out uncooked, but it’s never happened to me that I can remember.
I did get food poisoning once, from a hamburger that was raw in the middle that I had delivered to a hotel room. By the time I opened up the packaging the delivery person was long gone, and due to a mix up my roommate (who wasn’t there) had the only key, so I couldn’t go get anything else without locking myself out. I was starving, so I ate it, and regretted it the rest of the week. It took an hour or so to kick in, though.
The one time that I threw up because of the taste, was after eating a meal in an excellent Indian restuarant. Surprisingly, for someone as picky as me, I’m usually counted as having a cast-iron stomach - I may hate the taste, but it’s not going to make me sick. But something in Indian spicing just doesn’t agree with me. I would typically just pick at whatever I ordered and eat some nan, and get something else on the way home, once my stomach settled down. But this time I only made it to the parking lot before vomiting. That was the last time I’ve ever agreed to go to Indian with someone.
Forgot to mention: I barf every time I eat extra-cheese pizza. Every. Single. Time.
Extra cheese is the only thing that makes me sick. That, and the Waffle House. I’ve only eaten there once and will not make that mistake again.
That, or they’d rather lose a little business by cooking medium than get sued because someone got sick from a truly rare steak. Just a thought. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Playing devil’s advocate here: could it be that you’re extra-super-sensitive to cilantro, you’re eating at places where the other vegetarian meals are likely to have cilantro, and the cilantro is getting transferred to your dish by riding on the chef’s knife after she’s done preparing the other ones?
It is widely known that many people do not like vegetables. I wish chefs would be more forthcoming about the use of vegetables.
Honestly, I’d like a cite that someone is genuinely allergic to cilantro. Of course there are people who will clutch their chest and start gasping for air whenever they encounter something they don’t like.
Cilantro would not be such an “epidemic” if people didn’t like it. Restaurants and chefs don’t put spices in their food they’re certain are going to put most of their customers in the hospital. More people like cilantro than don’t. Why on earth would it be “increasingly popular” otherwise?
levdrakon, you can withdraw your claws. Nobody here claimed to be allergic to cilantro. Your obfuscation of the facts presented makes me wonder what the real purpose of your post was.
What is a fact is that a respectable percentage of the population experiences the taste of cilantro very strongly, and unpleasantly, while most of us don’t taste it much at all. If you’ve ever taken bio lab, you know that there’s nothing inherently unbelievable about this; most biology labs have a bunch of thin paper strips coated with a material that’s tasteless to most people but elicits a strong taste reaction in people with a certain gene.
One popular vegetable has a similar property. You’re the only one who can’t get over this. Why?
It’s hamburger that can’t be cooked rare anymore, because the potentially dangerous germs are all mixed throughout the meat. I’m pretty sure you can still order a steak rare.
Food makes me vomit all the time, especially since I’ll eat anything and everything including stuff like fly covered gelatanized pigs blood bought from street vendors. I eat a varied diet and don’t really understand how people can trace so exactly what made them throw up.
Considering your circumstances, I’m not surprised you couldn’t tell. However, I eat the vast majority of food prepared from my own kitchen. Breakfast is standard - yogurt, cereal, fruit, etc. - and is stuff that I would know if it had gone bad because I’d get sick more than once. Lunch is leftovers from dinner, often remade into something else, or things that I’ve premade and have little portions frozen and waiting for me to select. Same issue there. The food I make at home uses ingredients that get incorporated into multiple meals. So with all of these meals, if something was carrying a pathogen, more than one meal would almost certainly trigger it.
If I don’t make dinner at home, it’s usually carryout. The only time in the last year (to the best of my recollection) I have of having food poisoning or some other GI issue after a meal was after going to a burrito place. It’s not definite but it’s certainly the wisest choice in that instance.
I don’t remember the last time I sent back an entree, but I send back about 5-10% of the side of fries that come with the dish. I know it’s hard timing three dishes to come out at the same time, and if it is fast food, I am generally less picky, but if I’m paying for a decent lunch, I expect the fries to be fairly hot. Lukewarm is not going to cut it.
On the bright side, fries are generally quick to replace and they don’t take your plate back, they just bring you a side of hot fries (and no, I don’t eat the cold ones to get a free ‘double order’).
For the first, I’ve never sent food back. The only time someone I was with sent food back, it was at a very big name 5 star hotel which was completely taken over by our team for 4 weeks; we’d reserved a meeting room for 10 people at 9pm, warning that we’d want dinner.
