I like to start off my restaurant experiences by apologising to the waiter.
“I’m very sorry, I’ve done this daft thing and become a vegan. Now, I don’t care what it brought in front of me, be that a side salad and chips, as long as there isn’t any cheese, fish or meat. And again, please send my apologies to the chef for any inconvenience.”
It’s rather overkill, I know, but I don’t think every establishment should have to cater for all my life choices, for where does it stop?
“Bubbles give me gas, so can you bring me flat champagne?” Or “I have PTSD that is triggered by round plates, so can my food be on a square one? Tar.”
For instance, I once went to London’s proudest steak chain, Hawksmoor, and asked if they had a vegan option, to which they delivered a teeny tiny bowl of salad, whilst my fellow diners ate a whole rib eye. Whose fault is that? Mine.
It’s a s-t-e-a-k r-e-s-t-a-u-r-a-n-t.
The population is split into two; there are people who, like me, avoid causing fuss or inconveniences at a restaurant, and then there are the others, the ones who can’t dine out in single place without having a complaint heard, these are called the restaurant wailers.
I’m not talking about the odd complaint when things are actually bad. I’m talking about the people who can’t dine out without causing conflict. From the moment they walk into the establishment, to the moment they leave they are lauding their customer rights like Joffrey Baratheon ruling the Seven Kingdoms. (Y’all going to have to bear with me on the Game of Thrones references. I have just started watching it, and I can now see what all the fuss was about in 2012).
The restaurant wailer comes in all forms, I would say 39% male, 61% female. You can tell if someone is a wailer just by looking at them, for instance when James Corden was called out for screaming at a waitress nobody was surprised.
The male will either be in a stretched out suit or a white or grey polo shirt. They tend to lean back too far in their chairs and will take a phone call at any given moment. The female will be born before 1975, blonde and will look like she doesn’t enjoy food.
The restaurant wailer are their own worst enemy. Nowadays you can have almost any meal delivered to your home, but we’re all willing to pay a bit extra to go to an establishment where someone will cook for us whilst we enjoy a pleasant atmosphere. The issue about the restaurant complainer is they’ll destroy this pleasant atmosphere with their grumblings.
The restaurant is irrelevant, be that of Le Manoir or Nando’s, the wailer will source out an issue. If the wailer cannot find anything about the room, the wine, the table placement, then he/she will have to order the steak to regain power. Similarly to Brexit, chefs did something wrong when they gave the customer power to make a choice. The question, ‘how do you like it cooked sir/madame?’ has given the restaurant wailer more power than Daenerys Targaryen when she stepped into fire and didn’t burn. (Last reference I promise).
Medium rare is what a normal person will order because normal people know that’s a normal way to eat a steak; a little red, a little brown. The wailers though have convinced themselves that their steak can only be cooked in a particular (and awkward) way.
“I want it so it’s still moo-ing,”
“I want it so tough that I can wear it as a shoe.”
The waiter, knowing the type he/she is dealing with, will take the order to the kitchen with a brief that has taken up a whole sheet in their notepad. whilst being fully aware that whatever they bring out, it will be wrong.
Although there was the emotional abuse the waiter had to endure for two hours, restaurants used to be safe in thinking that the wailer and their wails, were confined in the walls of their establishment, but then TripAdvisor was invented, a special platform for wailers to let loose.
I’m going to leave this blog with a few snippets of ‘terrible’ reviews of steak from Hawksmoor’s TripAdvisor page…
“…The meat was poorly grilled, no crust, greyish inside. My ask for ” fleur de sel” couldn’t be met….”
“…Fillet steak chips with pepper sauce. What’s complicated? Main arrived and sadly the only taste was of salt. The pepper sauce was so insipid, again what’s complicated.”
“…It eventually arrived and despite our very best efforts and persistent mastication we eventually had to give up trying to eat it. It was so tough it was inedible. My jaw was actually aching from the effort.”
…. she even asked if I would like my uneaten, dried up, charred offering of a steak in a doggy bag, I actually thought she was joking.”
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