Did a server spill a glass of red wine right onto your new white dress? Were you forced to eat raw chicken, only to be made like a fool when you asked the restaurant to cook it and they said that it was already 'well done'? Well, we want to hear about it. We're gathering up epic tales of meals gone wrong - if you have one to share, leave it below in the comments or email it to jmulcahy@zagat.com. Stay tuned for a roundup of the worst of the worst - if you can stomach it, that is.
Here's a story about a birthday dinner ruined...
ReplyDeleteMy friends and I were going out to celebrate our twin friends' 25 birthdays. Since we were going to party in the city, we decided to have a quick, low-key dinner back home in LI first at a local pub a friend of ours tried once. There was going to be 9 of us and so our friend made a reservation. Mind you the place is mainly a bar so there aren't that many tables and they told us we'd probably have to split between a table and a booth, but they're next to each other so we'll still be able to talk to each other. We agreed. Little did we know how much trouble that would cause....
We show up a few minutes before 7:30 and tell our hostess we arrived. She tells us oh, well you're a large group and we don't have a table so you're going to have to wait. My friend told her about the conversation she had on the phone and pointed to the table we were supposed to get. The hostess looked at her all confused and just kept insisting that we have to wait. We were getting agitated naturally, since we had a train to catch into the city and the hostess gave us a blank stare and said "I'm just trying to help." But the manager walked over, and she was the one my friend spoke to on the phone, and she said oh don't listen to the hostess everything is set and you'll get that table once the previous group is done.
While we were waiting (and the people were taking forever) another big table opened up, so we thought great we'll get this table and we'll all get to sit together. Yet the hostess proceeds to go up to a group of 6 who came in after us and didn't have a reservation, and tells them they're getting the table, to which my friend immediately says something to her and she again looks at us like we're idiots and says well that's a table fit for 6 and I have a group of 6 here ready to be sat so....so what!? We had the reservation, and they didn't so we had rights to the table. Manager comes over again, we tell her and she immediately sits us at the table and scolds the hostess.
Now we're sitting about 45 minutes later than we should have been and the hostess, clearly not willing to help us at all, decides not to give us all menus...great, how are we going to order? The waitress then comes to take our drinks and disappears for 20 minutes, coming back and saying ooh sorry my friend is on TV right now in the UFC match and i got distracted....great, just take our order and let's be on our way. We order, and we're talking burgers, fries, nothing complicated...takes another 40 minutes just to get our food, which was cold by the time it arrived.
So in the end, for a dinner we thought would be quick and easy ended up taking about 3 hours and a complete waste of our time and money. We get to the city super late, wait on line for a club that was way over packed by the time we get there and that was our night.