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Julia Altshuler
 
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Default What's the funniest or worst restaurant experience you'd hadso far?

I wouldn't say this was my worst restaurant experience, but it was a
recent one so it has been on my mind lately.


I love yuppie food. I love plain honest cooking too, but something
about a mango salsa-arugula-chipotle-vanilla-saffron-green tea glaze,
pecan encrusted on wild rice, duck or crawfish with crumbled chevre,
wheat berry tart, makes me go weak in the knees. A wine list with
Chilean malbecs, New Zealand sauvignon blancs, 4 varieties of bottled
water and moscato for dessert doesn't hurt. Add the right sort of
lighting, seafoam green decor with abstract multi-media African-inspired
artwork on the walls, and I can't resist-- until recently.


We went to one such restaurant not too long ago. In the dim lighting, I
noticed something icky and sticky on the handle of my fork. I briefly
pointed out the problem to the waiter (who was dressed in black with a
long black apron). He murmured something and removed the fork holding
it close to the tines, thus missing the icky-sticky stuff. He returned
with a fork held the same way that had the same icky-sticky stuff on it.
Either it was on all the forks, or he'd decided I was crazy and tried
giving me my same fork back again. I again touched it gingerly with my
left hand, called him back ever so gently and explained that there
really was something icky and sticky on the fork and could I please have
a clean one.


Looking back, I can see that it might have been nothing worse than
dishwashing detergent. I really don't like to think about what else it
could have been. For the most part, I'm not into obsequious service so
I don't care for someone fawning over me and apologizing a thousand
times for a small mistake, but under the circumstances, don't you think
something more than "oh, sorry" was called for?


That wouldn't have been so bad, but the descriptions of the food pushed
all the right buttons on the menu, then didn't deliver in real life.
The fancy glazed duck with the wild rice turned out to be a tad
over-cooked, not the greatest seasonings, a little on the warm side.
Jim's fish was overcooked as well. We got the idea that a great chef
had breezed in to design the menu, given the staff a few days training,
then left. An ordinary steak-house menu featuring Caesar salad and
baked potato with sour cream would have been better assuming that the
steaks are cooked to perfection, the salad is fresh, the potato comes
steaming hot, and the cutlery is clean. Bad food is bad food whether it
is yuppified or not. I don't know why I have to keep learning that
lesson again and again.


--Lia