I have previously written about the economics of the restaurant trade. Having done that, I need to identify some characteristics of restaurants that can lead to a bad experience while eating out. Visiting a restaurant is all about the total experience, and not merely the quality of the food. Poor experiences lead to poor trade and eventually to a failed restaurant. Red flags, listed below, may give warning that the experience is likely to be unsatisfactory.
- Have you booked? The typical scenario is a cavernous room, complete with an immaculately dressed host/hostess at the front desk. When you say you haven’t, you are promptly despatched to a dark recess at the back of the restaurant, often quite close to the toilets. When you leave two hours later, no one else has arrived yet to take up their “reservations.”
- The menu is incomprehensible. You may be handed a menu in which you cannot understand the names of the dishes, leave alone pronounce the individual words. You either need a Google translator or to have someone knowledgeable at your side. Otherwise, just go somewhere where the menu is in plain English.
- The menu is inflexible. If you ask the waiter for an ingredient in your dish to be removed from, or swapped with a similarly priced alternative, you are told that “it is not possible.” This might mean that the dishes are either mass produced and bought in, or the chef is an amateur and you are moving away from his or her zone of comfort.
- The plates are not merely “small,” but very small. You have racked up a large bill after ten small plates but still remain hungry. The restaurateur is using demand and supply economics in the hope that you will order another ten plates before leaving. Beware in particular of over-priced “tapas”-style offerings.
- Even worse, you do not get any plates at all. The food is served on chunky slabs of wood that are far too small for the purpose. Half your meal ends up on the table as you make clumsy attempts to retrieve it off the substitute for a plate. Even worse, the meal arrives in a tiny metal cage or piled up in a mini bucket.
- Hidden extras. You have enjoyed the liberal supply of bread and olives on the table, and are even provided with seconds, unaware that an undeclared cover charge will be surreptitiously added to the bill.
- The service is overpowering. Every time the fluid level in your wineglass drops even slightly, someone appears from nowhere to top it up. Apart from the fact that you may have already exceeded your daily recommended units of alcohol, you feel paranoid that someone is watching your every move. Also, strangers keep asking you whether you have “enjoyed ” the meal.
- The supercilious waiter. The waiter’s body language is one of disdain, making you feel uneasy. Every request from you is met by a disapproving look, making you feel that you would rather have been somewhere else. Either order the £100 bottle of wine and raise your standing in the eyes of the waiting staff, or shut up and eat up. You have been warned.
- The greedy restaurateur. The service was lousy, but a 12.5% service charge has already been added to the bill. An additional request for a “gratuity” appears on the card machine as you are paying up.
- Poor hygiene standards. The toilets are next door to the kitchen, and the smells within are unpleasantly overpowering. The premises are generally unclean. You wonder whether the inside of the kitchen is just the same.
Ashis Banerjee
(amateur restaurant critic; professional eater)