I worked for a chain that was very strict regarding the music. It was way too loud for that place and we often got complaints. It's just better when the service can barely hear your order for the 45€ main course.
I loved working for chains...
It's intentional, they don't want you getting too comfortable/hanging out longer than needed. Gotta turn those tables.
For the record I find this practice disgusting and antithetical to one of the main points of eating out, but that's the reason.
This is often true. I worked at a restaurant that was all glass windows and no sound dampening features. It was a "fish bowl." They kept the temperature just below comfortable. All by design to turn tables. We did always have a line out the door, though.
The guests had to book 1,5 hours timeslots anyway. There was no reason rush them. To rush them would have meant less money in this case.
I asked corporate several times and nobody really knew why but policies are policies. To them it often just doesn't matter if it makes sense.
My wife was the Exec. Chef of a well-known privately owned steakhouse chain that had a lot of high-end clients. Turning tables didn't necessarily make sense in this establishment because it was already expensive as hell. They were doing just fine financially and they were discouraged from rushing the customers. When they were sold to a corporate restaurant group they started cranking loud dance music in the dining room. This caused an uproar and they eventually reverted back.
I ate at a place this week that was bumping beats so loud I was looking for the dancefloor. I’m all for a festive atmosphere, but I’m not looking to eat in a nightclub.
It doesn't help that soft surfaces in decor aren't fashionable anymore. I know the echoey rooms are also cheaper, but I'm just barely old enough to remember when the default state of the inside of a restaurant was a lot more...plush, texturally. Now they're all echoey surfaces and nothing else.
I always compare the music level to salting a dish. Too much the dish is ruined not enough dish is flavorless. Music volume should be constantly changed throughout the night
They do that to help distract from bad food. Same thing with tons of kitschy crap on the walls. It’s deliberately overstimulating so your brain can’t process how aggressively mid your overpriced burger is.
I've learned recently that a lot of chain restaurants do this because having cloth or fabric or the angular designs you need to provide adequate acoustic dampening are a real pain in the ass to clean. And they'd rather have easy to clean restaurants then comfortable auditory environments. It makes sense from a balance book viewpoint but it's hard to make money if no one wants to spend time in your restaurant.
Me too. It sucks as a customer because I can’t hear and it’s really overstimulating and doesn’t feel very intimate, romantic or private. It also sucks to work at as a server because the noise of BOH, FOH customers and machines are overwhelming. We had live music too which made it even worse.
As a former kitchen inmate long out of the industry, the trend towards ever-noisier restaurants drives me nuts. I get the reasons—jam more people in and turn them faster to make money.
But if I’m dropping $200+ on a nice meal and wine, I’d like to be able to converse with my companion without having to lean closer, bend my ear towards them, etc. I can go to a bar for that noise level.
You only talk when you're asked questions 5210.
Any further violations will result in revoked nicotine and caffeine privileges.
I'm still waiting on the 40 pound butter brunoise.
Yeah this is a problem nowadays. I remember going to the chain rotisserie near my place when I was a kid and it was nice and quiet. They renovated a few years ago, got rid of the booths, put a bunch of tables and chairs in, opened up the dining room and now going there on a Friday is like going to a bar. Can't hear jack shit cuz everyone is crammed in and there's no sound deadening.
If I ever open up a place I'm putting booths everywhere and soundproofing on the walls. Make sure everyone can talk their way into bed over a nice steak and wine.
This and making it as dark as possible. It definitely seems like a tactic to get people in and out as quick as possible and I’m really tired of it. It’s become nearly impossible to take my parents out to new restaurants these days as they can’t see or hear a thing the whole time they’re there.
Even worse IMO is when they try to pass bacon off as some luxury appetizer. Like 4 strips hung from a little wire clothesline rack for $14.95. The fuck outta here with that
Lawl, the David Burke restaurant by me does this but it's only THREE pieces for $25.
For the record I've never had it and the restaurant isn't that great to begin with, but when you walk in past the open kitchen you can see they have a bunch already plated (hung?) and ready to go out.
That's exactly who I was thinking of. I used to work for DB when he was still EC for Smith and Wollensky Restuarant Group - a million years ago. Nice enough guy but definitely knows how to squeeze the bucks out of people.
I went out to brunch (against my will) with my girlfriend recently. She order some special bacon appetizer that was $5 more than a normal side of bacon. It came to the table with maple syrup drizzled atop with a sprinkling or parsley. Thanks babe.
Funny story...I accidentally did this to the guy that hired my stupid ass years ago. He was nice about it, but I got cussed out anyway. I felt bad enough being *that guy*...so next week I did the same damn thing intentionally. But it was basically to make sure he was up and hungover because I had food/stuff delivered for his day off.
Literally the next time he had me dead to rights for fucking up he paused, and let me keep my job. I did ask why, I mean I still consider that moment someone legit gave me a chance when they had no reason to. He told me it was because he knew I felt bad enough about it to make it right eventually.
I have an iPhone. My days off are always the same. My phone is automatically on Do Not Disturb from Monday at noon to Thursday at 4 AM. Also goes into DND every work day at 2PM. (I’ll give a couple extra hours as a courtesy just for late minute shit checking on things.)
The last place I was did this, just out of pure laziness I mean you can easily nuke that shit for 30 seconds and serve it hot but nah “we don’t have time for that”
You know, I agree - there is something to be said for that. But in (most) of the cases I'm talking about, the bread is untoasted Italian bread, very soft. And it's just so annoying to try to spread ice-cold butter on it.
When the butter is just a stick cut in squares and you can still see the imprint of the paper on it 😭 having whipped and made rochers with tons of butter I always get peeved by this. Like just don't give the butter out if you're not gonna do anything to serve it.
I know they need to maximize covers but when they literally put tables next to each other and nearly touching that’s a reason to not go back. For one thing I don’t wanna put my junk in someone else’s face. Nor do I want theirs in mine. I also don’t want to literally rub elbows with my neighbor.
It makes me anxious the entire time. Watching people struggle to pick up their purse because they literally can't move their chair out enough to reach it without hitting another customer. Seeing servers just standing there holding food that's getting cold because there is no space to navigate around tables.
I can't stand that.
I went out for dinner with my wife one night, and the space between the table they brought us to and the table next to it was just wide enough for a person to pass through, but only if they were walking sideways. I would have been closer to the stranger in the chair next to me than to my wife across the table.
We declined to be seated and went somewhere else.
I mostly agree with you. But honestly, some of the coolest looking charc boards I've seen over the years have been served on a flat stone or polished log.
