What are your restaurant pet peeves?

[seaboy4hire]

For me it is not being greeted and ignored. Recently I was craving Thai like there was no tomarrow so went to my fav. place and grabbed a to go menue. I looked at the menue and took a seat waiting for the guy behind the coutner to finish up with what he was doing. I waited for about 4 or 5 minutes. I didn't get a hi, I'll be right with you or anything. I think that this will be the last time I go there. No great loss though since you can't throw a rock without hitting an Asian resteraunt in my neighborhood. Four Thai, four pho places, and countless teriyaki places. Plenty of places to go to for Asian food.

 

Hugs,

Greg

[email protected] http://seaboy4hire.tripod.com

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b310/NobodyKnowsMe/sinz.gif

[bbyguy]

Regarding sending food back...

 

Here is a link to what could happen. The waiters or chefs have been known to do horrid things.

 

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060722150656AApRTvj

 

This was also discussed on 20/20

Link:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2085903&page=3

Extract:

Don't Send Your Food Back — If You Plan to Continue Eating

 

So, if your meal messes up your bon appetit should you complain? Collins said definitely not.

 

"One word of advice to the consumer out there: Don't ever, ever send anything back and then eat it afterward. Don't ever, ever aggravate, humiliate or in any way demean your waiter before you've gotten your food. That's a big mistake," he said. Pickhardt said he's seen all sorts of gastronomical revenge by waiters serving picky patrons — including spitting in meals.

[Guest Merlin]

If you go into a restaurant alone, the place can be empty, but they will give you a tiny table up against a wall in the very back; the worst they can find. I hate it so much I seldom go to a nice restaurant when I travel.

[Guest icon513]

Playing the "water" game. "Still or sparkling?" they ask when I ask for a glass of water. "The free kind," I respond.

[bigguyinpasadena]

I get that all the time.Even in hotel restaurants where they are very used to solo diners.

Especially irksome when I have a newspaper to read.

[SAdler]

Mine has to be the emphasis on presentation at so many places.

 

Frankly, I know what a chicken caesar salad is supposed to look like and they cna be very cute. HOWEVER, I hate having to spend the next fifteen minutes (after waiting half an hour for it) cutting up the chicken and the lettuce just so I can actually eat it.

 

I mean fine, when you order chicken or a piece of meat you are expecting to cut it up. But I mean, part of the reason people order salads is to have something low maintenance to eat!

[Guest]

There are a number of things restaurants do that irk me. In the other string, I mentioned waiters pretending to ignore me as one of them. Some of my other pet peeves are:

 

(1) Leaving the tail on the shrimp or prawns. Miss Manners once wrote that it's prefectly acceptable to send the dish back to remind the cooking staff to take off the tails, but I must admit I usually just sheepishly dig into my pasta or salad and pull them off myself. Have any of you sent your dish back to have the tails removed?

 

(2) Being control freaks about the pepper grinder, i.e. not letting me touch it or leaving it on the table. Do they think I'm going to steal the pepper grinder or something? Why can't they just leave the pepper grinder on the table and let me decide how much pepper I want to grind and when?

 

(3) Same about shaving the parmesan cheese.

 

How about your pet peeves?

[Guest RandyRon]

One of my biggest peeves is not being able to get the check. I've been in some very nice restaurants with excellent service throughout the meal until you want the check. Then the waiter acts as if he's ashamed to give you the tab. (I have been at a few where, considering the quality of the food, I would be ashamed to ask to be paid for it.) In several instances when I am rushed, I've had to walk to the wait station and ask for the bill.

 

My local "everyday" restaurant where I usually do lunch leaves the bill on the table when they bring the meal. It may not be "upper class" but it saves a hell of a lot of time and arm waving.

[Guest zipperzone]

My number one bitch is having to listen to someones noisy screaming child when I am trying to have a quiet meal with friends. If I were to make the same amount of noise,I'd be asked to leave.

 

Number two would have to be (as another poster has said) waiting for the check to arrive. When I'm finished my meal and want to go - I WANT TO GO!. Then there is the long wait after he has taken your credit card before it comes back for your signature.

 

Number three is when they try tp sit you a lousy table, near the kitchen or with your back to a traffic ailse. If I don't like the table and can't be seated at one to my liking - I leave.

 

Number four is when there appears to be a world wide shortage of cutlery. It is an insult for a restaurant to expect you to save your knife and/or fork from the first course to reuse for the second. And sometimes there isn't even a side plate to park it on.

 

Number five is the waiter who hides behind a pillar so as he can see when your mouth is full of food before appearing to ask you "is everything OK sir?", leaving me trying to mumble something with my mouth full.

 

Or how about the times when the menu offers an obscure description of the dish and it's ingredients and you ask the waiter to explain, and he gives you a look that signifies he thinks you are a country bumpkin.

 

Lukewarm soup or vegetables not to mention over-salted food - the list goes on and on.......

[foxy]

My favorite restaurant is my kitchen.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

NASTY TINY BATHROOMS.

Servers who disappear.

Restaurants that don't hire enough servers.

Tables being so close together that you have to make a huge effort to ignore the party at the next table.

Not enough personnal space at your table.

Table being in a bad location: high traffic, being able to see the less appealing part of the kitchen, too close to the bathroom.

Menus with not enough descriptions.

Servers who don't know how to use more than one person's credit card to pay the bill.

[twinkboylover28]

I hate it when my meal is served and the waiters are cleaning the table near me with a pungent "lemon" cleaning agent (like lemon pledge or lemon fantastic).

 

I want to smell my food, not the strong cleaning chemicals.

 

As far as fast food, I avoid restaurants like micky dees, wendys, and burger king.

