My husband and I often have one appetizer and one entree between us. We might order another side dish (another salad, for instance), but if we order two main courses, we also say “Just bring out a couple of to-go boxes with it”, because we know that we’re gonna end up taking half home.
Personally, I think this is a ripoff in most cases. Now, I’ve seen Mexican places that charge a small setup fee, but in those places, that’s for the chips and salsas and tortillas. And it’s because a lot of people will just eat the tortillas and salsa, without ordering anything else. These restaurants also tend to offer a “fajita setup plate” for a small charge, which means that two people can share an order of fajitas, as the setup plate have beans and rice and pico de gallo and onions and such.
I would’ve very politely told them to either bring me another plalte, or I wasn’t paying them a dime.
That seems to be a recurring theme on Kitchen Nightmares and Restaurant: Impossible; owners who don’t really know what they’re doing, fixate on random & petty things while ignoring stuff that actually matters, and won’t listen to anyone who tells them differently.
I once ate a diner that had the logos for every major credit card on the door. I had a burger & fries, went up to the register to pay, and the cashier gave me the stink-eye when I tried to pay with my Visa. She then pointed to small sign taped to the side of the register saying there as a $10 minimum for credit cards. Without saying a word. :mad: I stared back at her for a few seconds before she started talking. I bluntly told her she could either charge my card or give my meal would be free. She started to argue, and I shut her down saying they should’ve had a bigger sign, like on the door were people could see it. She got the owner/cook/manager (I’m not sure which he was) out and they said they’d made an exception, but they’d have to a dollar “service charge” to my bill. I told them no, they could charge me the exact amount of the bill, and I’d call my card for a charge back if there was any discrepency. I got some really nasty looks, but they relented. Never ate there again.
And if she’d been nicer and said “I’m sorry we have a $10 minimum” instead of just pointing silently to the sign I would’ve sheepishly pulled Mr Hamilton out of my wallet and be done with it. Probally would’ve still said something about them needing a better sign though
Actually, yes, they ARE afraid that they’ll lose their beer license. Those licenses can be suspended or revoked, you know, and that might make the difference between a profitable restaurant and one that’s losing money.
I used to go to buffet/all-you-can-eat restaurants with a woman I’ll call Shirley. When she filled her buffet plate, she would come to the table and take several zip-loc bags out of her purse and fill them from the plate, to my surprise. At an expensive rib place, this came to the manager’s attention and she did some glib talking to convince him she was not doing anything wrong. :rolleyes: At an Indian-style restaurant I noticed she was getting dirty looks from a customer at a nearby table as she did this.
Another time I took her to a Swedish smorgasbord style restaurant I really liked. She reeled from the food served, claiming that her Jewish heritage made her extra carefrul of potentially spoiled food and she refused to eat the food. (This suggests I was deliberately having her served unpalatable food; I was insulted and embarrassed.) While we were on the way to another restaurant she suggested we go to a well-known buffet restaurant and sneak in the back so we could eat from the buffet line for free; :eek: I refused.
A lawyer later told me Shirley risked arrest for theft–and I risked arrest as an accessory.
I don’t go to restaurants with her any more. I haven’t even seen her in more than a year.
As someone who worked in the industry in a high turnover restaurant(s)… I can say this is pretty standard practice. Whether the bill is 17.43 or 87.32, we would usually round up and give the appropriate amount of cash back… kind of ASSUMING the one or two percent-ish tip and hoping to get more. About 99.99% of the people who paid with cash got this. The .01 percent that didn’t… well, the manager would back up any server who got complaints. Which I remember as like two in 2 years of working at one particular place.
The simple reason was, servers are usually very busy and don’t carry a cash register’s worth of coins on them… and not time to change everyone’s bill into 19 cents or what have you. I would usually have quarters, but nothing smaller.
In my experience, the restaurant or server will, if anything, round DOWN, in favor of the customer. So if I had a bill for 17.43, to use your example, and paid with a twenty, I’d get two singles and three shiny quarters as my change. This sort of slight generosity on the part of the restaurant or server would indeed result in a slightly larger tip from me.
If I received less change than I was supposed to get, though, this would definitely backfire on the server/restaurant, because I’d probably leave two cents as the tip.
There are a few kabab places around here that have closed-door “family” seating areas for Muslims who don’t want their women eating in full view of the public.
A friend told me that on Monday one of her coworkers baked a chocolate cake and brought it in for everyone to share. Their boss took three pieces to bring home to his family.
That’s hilarious. I’ve heard of the other way around (“You wouldn’t like that, you’re a foreigner”), but that’s the first time I’ve heard “You wouldn’t like it, you’re not a foreigner”!
That may actually be illegal - in some states it is actually state law that they provide a glass of tap water to anybody who asks, customer or not.
When I was 8 years old, my dad and I went out for lunch at the Pen and Pencil in NY [this was in 1969] and I ordered steak tartare. The poor waiter tried desperately to get me to change it to a hamburger and right up until he saw me dig in he was trying to convince my dad that there was no problem, he could take it back and have the chef turn it into a hamburger.
This, big time. Mother’s Day breakfast and you’re NOT taking reservations? Good call. You don’t even have a bar to hang out in and buy overpriced mimosas. Genius!
At least this one party of ten did not show up because they weren’t taking reservations or call ahead seating process.
Because I tried to plan ahead and call several days before to get reservations (or, at the very least, given a call ahead seating process) so that we wouldn’t have ten people, in our party alone, milling about an overcrowded waiting area for 45 minutes. They weren’t taking reservations and weren’t planning to on one of their busiest days of the year. This seems counterintuitive to me.
And so what? There were presumably plenty of people who did show up to make up for it.
It seems the opposite to me. Why would they even consider taking reservations if they know that it’s guaranteed that people are going to be lining up for a table? They want the house to be full and if it’s the busiest day of the year, then the house is going to be full. Taking reservations means slower turnover as tables are held for people to show up for their reservations and it means adding unnecessary work and delays to the process.
This, I guess, is one of the agree to disagree things. I thought the whole concept of the reservation/ call ahead seating process was pretty well known.