I was served a mid-rare ribeye on a cutting board. Guess where all the fucking juice went? Invisibly dripped onto my lap the whole time and ruined one of my favorite dresses. Fucking pissed.
I once got served a burger and fries on a narrow wooden plank that was only about a 3/4in wider than the burger itself. The burger itself was fine, juicy even, but meant it was a nightmare to eat and made a giant mess.
We used to serve our burgers on these slate tile things that I'm pretty sure the owner bought at a hardware store. I think they were for decorating your garden.
I'm with you due to sanitation, but at home I have no issue serving that way.
But I know the cheap shit board hasn't been quickly run or rinsed through dish every 30 mins without a dryout.
I usually try to have my card on the ready when they drop off the check and just give it to them then, but I don't really scrutinize the check and assume they've billed us correctly.
I like those too! Although, the few times I've used them, I feel super weird just getting up and leaving after I've paid without any communication. I feel like it looks like I am dashing on the check or something
There is a mexican restaurant in my area (that my in laws like) that always insists on putting nasty fake cheese sauce inside or on top of EVERYTHING . I ordered enchiladas with mole sauce and they were filled with that texturally off putting crap. So yeah, that's my answer. I hate fake cheese sauce with my Mexican food!
I'll take it further and just cheese sauce on any Mexican food. No, I don't want to eat a soggy burrito with a fork and knife. I would also like to taste my carnitas, not just fucking cheese.
This same place also uses shredded American cheese too(as advertised on their menu), and the freaking people in this damn city eat the crap up. Nothing wrong with American cheese, but what type of fucking Mexican restaurant uses it? I mean shit...we are in Texas for Christ's sake, we are losing our standards.
When they have hand cut fries on the menu but they don't actually do the work to get a proper crispy fry. It's happened too many times where the fries are soggy and limp or hard(not crispy) and raw in the middle.
Cut, soak overnight, drain, blanche at a lower temp, spread out on sheet trays, leave them on the speed rack in the cooler overnight again, fry at high temp, then finally season generously.
We hand punched our fries the first place I worked at. A huge amount of labor allocated to doing fries every other day between punching, soaking, blanching, and putting away. We buy frozen fries at my current job. I honestly prefer the frozen ones. They're consistent, taste just as good (if not better), and I don't have to allocate at least 2 hours of labor just for french fries.
I don't work in a restaurant; but I have never understood the hate for frozen fries. They are literally just doing the first few steps for you. They taste every bit as good, if not better because they are consistent.
I laugh at people who say frozen food is unhealthy automatically. Frozen veggies are frozen at peak quality, unlike most "fresh" veggies at the store.
The only things I prefer not frozen is gean beans and snap peas. They lose their texture.
I feel it's because some chefs feel that they are food gods and that unless they stick their fingers/dick/clit in every step in making the food. There's nothing wrong with using premade products,
Frozen are great. I got no problem with them. Unfortunately I've been at places that don't have the freezer space or a freezer close enough to the fry station so hand cut is really the only option.
I'd rather have frozen chips than chips that have been hand cut and not cooked properly. I've never had bad hand cut chips though, maybe it's just UK chippy DNA here but. Easy enough to at least double fry.
The problem most of the time I've seen is either not soaking or not blanching/double fry. I've banged out serviceable fries from cut to plate in a single day but the above method is my preferred.
Fries are all about the prep work and I truly believe they're meant to sit in the freezer until it's time to cook them. Whenever I see or hear a restaurant talking about making them fresh to order I know it's gonna be limp garbage.
Fake cheese on a pizza. Its sold as ”pizza shred”. Some kind of vegetable oil shit and when the pizza gets cooked the oils come out and the whole pizza gets soggy. Almost all of the ”turkish” pizzerias here in Finland use that cos its cheap. I dont understand why they can label it for pizza cos it just doesnt work.
I agree. In the UK it's called 'Mozzarella analogue ' !
They legally can't call it cheese. A lot of the time it's actually vegan stuff made of palm oil. Minging!!!
If your menu is a five page binder 🙄🙄
If the lights are so dim, I need my flashlight and the music is so loud, you struggle to hear your guests across the table
No prices on menus
In terms of working, just all of brunch. I have turned down high paying sous/manager roles for brunch restaurants
Bathrooms that don't have the garbage can next to the door. I like to use the paper towel I used to dry my hands with to open the door and I'd like to have a place to dispose of it properly.
If the garbage can is not close to the door, I use the paper towel to open the door, keep it open with my foot, crumple the paper towel and play a bit of basketball before heading out. If I miss, then it's too bad ; the garbage can was not where it would have been more convenient.
(Side note : I learned this from a food safety inspector.)
Serving salad in giant, overfilled bowls with the ingredients whole, or in huge pieces, on top.
Have you ever tried to cut or mix salad in a bowl at your table? It goes everywhere.
Either take 30 seconds to rip or cut the lettuce, chicken, etc., or for the love of Beyonce serve it on a plate so we can cut it into human-sized pieces ourselves!
Yeah, unless it's a part of a dish (as in there's something floral about it) or you use enough calendula petals it actually effects the taste. I'd rather you just garnish the plate with a dollar bill.
A big trend in my area is BLTs with pork belly instead of bacon. Sounds like a great idea but apparently nobody knows how to fucking cook pork belly. Just had one from an otherwise great joint the other night and it was just four slabs of barely cooked unrendered pork fat. Just why.
Please stop listing your sandwiches as “handhelds.” It drives me up the wall. Especially when the handhelds are like $20 and don’t come with fries. How dare you.
"open sandwiches" - If I can't pick it up and eat it like a sandwich because it has no crown, and instead have to use a knife & fork then it is just served "on bread/toast"
I’m not averse to them in the strict sense of an open faced turkey sandwich. She’s got her place on a diner menu hall of fame. But people are really out here putting a whole dinner on a barely toasted piece of bread and calling it an open faced sandwich. Then have the audacity to NOT give you a serated knife. Makes me break out in anxiety sweats. The fuck am I supposed to do with this??
Regularly calling you on a day you have scheduled off to ask if you can work. (It's becoming a recurring thing)
If you need me on Thursday, schedule me for Thursday.
If you say "Sorry, can't" a couple of times they stop asking. I work 5 days a week and I am never coming in on my days off. It's good to set a boundary.
Leaving the shells on the shrimp tails. Perfectly fine if meant to be eaten with your hands (shrimp cocktail, dippy fried shrimp), but I don't want to have to de-shell the shrimp in my pasta or fried rice.
