Virgil Evetts

Despite my grumblings about the very average level of service found in the local hospitality industry, I have had some truly excellent service here, a lot that was simply poor, but only a very slim minority that was really bad. The latter examples are usually pretty funny, even if they didn’t seem that way at the time.

Here are a few of my favourite bad experiences in local restaurants:

A maître de wagging her finger and berating me for having the audacity to arrive at her (almost empty) restaurant without a booking.

Being warmly invited into a shiny new establishment, shown to a table, given menus and brought water, but then told (about 15 minutes later) that the restaurant wasn’t actually open. The owner just thought we’d like to see the menu.

Being told by a waitress- when we questioned the restaurants peculiar booking rules [no bookings for less than 3 people, no bookings at all after 7:30]- that she was sure there were plenty of other restaurants that would have us if we didn’t like their policy.

I’m not too keen on waiters calling me ‘mate’, ‘buddy’, ‘bro’ or ‘dude’. There’s familiarity and then there’s just plain yokel.

In some cases bad service can be strangely appealing. I used to frequent a particular café  because the waitress was so hilariously surly. She would roll her eyes at any request and snap irritably at customers. The only words I ever heard her utter were ‘what?’ and ‘no!’ She was kind of like a belligerent floor show.

But these are all pretty mild really. My mother tells utter horror stories from her chefing days, including a cocaine-crazed head chef throwing a live crayfish at a diner, [attempting] to urinate on another and regularly shouting ‘well you can just f### off!’ at anyone who sent their meal back to the kitchen. Apparently he wasn’t big on criticism.

But I’m sure we all have treasured memories of shocking servive, so let’s have a little friendly competition- worst service experiences ever:Helen says – we have a foodlovers gift for the best story on this blog.

 

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