Restaurant Follies

If you have a business, don't use come-ons unless you can deliver on them. Otherwise, the consequences of not coming through on those come-ons could be painful for you.

For my birthday recently, my wife and I decided to visit a restaurant we hadn't visited for about four years.

Four years ago, we had gone to the restaurant with our whole family when we first moved to our community. It was the only ethnic-style restaurant of its type then. (Now there are at least 4 other restaurants with similar style food, so we definitely have more choice than just driving to a neighboring town to get similar food.) Anyway, when we first tried this restaurant, the food was bland and not well-cooked or prepared, the service was shabby, and the building was showing signs of neglect, even though from the outside the building seemed to be fine. Then, to top it off, the food was overly and surprisingly expensive. Way more than what one would expect for this type of food (perhaps you could expect to pay this at a classier restaurant in San Francisco or San Jose or Palo Alto... but in the California Central Valley?). The experience was so bad that we had not gone back to that restaurant in four years--we've since chosen Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican, or Italian restaurants in town... or, if we were *really* having a hankering for this type of food, we'd drive over the hills to the West to visit a restaurant in the neighboring town.

So... here it was, my birthday, and my wife knew that I liked this kind of food. We were aware from the sign painted on the huge picture window at the front of the restaurant that the meal would be *free* for the birthday person. We figured that we could then afford to manage what we already knew would be pricey. We *had* unfortunately, seemingly forgotten about the rest of the problems the place had. (And, now, there were similar restuarants in town from which to make a choice.)

We got there at 7:30pm. (It takes about an hour for me to drive home from my office two towns to the west.) Although the place was not very crowded, we were told that there would be a waiting period of about 15 minutes (the food is cooked at the tables--and two tables were already full and occupying two cooks). So, we sat in a booth on the bar-side of the restaurant. After about 30 minutes, we were getting fidgety and contemplating leaving to go to a more effective attempt at a restaurant. A waitress overheard our conversation and decided to seat us and another couple at one of the tables. Turns out that the other couple was also there to celebrate a birthday. We visited a bit. And eventually, the waitress brought out a plate of appetizers and apologized for the delay--it would be a "few more minutes". It was almost 9pm before our cook started the process--by that time we were fighting off the hunger pangs. Although the cook was a pleasant fellow, and seemingly had the training, again the food was not well-cooked or prepared. An attempt at a fancy atmosphere, yes, but the food didn't match the atmospheric attempt. And the building was even more shabby than it had been when we visited it four years earlier.

But the kicker came when we went to pay--we had made mention numerous times that we were there for a birthday meal... and the waitresses and cook even gathered around and sang the "Happy Birthday" song. But when we questioned why the bill was so high, the waitress said, "Oh, that free meal for the birthday person only applies if there are four people in the party." The other couple was similarly disappointed.

Needless to say, no-one in my family will ever go back to this restaurant again. Our memory has been restored on why we wouldn't want to go there. We have plenty of better choices in town. This restaurant had their chance--two, in fact--and they blew it. Now, I might not go around warning folks not to go to this particular restaurant, but I *would* recommend any of the *other* similar restaurants in town to folks wanting this kind of food. Do you think the restaurant will get the message?