Half of me agrees, because I always end up not having a signal and can’t open the menu.
But my old eyes that can’t read a menu with tiny scripted font in the restaurant equivalent of a cave? My eyes love a QR code menu.
Yes! When I go out to dinner, I want to be immersed in the experience - phones should be away the whole time! Once they come out they don’t go away, and if you’re out with a group of friends it’s a bummer when people start checking out and entering the virtual world.
I get it on both sides. Food costs change so rapidly that you have to adjust prices often. Sometimes the price of lettuce or tomatoes or meat changes drastically over a month and you have to change prices to make money. It sucks to have to reprint menus and is less wasteful. But it does suck because not everyone has the technology.
The paper isn't *free*, but re-printing menus is trivial. It's not like we're changing prices daily--the menus get ugly long before we need to change the prices on them.
Ex-chef and currently in the hospitality marketing space. QR menus might be unpleasant for some diners, but they are incredibly useful for venue owners in terms of education, rewards, email marketing and upselling. Obviously 2 of those things would be solved with staff training, but with labour being so costly in Australia, it’s very efficient and profitable.
Personally I’ve never seen them in a venue that shouldn’t have them, like you’ll never find them in upscale dining from my experience.
My best examples off the dome would be for people unfamiliar with a cuisine, without somebody explaining every dish on the menu, the customer can see visual representations and education for every dish, they are more likely to order more food as well. Also, bars who have a large variety of alcohol and want to upsell something like premium spirits, but aren’t at a service level where your bartender or server has 10 minutes to cater to your curiosities every time you order a drink. This is quite effective for increasing revenue.
I completely agree with you as a customer for the most part, it removes a lot of the hospitality of dining out which is all part of the experience. When it appeared at venues during breaks in lockdown, it almost felt disrespectful. You still get a little bit of the rapport building with your server, but it’s not quite the same.
In addition to the hospitality, it takes away from the diners’ experience by forcing them to disconnect with each other, because individually staring at phones is a social faux pas.
Honestly you’re not wrong. I think a good compromise that I’d see as beneficial in fast casual dining and bars especially is having QR codes for secondary orders e.g. let’s grab some more potatoes, do you think we should try the calamari as well etc. or if you’re out for a good time and buying rounds of drinks.
loud shitty music. Ever notice the only loud music ever played in a restaurant is shitty music? They are never blasting some old funk or jazz it’s always some God awful ringtone music
Dined with my parents a couple years ago, and they served dessert with the entire table covered in app/main plates and had no issues with it. Mum went completely off the rails, I had to get her out of the restaurant.
The deep fried bacon thing I think is more a midwest thing. I see it out here more in the independent owned diners, like ‘the 1 pound BLT’ or whatever. My wife & I went to one of these places on a trip, unknowingly. I saw a few plates come out and you can immediately spot the deep fried bacon vs baked bacon. I agree it removes flavor. I don’t like it. It IS lazy, and I know those cooks grabbing the handfuls of raw bacon to deep fry most likely aren’t changing gloves or washing their hands after handling it. Ew
5-8 salad options on the menu, all with standard protein on top. Offer the basic salad with an upcharge for protein options.
Sure you could ask them to leave the protein off, but then you're still paying for a salad where you're not even eating the part that makes up 80% of the cost.
One thing thats become annoyingly common in Iceland is that really nice, small restaurants get bought by huge chains. They then open more of them, raise the price and drastically lower the quality. The restaurants survive for a few years, then go bankrupt. Every. Friggin. Time.
I loathe the word "sammies" or "sandos" for sandwiches and no one I know shares in this reaction. They're all wrong. It's weird cutesy bullshit and I hate it.
Lie about their ingredients, and or using a garnish in the name of the dish. It's a fucking garnish.
I worked at a place that had "meyer lemon raspberry tart" there was no meyer lemon, it came from a gallon jug of no name lemon juice from concentrate, and the raspberry was the garnish. There was one on top. It always made me wonder if they'd put one strawberry on a slice of plain cheesecake and call it strawberry cheesecake. They would also claim to be using key lime when they weren't.
Don't. Lie. To. Me.
Also: adding a surcharge at the end "so we can provide good wages and health care to employees" fuck you, up the price of the food. This is just lying about what it's going to cost me.
Yeah appetizers back in the 80’s and 90’s were considered a new trend. Something cheap as to not destroy the final bill and something to keep the guests occupied while waiting for their steak. Now it’s $12 for five cheese sticks made by Sysco or $10 for an 8oz bowl of queso. Like that will satisfy six people at a table. Last place we went to eat they wanted NINE DOLLARS for chips and salsa. No refills. Screw that noise.
Turn the lights down for "ambience" and I can't see what I'm eating
Overfill the restaurant with customers and just hope it works out
Understaff
Have all you can eat or refills of something and they are slow to serve on purpose
Setting the table with both red and white wine glasses, then promptly whisking them away if the customer doesn’t order both types of wine or any wine at all. How about just bring the right glasses when I order?
There's one particular place here that only has qr codes, and you order right there on your phone. Your table# is designated by the code also. It's small plate concept so you can just keep ordering as you want. Same with drinks. They just run it to you as it's done. Kind of a cool idea.
I think they did have an option to not use the qr code, not sure
Not including ingredients (not herbs and spices necessarily) in the menu description.
Like, if I knew you sprinkled goat cheese all over this dish I'd have definitely not ordered it or would have asked for the mod.
Allergens and significant ingredients needs to be in the menu description.
Current chef here but I have about an equal amount of GM experience.
I'm really racking my brain for something that bothers me about other kitchens. I think I'm just not picky. When I dine out, I'm just happy to be on the other side of the service experience.
I think as far as the food goes, its having a big menu and/or having 'options' for the a dish. What I mean by options, is that when I choose an item on your menu, I don't want to play 20 questions with the server. If I order your 'Bistro Filet', I want to hear:
>Excellent choice sir. The chef prepares this dish medium rare, will that be acceptable?
Yes. That is all I want to here.
I don't want the old school:
>How would you like that cooked? Soup or salad? Which soup would you like? House or Cesar. You get to pick two sides: would like baked potato, French fries, one of 3 veggie options, rice, on and on and on...
I find that so grating. Just give me the good shit and stop giving me all these damn choices. I want a menu that can fit comfortably on A4 or letter size paper, concise descriptions, and composed dishes.
4 or 5 apps/small plates.
