Send It Back

To many people feel that if they order something in a nice restaurant, then they are obligated to keep it. So they force themselves to eat overcooked steaks and dried out chicken. The truth is not only should you send it back, but a good restaurants wants you to.

In every single restaurant, even the very best, mistakes are made. Sometimes there is a new chef, other times an unexpected rush leaves a kitchen in chaos. However, truly great restaurants always learn from their mistakes. If your food is not perfect, they not only want you to send it back, they need you to do so.

That is because unless they hear about problems, they cannot fix them. If they find a series of burned steaks being sold, they know they have to sit down and have a talk with the grill man. However, if everyone just eats the steak and then leaves the restaurant unhappy, not only have they lost a customer, they have lost an opportunity to fix a problem.

I repeat again, all restaurants make mistakes. There is simply no way a restaurant can serves thousands of meals and have all of them perfect. Yet when a restaurant is working hard to be the best, they will work with you, the customer, to make sure you have a great dining experience. So if anything at all is not right, by all means tell someone and insist that the problem be fixed. No problem is to small.

For example, your experience will be less than optimal if you discover that your water glass is filled with warm water. This can happen a lot because glasses are run through commercial dishwashers and then put back on fresh tables. If a server does not wait and let the glass cool ten minutes, then that glass will make even ice water warm. This is a common problem and can be fixed with more training. Yet if management does not know this is occurring, they cannot fix the problem.

So by all means enjoy yourself, but please demand the best.