[Food, Personal]
[personal|food] Restaurant disservice, Outback Steakhouse style
I’m not a fiend for perfect restaurant service. I know wait people get tired, kitchens get busy, and everybody messes up once in a while. Generally, I have a lot of patience and a high tolerance level for eccentricities of table service.
But last night, Lisa Costello and I had one of the worst restaurant experiences I’ve had in quite a while at Outback Steakhouse over here in SE Portland. Comparable to my very bad experience at Papa Haydn about this time last year [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. Much as with Papa Haydn, the evening was sufficiently irritating that I won’t voluntarily go back to the restaurant ever again.
On entering the restaurant, we were seated immediately in an otherwise empty section. There were very few diners in the place, as we had arrived relatively early in the dinner hour. A little more than five minutes later, we had to ask the host to send a waitperson to our table, as there had been no attention at all. The section was simply dead. He rolled his eyes, which I did not appreciate, then headed off to the kitchen. A waitress shortly appeared.
We placed our order, which was simple with no special requirements. It came out very slowly, and piecemeal. Two appetizers arrived about ten minutes apart. The steak arrived about forty-five minutes after we ordered, just after I’d politely complained to the host, who again was indifferent. Others around us entered the restaurant, were seated, ordered, served and finished their meals in the time it took our entree to come to table. The waitress never acknowledged this and made no attempt to explain the slowness, make up for it, or secure us our food. (She did eventually take one of our appetizers off the bill.)
What the heck do you do as a diner in that situation? I respect that food service is a tough job on its best day. The waitress was not being personally rude to us. I’m a little too well socialized to raise hell, though I did speak to the host twice, for all the good it did me.
Restaurant politics are funny. The whole low-wage/tip thing is weird. (There’s some history about it here, in an otherwise fascinating article about a tipless restaurant.) And I know chances are good the problem had little or nothing to do with our waitress. But her job is to be the restaurant’s face to its diners, and her job includes making sure people know what’s going on. Even a plausible lie about some embarrassing kitchen screw up would have been better than the dead silence and excruciatingly slow service we received.
I think that’s what frustrates me the most. That lack of communication, that lack of service in the larger sense of the term. The indifference.
At any rate, this is the first time I’ve set foot in an Outback Steakhouse in years. It’s also certainly the last. My life is too short, literally and figuratively, to put up with this crap. Especially when I am lucky enough to live in a place like Portland with hundreds of wonderful restaurants to choose from.
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Posted: 6:48 am Tue October 08 2013 |
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My grandfather was a chef and a restaurant manager most of his adult life and he insisted on providing great service.
Also on receiving it. I used to be greatly embarrassed when he would suddenly get up and stalk out of a place with bad service or bad food, leaving behind anything already on the table and loudly berating anyone who dared try to make him pay for it.
But I learned too. Were I with you at the Outback I would have suggested we leave in exactly the same way. I have done it before, much to the embarrassment of my children. The only difference is, I always asked to see the manager or asked one to call me.
That is terrible service indeed. I can see how it might happen if the whole kitchen were understaffed and the other diners were also getting slow service … but just you guys? That’s weird and I’d take it personally, and yeah, I’d walk out. Sorry you had such a bum experience. I’ve never been to OS, but that story doesn’t thrill me at all.
I can’t even remember visiting a chain restaurant while I lived in Portland. Definitely one of the best foody towns in the country.
The Yelp reviews are all over the place, but it sounds like your experience was somewhat common. I’m sorry this happened.
Jay,
I hate to say it but if you had other eating options available you should have gone elsewhere. Do not take that statement in any way an excuse for the poor service you received. That service was completely unacceptable for a national chain.
Personally I have come to loath these nationwide chains. Yes, they provide fairly consistent food selections no matter what state you happen to be in or visiting. But if I am going to go out to eat I want it to be worthwhile. I’ll specifically look for the local, no chain, restaurant when I am out and about. If out of state or my local area I’ll make the effort to ask a few people where they would recommend for a really good local place to eat. It is very infrequently that I am steered wrong. Many times a place is recommended and from the outside it looks marginal. If I had found it on my own and saw the outside I would have simply passed it by looking for a “better” place. But with a recommendation I am willing to put that 1st impression aside and give it a chance it might not have otherwise had. Wonderfully surprised is how I categorize most of the meals enjoyed this way.
So, my rule of thumb advice, if it is a national chain only eat there if it is truly your last and only resort for food.
I’ll share a local example from Mukwonago, WI. There is a little family owned eatery that rents space attached to a local gas station. It has 5 tables and can seat maybe 25 people tops if completely full. From the outside you would never think to go there. Below is a google maps streetview link if you would like to see. The door to the restaurant is located behind and just to the left of the ice machine. Not surprisingly the name of this place is “The Hidden Cafe”
Good luck finding better meals.
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=42.858167,-88.331594&spn=0.000789,0.001206&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=42.858161,-88.331719&panoid=E4qt0iPj8AWipE0Q6HMYkw&cbp=12,172.6,,1,4.92
“What the heck do you do as a diner in that situation? ”
There’s only one thing to do – get up and walk out.
I had a friend who did extensive world travel, and he told me the MOST important phrase to learn in any language is, “I’m sorry.”