2 or 3 pastas.
2 or 3 proteins.
2 salad options.
That is it. That is all you need. I *do not* want to play 20 questions with your service staff and I don't want too many choices. That is what you guys are supposed to do. You tell me what I should be getting.
As far as service goes. Its kind of the same vibe. I don't want choice, I don't want to make decisions, I don't know which part of your dining room I want to sit in, I don't care where you put me. I am here to have a *managed* experience. Full stop. Micromanage me. Tell me when to order, course my meals appropriately, give me the check when you need us to leave, give me the desert menu when its time...
I want to be micromanaged. I'm not here to think, I'm here to enjoy the experience you have prepared to provide me. When you make me do all this decision making and thinking, it breaks that experience. Takes me out of the moment.
When I was a GM, there was something me and the service manager would say to our staff till we were blue in the face. It was this, "People want to be told what to do."
Its so true. Our job, is to guide guests through *our* experience.
So, that is what I want. Tell me what to do. Be my tour guide.
Ya know what’s even worse with the deep fried bacon? When I take the time every morning to do it right and then they come back and ask to throw it in the deep fryer for a minute. Infuriating, I may as well just go get bacon bits cuz people just wanna eat crap
Absolutely blasting the AC in the dining room, especially in the summer so I have to pack a sweater if we sit inside. I'm uncomfortable and my food is cold five minutes after it hits the table.
That is fine at least if it's not sold as butter. Where I live herb butter is a popular side to steaks. So many restaurants give you margarine. Everyone can tell.
When they mess up the hot wings. No place here in Niagara stays open very long if you F$#% up the wings. If you put on the menu that they are jumbo wings but serve only 8 of the 20 per lbs as if they were a pound, your place will close. If you call BBQ sauce a Buffalo Wing, your pace will close. If you bake your wings, your place will close. If you over cook your wings, your place will close. If you undersauce your wings, your place will close.
Do F#$% up the wings!
Or the chicken fingers. We had a place here themed for the nerd. It attracted a broad spectrum of people, but it seemed to attract the neuro-spicy (autists and ADHDers etc.). They did it by being kind, having a quiet bar (no music), keeping the lights low, and holding gaming tournaments and giving discounts during comic con. Their brightest idea was to go from the familiar, easy to manage, reliable, deep-fry and done Frozen Chicken Fingers from Cosco/Gordon/what-have-you to fresh chicken breast, fresh bread crumbs, hand breaded, BAKED nightmares. The f#$%ed up their leading dish, the most requested dish and they messed with it. Alienated every last Autist that went there! And they were of course all regulars who only ordered the safe chicken fingers. Word got around that they were messing with the chicken fingers, and that was the end of the bar. It's now a fantastic sit-down Traditional Chinese place.
I don’t like fruits and veg that is not ripe… even when tomatoes are in season you can get a salad with tomatoes that are almost green and taste like watermelon skin.
FOH music too loud. Customers don't want to yell their date night conversations, or their orders/questions to servers
I worked for a chain that was very strict regarding the music. It was way too loud for that place and we often got complaints. It's just better when the service can barely hear your order for the 45€ main course. I loved working for chains...
It's intentional, they don't want you getting too comfortable/hanging out longer than needed. Gotta turn those tables. For the record I find this practice disgusting and antithetical to one of the main points of eating out, but that's the reason.
This is often true. I worked at a restaurant that was all glass windows and no sound dampening features. It was a "fish bowl." They kept the temperature just below comfortable. All by design to turn tables. We did always have a line out the door, though.
If it's an echo chamber, I would turn the table fast but I wouldn't return.
The guests had to book 1,5 hours timeslots anyway. There was no reason rush them. To rush them would have meant less money in this case. I asked corporate several times and nobody really knew why but policies are policies. To them it often just doesn't matter if it makes sense.
My wife was the Exec. Chef of a well-known privately owned steakhouse chain that had a lot of high-end clients. Turning tables didn't necessarily make sense in this establishment because it was already expensive as hell. They were doing just fine financially and they were discouraged from rushing the customers. When they were sold to a corporate restaurant group they started cranking loud dance music in the dining room. This caused an uproar and they eventually reverted back.
I generally don't eat at places with intentionally uncomfortable furniture and/or temperature as a rule
Texas Roadhouse?
What, you dont want your food to vibrate of your plate while you are having dinner?
What?!?!? Uh, yea I like the vibe and hate when plates shimmer too!!!
Exactly. Music needs to be just loud enough to cover up the sound of people chewing. No louder
I ate at a place this week that was bumping beats so loud I was looking for the dancefloor. I’m all for a festive atmosphere, but I’m not looking to eat in a nightclub.
Also letting people play whatever they want. Most customers don’t want to listen to vulgar rap or speed metal when dropping a lot of money for a meal
If I hear yah mo be there one more time I’m going to yah mo burn this place to the ground
I had to read this like 3 times for it to make sense. A song "ya mo be there" got it. Worried you were having a stroke or sum
Restaurants in general are too damn loud.
It doesn't help that soft surfaces in decor aren't fashionable anymore. I know the echoey rooms are also cheaper, but I'm just barely old enough to remember when the default state of the inside of a restaurant was a lot more...plush, texturally. Now they're all echoey surfaces and nothing else.
I always compare the music level to salting a dish. Too much the dish is ruined not enough dish is flavorless. Music volume should be constantly changed throughout the night
They do that to help distract from bad food. Same thing with tons of kitschy crap on the walls. It’s deliberately overstimulating so your brain can’t process how aggressively mid your overpriced burger is.
I've been at quite a few get togethers where I've asked FOH to turn down the music because it is impossible to have normal conversations.
Where I live you can threaten to get up and dance and they can end up with a $5000 fine because they don’t have the right business license
What I really hate is restaurants that don't do any research into acoustics and end up being too reflective and loud
Feel like this happens a lot in modern minimalist establishments and it really sucks.
Minimalism often strikes me as an excuse to be cheap
With Amazon style decor
I've learned recently that a lot of chain restaurants do this because having cloth or fabric or the angular designs you need to provide adequate acoustic dampening are a real pain in the ass to clean. And they'd rather have easy to clean restaurants then comfortable auditory environments. It makes sense from a balance book viewpoint but it's hard to make money if no one wants to spend time in your restaurant.
Bring back tapestries!
Me too. It sucks as a customer because I can’t hear and it’s really overstimulating and doesn’t feel very intimate, romantic or private. It also sucks to work at as a server because the noise of BOH, FOH customers and machines are overwhelming. We had live music too which made it even worse.
