Prompted by the thread about not being able to make a cocktail at a bar, and the replies in which posters recount glorious tales of the bar that had no wine, and the chinese restaurant that ran out of rice, I thought it might be fun to reveal the most ridiculous things that a restaurant you were at has ever run out of.
To get the ball rolling. Back in the day, after my parents had split up, my sibling and I were going out to dinner each weekend with my dad. One time, we’d decided to catch a movie, so after the film, dinner was just quick and dirty.
We walked in to the Pizza Hut across the road, to be told that we could order the salad bar, but they’d run out of pizza bases. At 8pm on a Saturday night.
Not feeling the love of salad all that much, we proceeded to the KFC down the street, to be informed that they’d run out of chicken pieces, but we could have nuggets if we wanted!
Double Whammy!
At least the McDonalds we ended up at had some damn burgers for us…
The fact that Starbucks can (and has, in my experience(s)) run out of regular sugar, certain lids, wooden stirrers, cup sleeves or any of those *basic * items that have to do with their bread-and-butter profit maker – run-of-the-mill coffee drinks – continually has me leaving the store, shaking my head.
Another pizza example - a pizza restaurant that I once visited with my parents told us one Saturday night that it couldn’t do any pizzas because it had run out of flour. It was turning customers away. I wondered why it hadn’t sent someone to the supermarket about 200 metres down the street to buy a few more kilos of flour.
I was once at a Taco Bell on a holiday weekend when they were out of small flour shells. (or maybe it was large flour shells one of the two).
It becomes rather hard to order when you are trying to decide whether a soft taco shell is the same size as the shells for some of their more exotic menu items.
In fairness, it was a holiday weekend, it sounded like their next truckload of supplies was due later that day or the next day, and it also sounded like they’d missed their guess on how many travelers would be coming through, but . . .
A group of friends and I once went to a restaurant that advertised an all-you-can-eat fish fry on Friday nights. A couple people got the fish fry. We ate, and the all-you-can-eat people ordered another round of fish. There were several different kinds (trout, whitefish, walleye, etc) and they were picking and choosing which they wanted so they could try them all.
When they tried to order the third round, the waitress informed them that the kitchen had closed, and the chef had gone home. It was a good fifteen or twenty minutes before the sign on the door said the restaurant closed. We were miffed, to say the least.
I was in a Kenny Rogers once where I was informed they had run out of chicken. So I asked them why they were open. I was told people might want to buy side dishes.
Because many’s the time Dad will tell the family “Hey everybody, let’s all go out for some cole slaw!”
In my (admittedly limited) pizza experience, the flour then has to be made into dough, which has to prove and rise, all of which takes time. The ought to have picked that extra flour up in the morning, and made some more dough.
Prime rib is a large roast cooked in one piece. The individual steaks are carved off as people order them. The ends tend to be well done, followed by medium, medium rare, and rare. I think it’s entirely possible to run out of “medium” if more people ordered “medium” that night than normal.
Yeah, but to control costs and to maximize profits, the serving sizes may have been pre-set.
This happened to me at Subways (with their cheesesteak).
Each portion per 6-inch piece of bread (2 for a 12-inch, etc.) was in these little cardboard trays.
Because the manager wanted to push that even further, think he pinched some out of each of them. I ended seeing more white of the bread than brown of the meat.
A few years back, on July 4th, our local KFC ran out of chicken. It was something like 3pm. That was just one indication of how poorly managed that particular KFC was.
When we lived in South Carolina, we had a KFC near us that never had chicken. Seriously, every time we went in, they said they were out. It got to be a joke and we’d do a quick run through the drive-thru every once in awhile just to check. One time, though, my husband went in at about 7 pm on a Saturday night. He ordered a four-piece or something like that. They loaded him up with chicken…filled up a bucket and a couple boxes with everything they had and told him it was free. They told him they were getting close to closing time (not really…I think they closed at 9 or 10) and they were just trying to get rid of the extra. Ooooookay…solved that mystery.
I went to resturant a few years ago that specialized in barbecue- they also had these awesome salads. I ordered a salad, and they told me that they were out of lettuce. The place was literally in the same shopping center as a grocery store. I don’t eat red meat, so I ordered a chicken sandwich. Out of chicken. I would up having garlic bread and water for lunch.
Not really. It would change the texture and flavor of prime rib to throw a piece on a grill or (even worse) the microwave. Some people might be OK with that, but a lot of people would be unhappy if their prime rib came out with grill marks on it.
It’s kind of the whole point of prime rib that it’s a big piece of meat that’s the same all the way through. It’s not like a steak where the outside is seared and the middle is done the way you want. If you order a rare prime rib, what shows up on your plate looks like a big bloody red piece of meat - you don’t cut into it to see that it’s rare, it’s rare on the outside because it’s a piece cut from the heart of a big roast. Does that make sense?
Edit: Here’s a picture of a prime rib dinner. See what I mean? Throw that sucker on the grill for a few more minutes and it’s just not the same thing.
It’s part of a chain in the U.K. doing New Orleans-style food (and more generally American food). Lots of their dishes are served over rice. It was in the middle of the day. They were out of rice. They made the dish instead over a baked potato.