 

If you dont go during the lunch rush hour, the fries are always cold (or have been sitting there all day and dont taste fresh), the chicken nuggets are "hard as a rock" and have obviously been sitting under a heat lamp for several hours AND yet they still serve them to you....

 

...sometimes i would like to take it back and have THEM eat it as their punishment. The burgurs taste like they have been pre made sitting there all day.

 

Oh, and also when Wendy's secretly took out all their TOMATOES on their burgurs UNLESS you specificly ask them to make your burger with tomatoes!

 

How are you supposed to ask wendys to put tomatoes on if you didnt know they were going to take them off in the first place? Should you also ask them to make sure to put lettuce on?

 

An upsacle restaurant actualy made their "tirimisu" dessert with "Hershey's" chocolate syrup..low class!

 

I also hate when some restaurants charge $2 for refils on an 8oz soft drink. It's just tacky.

 

I used to go to Q'Doba Mexican Grill all the time to order their "3-cheese nachos." Then one day the new "assistant manager" was "rationing out the cheese sauce" and only poured "2 spoonfools" over my nachos.

 

I told her she would have to pour at least a couple more spoonfuls on my nachos ...like they have been doing in the past! (because, after all, they are NACHOS!)

 

She then told me that cheese is a "high value item" and that she would have to charge me .80 cents for each additonal spoonful.

 

Hello! That's why I'm paying $5 in the first place..it's not for the chips.

 

Anyways, I use to frequent Q'Doba 3 times a week; however, I walked out the door leaving her with my uneaten nacho.s I will never go back there again.

 

It's funny because they have coupons all the time for "buy one-- get one free" meals in an effort to attract NEW customers... yet they cant even keep their current customers because they "nickel- and - dime" them on eveything.

 

 

As far as returning your food....I would never do that! My friend returned a steak at outback steakhouse because it was "overcooked" when he ordered it medium.

 

God knows what the cooks did to his "new" steak.

 

Finally, bathrooms that don't have paper towels to dry your hands. I hate the hot-air blower thing.

 

I like to be able to walk into a rest room and pour as much soap on my hands and use as much water and paper towles I want.

 

I hate it when they have water-savers, or even worse, when you have to push down that nasty knob on the sink and the water only comes out for 5 seconds....and in little strands of rain drops!

[Guest zipperzone]

>If you go into a restaurant alone, the place can be empty,

>but they will give you a tiny table up against a wall in the

>very back; the worst they can find. I hate it so much I seldom

>go to a nice restaurant when I travel.

 

Why would you not just ask for a better table? And if they won't accomodate you - LEAVE.

[Guest skrubber]

I must repeat zipperzone and say #1 is KIDS. I don't know why people take them ANYWHERE.

 

#2 is also a repeat - waiting for the check. I want to go too. It appears that some servers think that when you are seated you have camped out for the night.

[Guest RandyRon]

I agree with those that say that screaming children are definitely not appreciated in any setting. Over many years I have taken several nieces and nephews and now grandnieces and grandnephews to very upscale restaurants. The trick for the children to behave is to seat them so that they can see what's going on in the rest of the restaurant. Children have a natural curiosity and if the are seated such that they can't see what's happending, they become restless. I have always made sure that the children's chairs are positioned so they can see the action in the restaurant and have never had a problem with bad behavior. And believe me it isn't because the children were angels because they could be a handfull in other situations.

[Lankypeters]

How about diners who walk by your table and stick their noses down into your plate to see what you're having? Some geek in white tennis shoes and biege dress socks did it last night while I escaped the heat of cooking in a coffee shop. I stared him down, to no avail.

 

 

Lankypeters

[+ deej]

I'll agree about both misbehaved kids and waiting for the check.

 

The check thing is curious, though. EVERY wait-person I've ever talked with about their job says the #1 thing they're interested in is churn. Get the next butts in those seats, get more people through, serve more people and increase their tips by sheer numbers. Why the delay waiting for the check? It never made any sense to me -- the two seem diametrically opposed.

[AdamSmith]

1. Waiters who interrupt diners' conversation.

 

2. Waiters who don't have strong opinions about the menu. This has several variants. The most annoying may be asking whether they recommend the fish, fowl or beast, only to hear, "Oh, I'm a vegetarian..."

 

3. Strolling musicians of any kind.

[Guest Merlin]

Because it largely spoils the enjoyment to have to quarrel over the table. I find it hard to be interested in going to a nice restaurant, knowing in advance that I will have to go through the aggravation of being shown the worst table and complaining about it.

[+ Charlie]

Music of any kind, except very quiet classical quartets in the background. One of my pet peeves about restaurants in Palm Springs, especially gay ones, is the loud--and often live--music that makes it almost impossible to carry on a conversation with my charming, witty dinner companions.

[Rick Munroe]

>No great loss

>though since you can't throw a rock without hitting an Asian

>resteraunt in my neighborhood.

 

But Greg, do they make you pay if you break the window?

[valleydude]

The most common one in Hollywood and West Hollywood (and this very much also includes some bars) is making customers wait while the server finshes extended conversations with other customers or with the other employees.

 

Even worse is general unatteviseness, such as when you go in with only about 30-40 minutes to spare and having in take 10 minutes to get the menu, 10 more minutes for the waiter coming up to take the order, and then everything else, including getting the check, also taking way too much time. Sometimes when the restuarant is slowest, the service is at its worst. Most consistently terrible for apathetic and snail-paced service is Yukon Mining Company.

[ServeUncutUncle]

Mt Pet Peeve is when he Waiter says " Are you Ready to order"...I say Give me a couple more minutes...and then they vanish for like 15/20 minutes. You then sit there to become the waiter yourself. And Wait and Wait and Wait.