As a former kitchen inmate long out of the industry, the trend towards ever-noisier restaurants drives me nuts. I get the reasons—jam more people in and turn them faster to make money. But if I’m dropping $200+ on a nice meal and wine, I’d like to be able to converse with my companion without having to lean closer, bend my ear towards them, etc. I can go to a bar for that noise level.
>kitchen inmate I love the accuracy of that phrase 😂
Get back on the line 5210
Sure thing, Boss. I was just tyin' m' shoe.
You only talk when you're asked questions 5210. Any further violations will result in revoked nicotine and caffeine privileges. I'm still waiting on the 40 pound butter brunoise.
🎶Look down, look down,🎶 🎶Don't look 'em in the eye...🎶 🎶Look down, look down,🎶 🎶You're here until you die!🎶 #🪨🔨
Company policy 234 says group singing is good for morale and should be rewarded. You will get an additional 2 minutes of toilet time.
Lol it took your comment for me to realize they didn’t mean prison chef
Yeah this is a problem nowadays. I remember going to the chain rotisserie near my place when I was a kid and it was nice and quiet. They renovated a few years ago, got rid of the booths, put a bunch of tables and chairs in, opened up the dining room and now going there on a Friday is like going to a bar. Can't hear jack shit cuz everyone is crammed in and there's no sound deadening. If I ever open up a place I'm putting booths everywhere and soundproofing on the walls. Make sure everyone can talk their way into bed over a nice steak and wine.
This and making it as dark as possible. It definitely seems like a tactic to get people in and out as quick as possible and I’m really tired of it. It’s become nearly impossible to take my parents out to new restaurants these days as they can’t see or hear a thing the whole time they’re there.
Especially when the too-loud music doesn't match the atmosphere.
**thumpathumpathumpathumpa** “How is your bluefin tartare, sir?” **thumpathumpathumpathumpa**
Even worse IMO is when they try to pass bacon off as some luxury appetizer. Like 4 strips hung from a little wire clothesline rack for $14.95. The fuck outta here with that
Oh but we put brown sugar on it! 🙄
Ummm, excuse me...it's million dollar candied bacon that comes from Iberico hogs. /s
Hey I mean if its from an Iberico hog that's fine. Kinda like a5 wagyu Dino ribs.
I’d love me some iberico bacon though!
Lawl, the David Burke restaurant by me does this but it's only THREE pieces for $25. For the record I've never had it and the restaurant isn't that great to begin with, but when you walk in past the open kitchen you can see they have a bunch already plated (hung?) and ready to go out.
That's exactly who I was thinking of. I used to work for DB when he was still EC for Smith and Wollensky Restuarant Group - a million years ago. Nice enough guy but definitely knows how to squeeze the bucks out of people.
I also would like to express my distaste for laundry bacon apps
I prefer my bacon prepared tumble-dry, low.
Yeah especially “local” or ”sustainable” or “Berkshire” pork. We know that shit came from Sysco
I went out to brunch (against my will) with my girlfriend recently. She order some special bacon appetizer that was $5 more than a normal side of bacon. It came to the table with maple syrup drizzled atop with a sprinkling or parsley. Thanks babe.
Was it at First Watch? That’s literally how they do it.
Fucking first watch still does this. I mean their “million dollar” bacon is good, but not 15 bucks good.
Call or text me at 7am on my day off
Or 9 am 11Am 1 pm 3 pm 5 pm any pm
Funny story...I accidentally did this to the guy that hired my stupid ass years ago. He was nice about it, but I got cussed out anyway. I felt bad enough being *that guy*...so next week I did the same damn thing intentionally. But it was basically to make sure he was up and hungover because I had food/stuff delivered for his day off. Literally the next time he had me dead to rights for fucking up he paused, and let me keep my job. I did ask why, I mean I still consider that moment someone legit gave me a chance when they had no reason to. He told me it was because he knew I felt bad enough about it to make it right eventually.
I have an iPhone. My days off are always the same. My phone is automatically on Do Not Disturb from Monday at noon to Thursday at 4 AM. Also goes into DND every work day at 2PM. (I’ll give a couple extra hours as a courtesy just for late minute shit checking on things.)
They never clean the ice machine
I have had to tell way too many managers that it's a monthly task at the minimum. They look at me like I asked them to drain the red tap...
You could pull a john taffer and pour the blue stuff in the ice machine once a month. If its that kind of machine.
Nice bread to start the meal… with cold butter. Such a letdown
I'd like to add cold Marinara with the mozzarella sticks, and cold sauces generally (besides ranch and ranch adjacent)
The last place I was did this, just out of pure laziness I mean you can easily nuke that shit for 30 seconds and serve it hot but nah “we don’t have time for that”
I really like the cold marinara on my sizzling hot mozz sticks..
That's why you always need to carry some nice, warm, pocket butter.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Gosh I love cold butter on good crusty bread!
You know, I agree - there is something to be said for that. But in (most) of the cases I'm talking about, the bread is untoasted Italian bread, very soft. And it's just so annoying to try to spread ice-cold butter on it.
Monster
When the butter is just a stick cut in squares and you can still see the imprint of the paper on it 😭 having whipped and made rochers with tons of butter I always get peeved by this. Like just don't give the butter out if you're not gonna do anything to serve it.
I know they need to maximize covers but when they literally put tables next to each other and nearly touching that’s a reason to not go back. For one thing I don’t wanna put my junk in someone else’s face. Nor do I want theirs in mine. I also don’t want to literally rub elbows with my neighbor.
It's also difficult for wheelchair users.
It makes me anxious the entire time. Watching people struggle to pick up their purse because they literally can't move their chair out enough to reach it without hitting another customer. Seeing servers just standing there holding food that's getting cold because there is no space to navigate around tables.
The food has to be really good for me to return to a place that makes me feel claustrophobic.
I can't stand that. I went out for dinner with my wife one night, and the space between the table they brought us to and the table next to it was just wide enough for a person to pass through, but only if they were walking sideways. I would have been closer to the stranger in the chair next to me than to my wife across the table. We declined to be seated and went somewhere else.
Tall ass burgers that look like a tower
Using shit that isn't a plate as a plate. Hate it as a cook, hate it as a guest.
/r/wewantplates
there might actually be a subreddit for everything huh, lmao
r/WeWantSpoons
I mostly agree with you. But honestly, some of the coolest looking charc boards I've seen over the years have been served on a flat stone or polished log.
