What To Do If You’ve Had an Unpleasant Dining Experience

What To Do If You’ve Had an Unpleasant Dining Experience

I get a surprising amount of email from people who’ve had a bad experience at a restaurant: and I’m talking two page, single-spaced letters with lots of invective and displeasure. While I don’t mind reading them, frankly, there’s not a lot I can do at that point except forward the emails to the management of the restaurant. If you’re looking for resolution, the complaints should be addressed to the management of the restaurant, preferably while the customer is still there. Yet many folks are very reluctant to do this.

Most quality restaurants are aware of the fact that not every dish is going to please every customer. And these establishments make a living by keeping their customers happy. So if you have a problem and your server can’t resolve it, immediately ask for the manager. Here’s a rule of thumb on what to expect:

• A dish not up to your expectations
  Call the waiter and tell them that you don’t like the dish. Most quality restaurants are happy to make you something else and remove the offending dish from the tab. Some will even comp the new dish. However, don’t eat all or most of the dish and THEN complain. You will lose your credibility.
• Poor service
  There are certain criteria that I have for good service: a pleasant and helpful attitude, knowledge of the menu, knowing when and when NOT to approach the table, and being efficient with delivery of courses and equally importantly, the check. Occasionally one in Austin runs into what I call the “smartass” wait person. This server will try to impress you with glib comments or equal doses of banality. They are prone to say things like “are we hungry yet?” This is one where you have to bypass the waitperson, obviously. Seek out the owner or manager and tell them your problem. If they have any sense of how to run a restaurant, they’ll treat your complaint with genuine concern and offer you compensation AND a new server.
• Bad bottle of wine
  This one gets trickier. About one in thirty bottles of wine can be corked. This is a bacterium that attacks the cork and subsequently gives the wine a horribly moldy taste or odor. Any good restaurant will instantly recognize a wine that’s truly corked and replace it. However, I’ve seen customers with a speck of cork in their glass complaining that their wine is corked. I’ve also seen customers send back several bottles in a row claiming that the wine “just didn’t suit me.” If you have a legitimate grievance, most quality restaurants, again, will be happy to pour you a comparable bottle of wine. But they’re probably not going to eat a $200 bottle of wine because you don’t think the color looks right.

Most restaurants want to avoid doing battle with customers over issues that can be easily resolved. But diners need to speak up during the dining experience. Emailing your local food critic a week later may be an exercise in venting but it won’t solve your immediate problem. And from my experience, most of these problems are indeed solvable.