Unfortunately, this post will not be dedicated to any kitchen fiascos, nor creative culinary adventures. Instead, it's a "venting post" into which I plan to pour some of my frustration with living in Alaska.
Before delving into the particulars, I should preface this vent with the fact that I have had the opportunity to dine in a multitude of countries and experience a fairly wide variety of cultures and cuisines. I've had good service, impeccably pristine and artful service. And I've had bad service. Really really bad service. Best service I've had was probably at Al Mahara, at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, the only 7 star hotel in the world. That was good service. Mark's in Houston, also spectacular service. I've also had bad service. Really, really bad service. Surprisingly, I had consistently bad service in Israel, possibly because I was one of those obnoxious American tourists. France is known for their snarky service and the Parisian wait staff do an excellent job of maintaining that reputation. Just about everywhere in the Former Soviet has pretty terrible service. There's that general attitude of "you're going to get what we give you, and you're not going to dare complain." Anything goes. I thought I'd leave that behind upon repatriating to the US. Alas, such was not the case. I could write a book about the cultural and economic similarities between Alaska and the Former Soviet, but tonight I'll focus on the restaurant service. The really really bad restaurant service. I attribute it to the lack of competition here. There seems to be this secretive conspiratorial collusion amongst the restaurants in this town to maintain an astonishingly, painfully low level of service. They also seem to be very good at maintaining the ridiculously high prices that only "good" restaurants elsewhere would be able to charge. I feel like many Alaskans don't even realize just how criminal this combination is, and if they do, they're powerless to escape it without boarding a flight for Seattle.
For you "outsiders" reading this, I know what you're thinking. "You could get good service if you're just willing to pay for it. There must be at least a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants that you could get some good service at." Well, there are a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants here, but even those with generally decent service are fairly inconsistent. The bar here is just so low...
This rant was brought on by my dinner experience last night. A group of 7 of us decided to get a little dolled up and go out for a nice Saturday evening dinner. We ate at an Anchorage restaurant called Romano's. I'd heard mixed reviews. It's supposed to be one of the nicer Italian restaurants in town, so I had been planning on trying it out for some time now.
There were so many issues with the service that it would be too emotionally draining for me to relive/recount them all right here. I will say that we'd have to continuously ask for refills of water, we waited ages to have our orders taken, both for appetizers and for the main course, and we had the good fortune of being able to all sit around and listen to the waitress chit chat for a good 15 minutes with the table next to us while we were trying to get her attention. When we finally managed to pry her away from her engaging conversation, much to her annoyance, we asked to order the stuffed mushrooms, inquiring, of course, how many mushrooms came in an order. Six. Six mushrooms per order. Well, we clearly had 7 of us eating dinner, one of which had gotten up to wash his hands prior to eating. We asked if we could get 7 mushrooms. Much confusion and consternation ensued. We offered to pay for the 7th mushroom. Continuation of consternation. "Well, you only have six people sitting here right now." "Yes, but there are seven of us, the other guy is coming back." "Well he's not here right now." "Ok... Can we get 7 mushrooms?" "He's late, he doesn't deserve a mushroom." "Ummm... We like to encourage hand-washing. Can we get 7 mushrooms? We are willing to pay for it..." "I'll ask."
Whew! We did, in fact, get 7 mushrooms. One of which was the size of a nickel. They were moderately tasty. About a half hour later, we were able to order our main courses.
When the main dishes finally came out, I had the added good fortune of finding a nice curly black hair nestled in the cream sauce of my fusilli. Yum! I tried to discretely let the waitress know, but she seemed extremely confused by the whole situation. By the time she finally clued in to the reason for my outreached-cream-sauce-covered-hair-displaying finger, the entire table had figured it out. So she took the plate, and grumbled, "I'll go get you another one." We all sat there for a bit, no one eating, everyone trying to be polite. I finally convinced folks that I'd be more comfortable if they just started eating. They gracefully put together a collection plate of food for me which held me over until my plate re-arrived, sans-hair this time. When my plate finally arrived, everyone had pretty much finished their food.
Thankfully, throughout all of this, I was able to self-medicate with a really nice Beringer cab. I'm guessing it was a 2007. The rest of the gang managed to keep things light-hearted and the humor rarely managed to crawl out of the gutter.
Thankfully, throughout all of this, I was able to self-medicate with a really nice Beringer cab. I'm guessing it was a 2007. The rest of the gang managed to keep things light-hearted and the humor rarely managed to crawl out of the gutter.
The bills come out, again, after much confusion and consternation on the part of the waitress, and this is what my date and I received:
This check was for two of us. Please note the $1.50 "MUSH" and the $22.95 filet, (which was my dish). I'm shocked that they didn't charge us for the hair. I asked the waitress about it all and she said, "well, they made me." Ok. So I talked to the manager about it, explained that this really was pretty lacking in class to charge full price for a meal that had hair in it, and, on top of that, charge us for the single additional nickel-sized mushroom when there was a table of 7 people all drinking wine and eating food. She said, "Oh, you sent it back? That should have been removed from the bill, let me check on that." I smugly returned to the table, feeling satisfied in the resolution. The manager returned and said, "I didn't realize they brought you a new plate. The charge remains..."
Seriously? Wait, so let me get this straight: you brought me food with hair in it, which means someone back there wasn't wearing a hair net (or worse...) and thus violating food code, and then, you make me wait 20 minutes while the rest of my party eats their food or worse, allows it to get cold, and then you charge us for an additional mushroom on top of it all?!? Usually a restaurant that wants you to come back, or at least not bad-mouth them will comp your dish if not the whole meal. They'll usually offer you free dessert or a gift certificate or SOMETHING. Nope. We got charged. It was such an incredibly uncomfortable situation that I'm pretty much determined to shout my disgust from every digital roof-top available. Like this one.
I will admit, I should know better than to expect anything different.
And on that note: I'm going to go plan out my cooking for the next month, since I doubt I'll be eating out very much...
No comments:
Post a Comment