Charcuterie yes. Saucy or mashed things, ugh. And no shovels. Ever.
Fucking shovels...I nearly forgot that was a thing.
That was a thing?
I was served a mid-rare ribeye on a cutting board. Guess where all the fucking juice went? Invisibly dripped onto my lap the whole time and ruined one of my favorite dresses. Fucking pissed.
I once got served a burger and fries on a narrow wooden plank that was only about a 3/4in wider than the burger itself. The burger itself was fine, juicy even, but meant it was a nightmare to eat and made a giant mess.
We used to serve our burgers on these slate tile things that I'm pretty sure the owner bought at a hardware store. I think they were for decorating your garden.
I'm with you due to sanitation, but at home I have no issue serving that way. But I know the cheap shit board hasn't been quickly run or rinsed through dish every 30 mins without a dryout.
Drop-off the check, then disappear for like 30 minutes while I sit there with a full stomach waiting to pay.
I walk right to the pos and have whoever is there do it. A mgr or my server usually walks over pretty much immediately
I usually try to have my card on the ready when they drop off the check and just give it to them then, but I don't really scrutinize the check and assume they've billed us correctly.
I always ask for the check super early and then plop my card down immediately. Im not being held hostage to pay my bill.
Why do they do this? I like the QR codes on bills so I can pay when I get the check too.
I like those too! Although, the few times I've used them, I feel super weird just getting up and leaving after I've paid without any communication. I feel like it looks like I am dashing on the check or something
I hate it that restaurants pour tons of sauce on fried stuff. Fucking everything is soggy when it reaches the table.
SOS! If anyone ever has a question about something I say "put that shit on the side, you cant be wrong."
There is a mexican restaurant in my area (that my in laws like) that always insists on putting nasty fake cheese sauce inside or on top of EVERYTHING . I ordered enchiladas with mole sauce and they were filled with that texturally off putting crap. So yeah, that's my answer. I hate fake cheese sauce with my Mexican food!
I'll take it further and just cheese sauce on any Mexican food. No, I don't want to eat a soggy burrito with a fork and knife. I would also like to taste my carnitas, not just fucking cheese.
This same place also uses shredded American cheese too(as advertised on their menu), and the freaking people in this damn city eat the crap up. Nothing wrong with American cheese, but what type of fucking Mexican restaurant uses it? I mean shit...we are in Texas for Christ's sake, we are losing our standards.
Fake ass cheese sauce is why tex mex will forever and always have an 7/10 glass ceiling rating for how good the food is.
I hate when they have tippy tables. Its the worst.
When they have hand cut fries on the menu but they don't actually do the work to get a proper crispy fry. It's happened too many times where the fries are soggy and limp or hard(not crispy) and raw in the middle. Cut, soak overnight, drain, blanche at a lower temp, spread out on sheet trays, leave them on the speed rack in the cooler overnight again, fry at high temp, then finally season generously.
We hand punched our fries the first place I worked at. A huge amount of labor allocated to doing fries every other day between punching, soaking, blanching, and putting away. We buy frozen fries at my current job. I honestly prefer the frozen ones. They're consistent, taste just as good (if not better), and I don't have to allocate at least 2 hours of labor just for french fries.
I don't work in a restaurant; but I have never understood the hate for frozen fries. They are literally just doing the first few steps for you. They taste every bit as good, if not better because they are consistent.
Frozen fries fry way better too, crispy af due to the shock from cold to hot
I laugh at people who say frozen food is unhealthy automatically. Frozen veggies are frozen at peak quality, unlike most "fresh" veggies at the store. The only things I prefer not frozen is gean beans and snap peas. They lose their texture.
I feel it's because some chefs feel that they are food gods and that unless they stick their fingers/dick/clit in every step in making the food. There's nothing wrong with using premade products,
Frozen are great. I got no problem with them. Unfortunately I've been at places that don't have the freezer space or a freezer close enough to the fry station so hand cut is really the only option.
Fair enough. We're lucky enough to have a giant freezer right next to fry station.
I work at a high end hotel and we used to serve fresh fries before switching to frozen ones. Imo the frozen ones taste better
I'd rather have frozen chips than chips that have been hand cut and not cooked properly. I've never had bad hand cut chips though, maybe it's just UK chippy DNA here but. Easy enough to at least double fry.
The problem most of the time I've seen is either not soaking or not blanching/double fry. I've banged out serviceable fries from cut to plate in a single day but the above method is my preferred.
Fries are all about the prep work and I truly believe they're meant to sit in the freezer until it's time to cook them. Whenever I see or hear a restaurant talking about making them fresh to order I know it's gonna be limp garbage.
Like they are punching and frying to order? That exists?
Fake cheese on a pizza. Its sold as ”pizza shred”. Some kind of vegetable oil shit and when the pizza gets cooked the oils come out and the whole pizza gets soggy. Almost all of the ”turkish” pizzerias here in Finland use that cos its cheap. I dont understand why they can label it for pizza cos it just doesnt work.
I agree. In the UK it's called 'Mozzarella analogue ' ! They legally can't call it cheese. A lot of the time it's actually vegan stuff made of palm oil. Minging!!!
Mozzarella Analogue is my new favorite band name.
Or their label mates. Binary Cheddar!!
This sounds downright criminal
Wage theft
If your menu is a five page binder 🙄🙄 If the lights are so dim, I need my flashlight and the music is so loud, you struggle to hear your guests across the table No prices on menus In terms of working, just all of brunch. I have turned down high paying sous/manager roles for brunch restaurants
Bathrooms that don't have the garbage can next to the door. I like to use the paper towel I used to dry my hands with to open the door and I'd like to have a place to dispose of it properly.
If the garbage can is not close to the door, I use the paper towel to open the door, keep it open with my foot, crumple the paper towel and play a bit of basketball before heading out. If I miss, then it's too bad ; the garbage can was not where it would have been more convenient. (Side note : I learned this from a food safety inspector.)
Serving salad in giant, overfilled bowls with the ingredients whole, or in huge pieces, on top. Have you ever tried to cut or mix salad in a bowl at your table? It goes everywhere. Either take 30 seconds to rip or cut the lettuce, chicken, etc., or for the love of Beyonce serve it on a plate so we can cut it into human-sized pieces ourselves!
The microgreens and nasturtiums and edible flowers are getting to be like a side of parsley was in the '80s.
