Twice this month, I got ignored in restaurants and my order was completely forgotten. Rather than hang around for another 45mins I decided to leave both times, much to the angst of my dining companion. I would rather go somewhere else and get served quicker then pay for crap service. I wouldn’t mind so much if the two places I went to actually bothered to bring the drinks whilst I had to wait over an hour for food or if the restaurant was full of people, but they didn’t and it wasn’t. One was a veggie cafe which used to be consistently good but is now run by snotty staff and overrun by kids, and the other is a new ‘modern’ Indian. Am I taking it personally? yes probably I am. We used to write food reviews for the Source - a good review goes a long way in a city full of restaurants and cafes struggling to survive so I think they should try a bit harder to do the simple thing of taking an order and giving it to the kitchen.
In LA those diner waitresses were amazing, taking complicated orders and serving 6 tables at once and never spilling a drop or ‘forgetting an order’. Maybe there was a reason we were forced to go to our regular places, as food holds energy. If the waiting staff are miserable, chances are the chef is too. I don’t want to taste the kitchen staff’s hangovers or apathy. I’ll stick to my favourite places, where the food is made with love (Pause, Food for Friends, Ideya and Terre a terre).