We asked for salads and sandwiches, including a hamburguer which arrived both burned and frozen. The recipient of the hamburguer called the server, asked for the shift manager and proceeded to very calmly chew the manager in one side and out the other while the server went to get a salad.
I sent back a wonderful crab cake dinner once because it came garnished with grapefruit (?), to which I am violently allergic. Who would ever think to say “hold the grapefruit” when ordering a seafood dinner? Hold the lemon, maybe. They replated the meal, which was fine.
I also am allergic to scallops, and always ask what is in something labeled “seafood.” If it is promised to have no scallops, I will eat it, but occasionally have been fooled, and then find myself on the way to Ralphtown. I have always wished I could induce vomiting and get it over with, but it doesn’t work for me. I just have to wait for the inevitable. And :: rant :: why do people call things “citrus” when they just mean “lemon” or “orange”? I always have to ask if there’s grapefruit involved. Just say what you mean.
Yep. Most hamburger is just fine to eat rare BTW. Cooking it medium well is a precaution against lawsuits more than anything else. Regular old steak can be eaten basically raw if you like (as I do). There are still places that you can get a rare burger, but it will involve hassling the waiter who has been trained that rare burgers are OMG TEH DEVIL! and that you you really mean medium. Usually I tell them to make certain that it is warm through and bring it out.
Only a couple times. I was at a new Italian place and the mozzarella sticks we ordered for appetizers were pretty burnt. We sent them back, it took until the end of the meal until they got us another batch, and they were burnt worse. We left them untouched on the table.
Another time I got a very rare steak even though I ordered well-done. I can take somewhat rare, but this was really pink.
Interesting responses so far! It sounds like a lot of people have sent back steaks before, and I guess that makes sense if you’re spending $$ on a prime rib or something. I guess if I spent $30 on a steak and they cooked it wrong, I might do the same. But there are some pretty gross or outright wrong things in restaurants I’ve let slide. I got a big shard of clear plastic in my soup at a Turkish restaurant once (I told the server but they didn’t even comp it!) and once I got an egg salad sandwich from a little takeout deli type place and it was frozen. I was pretty horrified, but I just took it home and let it thaw and ate it later.
I did recently return a $4 box of Okami sushi to Trader Joe’s because I took a bite and the avocado was so unripe that I thought from the crunch of it that I’d accidentally bought sushi with cucumbers in it.
I was vegetarian for a while and always ate dishes that were accidentally sent out with meat in them–with my reasons for vegetarianism, it seemed very stupid and letter-of-the-law to have them throw away/waste the meat dish that animals had already died for so they could make me a brand new one.
I also have to say I feel pretty lucky at how iron my stomach apparently is. I eat a lot of street food when traveling and on my most recent trip to Asia, where I was eating things like fried tarantulas from street vendors all over the place, only felt at all sick when I came home and ate at T.G.I. Friday’s, where I got some horrendous stomach cramps.
I admit that I do send stuff back more often now than before I watched Kitchen Nightmares, but that’s largely because I’m looking more carefully. Worst time is when we looked at our salads, which were full of wilted and rotting field greens, and asked the waitress if she could take it back. When she asked the cook about it, and this was an open kitchen restaurant, he loudly and unapologetically said to her, “That’s how it is, live with it!” Needless to say, we didn’t go back, and it closed soon after.
That said, when they make a good effort to replace the dish, I tip well. And if they choose to comp the dish, I tip at least as much as if they had charged me for it. When they’re especially awesome about it, I make up for the cost of the dish on the tip. Well I would have had to pay for it anyway, right?
I love fried okra. And there’s a local restaurant that makes it fantastic. I’ll order it knowing there’s about a 1 in 3 chance that I’ll have to send it back because it’s luke-warm. Or rather, I used to. After several years the servers know me well enough to check it before they bring it. And they like my tips so everyone is happy.
If my steak is anywhere in the vicinity of medium rare I’m fine with it. Every once in a while I’ll have to send back one that’s crisp or bleeding too much.
Couple of times I’ve sent back chicken that was bleeding.
Once there was a baked potato that looked great on the outside but was almost completely black when I opened it. The manager turned a lovely shade of green when she saw it.
And another time I ordered a blue cheese dressing. What I was served could best be described as gelatinous. Not a adjective I want to use describing salad dressing.
re: throwing up. Never after just one bite, but I can imagine that reaction to certain textures or flavors. Not that I expect liver to be able to sneak up on me.