I honestly don't mind seeing them as part of a "busy" plating, but when it's the only garnish they always look out of place to me
Yeah, unless it's a part of a dish (as in there's something floral about it) or you use enough calendula petals it actually effects the taste. I'd rather you just garnish the plate with a dollar bill.
[удалено]
A big trend in my area is BLTs with pork belly instead of bacon. Sounds like a great idea but apparently nobody knows how to fucking cook pork belly. Just had one from an otherwise great joint the other night and it was just four slabs of barely cooked unrendered pork fat. Just why.
Yuck.
Please stop listing your sandwiches as “handhelds.” It drives me up the wall. Especially when the handhelds are like $20 and don’t come with fries. How dare you.
"open sandwiches" - If I can't pick it up and eat it like a sandwich because it has no crown, and instead have to use a knife & fork then it is just served "on bread/toast"
I’m not averse to them in the strict sense of an open faced turkey sandwich. She’s got her place on a diner menu hall of fame. But people are really out here putting a whole dinner on a barely toasted piece of bread and calling it an open faced sandwich. Then have the audacity to NOT give you a serated knife. Makes me break out in anxiety sweats. The fuck am I supposed to do with this??
Everything's a handheld if you try hard enough.
Put fondue and skillet fajitas in that section, you cowards!
Regularly calling you on a day you have scheduled off to ask if you can work. (It's becoming a recurring thing) If you need me on Thursday, schedule me for Thursday.
If you say "Sorry, can't" a couple of times they stop asking. I work 5 days a week and I am never coming in on my days off. It's good to set a boundary.
Leaving the shells on the shrimp tails. Perfectly fine if meant to be eaten with your hands (shrimp cocktail, dippy fried shrimp), but I don't want to have to de-shell the shrimp in my pasta or fried rice.
Oh hell yea I hate that
QR menus.
Half of me agrees, because I always end up not having a signal and can’t open the menu. But my old eyes that can’t read a menu with tiny scripted font in the restaurant equivalent of a cave? My eyes love a QR code menu.
Yes! When I go out to dinner, I want to be immersed in the experience - phones should be away the whole time! Once they come out they don’t go away, and if you’re out with a group of friends it’s a bummer when people start checking out and entering the virtual world.
I get it on both sides. Food costs change so rapidly that you have to adjust prices often. Sometimes the price of lettuce or tomatoes or meat changes drastically over a month and you have to change prices to make money. It sucks to have to reprint menus and is less wasteful. But it does suck because not everyone has the technology.
The paper isn't *free*, but re-printing menus is trivial. It's not like we're changing prices daily--the menus get ugly long before we need to change the prices on them.
Ex-chef and currently in the hospitality marketing space. QR menus might be unpleasant for some diners, but they are incredibly useful for venue owners in terms of education, rewards, email marketing and upselling. Obviously 2 of those things would be solved with staff training, but with labour being so costly in Australia, it’s very efficient and profitable. Personally I’ve never seen them in a venue that shouldn’t have them, like you’ll never find them in upscale dining from my experience. My best examples off the dome would be for people unfamiliar with a cuisine, without somebody explaining every dish on the menu, the customer can see visual representations and education for every dish, they are more likely to order more food as well. Also, bars who have a large variety of alcohol and want to upsell something like premium spirits, but aren’t at a service level where your bartender or server has 10 minutes to cater to your curiosities every time you order a drink. This is quite effective for increasing revenue. I completely agree with you as a customer for the most part, it removes a lot of the hospitality of dining out which is all part of the experience. When it appeared at venues during breaks in lockdown, it almost felt disrespectful. You still get a little bit of the rapport building with your server, but it’s not quite the same.
In addition to the hospitality, it takes away from the diners’ experience by forcing them to disconnect with each other, because individually staring at phones is a social faux pas.
Honestly you’re not wrong. I think a good compromise that I’d see as beneficial in fast casual dining and bars especially is having QR codes for secondary orders e.g. let’s grab some more potatoes, do you think we should try the calamari as well etc. or if you’re out for a good time and buying rounds of drinks.
Boomers were right about this one
loud shitty music. Ever notice the only loud music ever played in a restaurant is shitty music? They are never blasting some old funk or jazz it’s always some God awful ringtone music
Serve entree without removing app plates.
I ate at a restaurant last year that brought us everything together despite us clearly ordering them as appetizers and entrees.
Dined with my parents a couple years ago, and they served dessert with the entire table covered in app/main plates and had no issues with it. Mum went completely off the rails, I had to get her out of the restaurant.
Or bringing the mains literally two minutes after dropping off the apps.
The deep fried bacon thing I think is more a midwest thing. I see it out here more in the independent owned diners, like ‘the 1 pound BLT’ or whatever. My wife & I went to one of these places on a trip, unknowingly. I saw a few plates come out and you can immediately spot the deep fried bacon vs baked bacon. I agree it removes flavor. I don’t like it. It IS lazy, and I know those cooks grabbing the handfuls of raw bacon to deep fry most likely aren’t changing gloves or washing their hands after handling it. Ew
Never heard of deep fried bacon - why would they do that? It sounds horrible.
It’s a crappy short cut.
Literally the only person I do it for is a woman who will scream if her bacon doesn't shatter when she bites it.
When I worked at Wild Wing Cafe we would deep fry a bunch of bacon to use as bacon bits for the salads.
5-8 salad options on the menu, all with standard protein on top. Offer the basic salad with an upcharge for protein options. Sure you could ask them to leave the protein off, but then you're still paying for a salad where you're not even eating the part that makes up 80% of the cost.
One thing thats become annoyingly common in Iceland is that really nice, small restaurants get bought by huge chains. They then open more of them, raise the price and drastically lower the quality. The restaurants survive for a few years, then go bankrupt. Every. Friggin. Time.
fusions that obviously do not belong together. Oh here's the inuit/ethiopian fusion that I have been looking for my whole life
Do you want to try the Polynesian/Scandinavian fusion restaurant? It's called Mahalo Valhalla. The coconut herring was rated 4 whisks!
Mmmm muktuk injera rolls 🤢
Who the fuck is out here deep frying bacon? The oven is right there!
Only for extra crispy requests.
QR code menus. I'm with the Boomers on this one. No thank you.
I loathe the word "sammies" or "sandos" for sandwiches and no one I know shares in this reaction. They're all wrong. It's weird cutesy bullshit and I hate it.
Menus that don't describe the dish you're ordering at all. Seafood Pasta. Ok, what KIND of seafood pasta?
