One of the more disappointing things that can happen to a dining critic, or to anyone, is this: steering friends to dinner at a place you’ve enjoyed in the past, only to encounter disaster.
It happened to me last week at a tony restaurant in a tony mountain town, whose name I won’t mention here because bad ink lasts longer than bad memories and I won’t talk smack about a restaurant I’ve only been to twice. Besides, maybe it was just an atypically bad night. Maybe the boss was out, or someone spiked the employee punch, or the moon was misaligned. Or something.
In retrospect, the meal was already southbound long before it hit its low point, which was when I bit into the metal-and- plastic twist-tie hidden in the $11 “fruits de mer” seafood salad — an incident a staffer waved off with (and I’m being generous here) bewildering gracelessness. “We don’t even use those,” was what she said, smiling flirtatiously in an anemic buck-pass. Really? Was she implying that there was an immaculate twist-tie conception between kitchen and table? Was she suggesting our party was culpable, as if we’d booby- trapped the salad ourselves?
(As always, it wasn’t the crime that offended nearly so much as the coverup. An unqualified apology would have done nicely.)
But this meal was doomed well before that. We were warned when our waiter, in introducing himself, quipped that the “service here is spotty” — then he proved his point by having no inkling where the cheeses on the $13 cheese plate came from (“somewhere around here”) and by carrying his order pad down the back of his pants. Not tucked into an apron, just straight down the back of his pants. Acceptable? No. Especially not when on that pad are orders for $25 entrees.
After the twist-tie seafood salad came the un-seasoned (not under-seasoned, un-seasoned) steak with its inedibly garlicky chimichurri. Then rock-hard gnocchi — among the six of us, we were able to chew through only about three; the rubber- eraser rabbit loin was only slightly easier to masticate. A short pour on a $14 glass of wine preceded the death blow, a “pot de crème” that, if it wasn’t a quick-stir of instant pudding and hack-diced fruit, was even worse.
I’ve had enough bumpy restaurant nights to take them in stride. Like a fisherman with a bad day’s catch, I’ll find fodder for storytelling somewhere in my net, and shake off the rest.
But this time I was not bemused. By the time I spooned that pudding into my mouth, I was rightly ticked. I stewed for days about the debacle, which cost $300 in the final tally.
And yet, I have hope.
Here is another reason that I won’t name the restaurant: There are dozens of others across the state where the same things happen to other customers every single night. I know, because I get letters.
It is time (in fact, it is always time) for this restaurant and every restaurant to review and rethink its operating procedures, to have a serious series of staff meetings to excise the sloppiness that’s infected too many restaurant floors and kitchens and to reset the standards back to a civilized level. You, and we, deserve it. Easier said than done, I know, but a noble and attainable goal. (Today’s cover story shows it’s possible.)
Here’s where I differ from most customers: I will be back to this restaurant, because I believe in it. I can’t say the same for my dining companions.
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