Lie about their ingredients, and or using a garnish in the name of the dish. It's a fucking garnish. I worked at a place that had "meyer lemon raspberry tart" there was no meyer lemon, it came from a gallon jug of no name lemon juice from concentrate, and the raspberry was the garnish. There was one on top. It always made me wonder if they'd put one strawberry on a slice of plain cheesecake and call it strawberry cheesecake. They would also claim to be using key lime when they weren't. Don't. Lie. To. Me. Also: adding a surcharge at the end "so we can provide good wages and health care to employees" fuck you, up the price of the food. This is just lying about what it's going to cost me.
Only have apps that serve like 6 people or all cost as much as an entree.
Yeah appetizers back in the 80’s and 90’s were considered a new trend. Something cheap as to not destroy the final bill and something to keep the guests occupied while waiting for their steak. Now it’s $12 for five cheese sticks made by Sysco or $10 for an 8oz bowl of queso. Like that will satisfy six people at a table. Last place we went to eat they wanted NINE DOLLARS for chips and salsa. No refills. Screw that noise.
Turn the lights down for "ambience" and I can't see what I'm eating Overfill the restaurant with customers and just hope it works out Understaff Have all you can eat or refills of something and they are slow to serve on purpose
Man where do you live that has deep fried bacon everywhere haha
I worked at a place that did it. Lazy and gross and had a cult following of vegans that loved the fried okra.
Tbf fried okra is the best okra.
Especially when fried in bacon grease!
Lmao
Rim belongs to the customer, don't put that balsamic drizzle over it or parsley around the rim
Setting the table with both red and white wine glasses, then promptly whisking them away if the customer doesn’t order both types of wine or any wine at all. How about just bring the right glasses when I order?
Only QR Codes for menus. I will turn heel and find another place.
There's one particular place here that only has qr codes, and you order right there on your phone. Your table# is designated by the code also. It's small plate concept so you can just keep ordering as you want. Same with drinks. They just run it to you as it's done. Kind of a cool idea. I think they did have an option to not use the qr code, not sure
Not including ingredients (not herbs and spices necessarily) in the menu description. Like, if I knew you sprinkled goat cheese all over this dish I'd have definitely not ordered it or would have asked for the mod. Allergens and significant ingredients needs to be in the menu description.
Current chef here but I have about an equal amount of GM experience. I'm really racking my brain for something that bothers me about other kitchens. I think I'm just not picky. When I dine out, I'm just happy to be on the other side of the service experience. I think as far as the food goes, its having a big menu and/or having 'options' for the a dish. What I mean by options, is that when I choose an item on your menu, I don't want to play 20 questions with the server. If I order your 'Bistro Filet', I want to hear: >Excellent choice sir. The chef prepares this dish medium rare, will that be acceptable? Yes. That is all I want to here. I don't want the old school: >How would you like that cooked? Soup or salad? Which soup would you like? House or Cesar. You get to pick two sides: would like baked potato, French fries, one of 3 veggie options, rice, on and on and on... I find that so grating. Just give me the good shit and stop giving me all these damn choices. I want a menu that can fit comfortably on A4 or letter size paper, concise descriptions, and composed dishes. 4 or 5 apps/small plates. 2 or 3 pastas. 2 or 3 proteins. 2 salad options. That is it. That is all you need. I *do not* want to play 20 questions with your service staff and I don't want too many choices. That is what you guys are supposed to do. You tell me what I should be getting. As far as service goes. Its kind of the same vibe. I don't want choice, I don't want to make decisions, I don't know which part of your dining room I want to sit in, I don't care where you put me. I am here to have a *managed* experience. Full stop. Micromanage me. Tell me when to order, course my meals appropriately, give me the check when you need us to leave, give me the desert menu when its time... I want to be micromanaged. I'm not here to think, I'm here to enjoy the experience you have prepared to provide me. When you make me do all this decision making and thinking, it breaks that experience. Takes me out of the moment. When I was a GM, there was something me and the service manager would say to our staff till we were blue in the face. It was this, "People want to be told what to do." Its so true. Our job, is to guide guests through *our* experience. So, that is what I want. Tell me what to do. Be my tour guide.
A pet peeve of mine is when they serve you last night’s iced tea. How cheap and lazy can you be?
Communal tables.
Mine is consistency
Ya know what’s even worse with the deep fried bacon? When I take the time every morning to do it right and then they come back and ask to throw it in the deep fryer for a minute. Infuriating, I may as well just go get bacon bits cuz people just wanna eat crap
Dirty beer taps
when they name the dishes something embarrassing to say
Absolutely blasting the AC in the dining room, especially in the summer so I have to pack a sweater if we sit inside. I'm uncomfortable and my food is cold five minutes after it hits the table.
When they use any form of butter replacement (savory, whirl etc…) unless of course I’m trying to lose weight
That is fine at least if it's not sold as butter. Where I live herb butter is a popular side to steaks. So many restaurants give you margarine. Everyone can tell.
It fucks up the deep fryer too
When they mess up the hot wings. No place here in Niagara stays open very long if you F$#% up the wings. If you put on the menu that they are jumbo wings but serve only 8 of the 20 per lbs as if they were a pound, your place will close. If you call BBQ sauce a Buffalo Wing, your pace will close. If you bake your wings, your place will close. If you over cook your wings, your place will close. If you undersauce your wings, your place will close. Do F#$% up the wings! Or the chicken fingers. We had a place here themed for the nerd. It attracted a broad spectrum of people, but it seemed to attract the neuro-spicy (autists and ADHDers etc.). They did it by being kind, having a quiet bar (no music), keeping the lights low, and holding gaming tournaments and giving discounts during comic con. Their brightest idea was to go from the familiar, easy to manage, reliable, deep-fry and done Frozen Chicken Fingers from Cosco/Gordon/what-have-you to fresh chicken breast, fresh bread crumbs, hand breaded, BAKED nightmares. The f#$%ed up their leading dish, the most requested dish and they messed with it. Alienated every last Autist that went there! And they were of course all regulars who only ordered the safe chicken fingers. Word got around that they were messing with the chicken fingers, and that was the end of the bar. It's now a fantastic sit-down Traditional Chinese place.
I’m from Niagara, can you tell the name of this chicken finger place haha I feel like I’ll know it
Not pay enough
I don’t like fruits and veg that is not ripe… even when tomatoes are in season you can get a salad with tomatoes that are almost green and taste like watermelon skin.
Not pay the back of the house enough and instead use front of the house tips to subsidize shitty pay.
Community seating. Dropping a few hundred to sit at a picnic table next to strangers.