Disaster at Downing
I'm back from Ireland and I can't get the incredible country and its people out of my head. To the tune of James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind," I keep singing "In my mind I'm going to Ireland..."
I returned to +1,000 e-mails from work and a few from friends. "Miss you, Mona!" "Where are you?" "Can we please make plans this month?" I felt loved and missed. Fashionista sent her choices for FTDC: Market Table, Commerce or 10 Downing. I was all about 10 Downing until I received this alarming report from FunStar:
My girlfriend and I hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks so last Tuesday we decided to meet for drinks and apps (our favorite kind of girls-only date night). We love any excuse to try a new place, and since 10 Downing had been on the list for a while, we decided to give it a shot. The restaurant was comfortably crowded - but not packed - when we walked in around 8:30. We both agreed the décor was fabulous and our overall first impression was good atmosphere/great potential.
There weren’t any available seats at the bar, where we prefer to sit, so we agreed to take a two-top near the patio door. The waiter came over and was very charming. He asked if we were cold and offered to relocate us to a better table away from the door. Yes please. After moving and getting re-situated, we took a look at the menu. The waiter came back a few minutes later to take our drink order… a bottle of champagne. He promptly returned with the bottle for presentation. This is where the night takes its first turn for the worse.
The way in which he opened the bottle sent approximately two glasses worth of champagne soaking into the back of my head, shirt, down my arm and all over (and into) my leather handbag sitting on the floor next to my chair. He immediately leaned over with the hand towel and started wiping me off, and I politely pushed him off with a smile and said it was OK. He continued to clumsily pour us two glasses before he took our order – the baked sheep cheese plate, the trout tartare and beet salad. The waiter mentioned if we didn’t want that cheese plate we could order the same one, just not baked. We thanked him for the suggestion and went for it. Local time: approximately 9pm.
After we placed our order, he stopped by the table to refill our glasses much too frequently. I felt as if he was forcing it down our throats. We also never received the complimentary bread and butter basket that we saw at every other table around us. Local time now: 9:30. When our bottle got close to the half-way point and we had yet to see a morsel of food, I asked him the status of our cheese plate and if we could please get some bread and butter in the meantime. He said he’d go check before he disappeared for 10 minutes. When he came back, still without the cheese plate (it’s just a plate of toast and cheese), he asked, "What did you order again?" He had forgotten.
We re-ordered and re-asked for our cheese plate. It came out a few minutes later, delivered by someone else. We quickly ran out of the prepared bread to go with the cheese (they only provide about four small toast points) and asked for more. More was delivered several minutes later, not as the accompanying toast points, but as the bread and butter basket we should have received an hour earlier. Again our server was nowhere to be found.
Local time: after 10pm. We asked our waiter to cancel the trout tartare. At that point, we weren’t hungry anymore. He informed us that he couldn’t as it had already been prepared. If I wasn’t showing my anger already, now I was.
I replied firmly we had gotten our cheese plate, a dish that requires ZERO cooking, and we were not going to be forced to eat a plate of food that we no longer wanted, especially if it was already ready and just sitting under a heat lamp, waiting for us to finish our first course. I told him to cancel the tartare and deliver the beet salad. I asked what took well over an hour to get a cheese plate that requires no cooking? He told us he had in his notes that he put in the order around 9:30, to which I replied, "Yes, because you had to come back and ask us our order a second time nearly an hour after we first ordered at 8:30." How was that OK?
He sat there and continued to argue with me, insisting I was wrong/mistaken. I said forget it, just bring us the check. Out came the beets around 10:30, which were lackluster. The champagne was done by this point. When he came by to refill our glasses with a bottle that had been empty for ages, he commented, "Sometimes I just get so busy that I forget what I’m doing!" Then he laughed as if we found it amusing.
When the check finally came, not one thing had been comped in exchange for the massive amounts of spilled champagne (on the customer’s head and back no less) or the ridiculous waiting time for the food. In fact, it was even more expensive than we were expecting since the off-the-menu cheese plate he sold us as being the "same" as the one on the menu was about $10 more.
In retrospect, I highly regret never asking to speak to a manager and I’m not one to shy away from speaking up. I think I was so in shock I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. The waiter should have sent a manager over on his own after everything that had happened, but then again, I guess there are a lot of things that waiter should have done.
Needless to say, I did not leave a good tip, and I NEVER leave bad tips. I waited tables for four years, so I’m usually an excellent tipper. I almost didn’t leave one at all. I can forgive mistakes if you try to rectify them, or even if you just apologize for them. But for the server to laugh it off and call me a liar was unacceptable.
I walked out 10 Downing’s side door around 11pm… for the first and last time.
I returned to +1,000 e-mails from work and a few from friends. "Miss you, Mona!" "Where are you?" "Can we please make plans this month?" I felt loved and missed. Fashionista sent her choices for FTDC: Market Table, Commerce or 10 Downing. I was all about 10 Downing until I received this alarming report from FunStar:
My girlfriend and I hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks so last Tuesday we decided to meet for drinks and apps (our favorite kind of girls-only date night). We love any excuse to try a new place, and since 10 Downing had been on the list for a while, we decided to give it a shot. The restaurant was comfortably crowded - but not packed - when we walked in around 8:30. We both agreed the décor was fabulous and our overall first impression was good atmosphere/great potential.
There weren’t any available seats at the bar, where we prefer to sit, so we agreed to take a two-top near the patio door. The waiter came over and was very charming. He asked if we were cold and offered to relocate us to a better table away from the door. Yes please. After moving and getting re-situated, we took a look at the menu. The waiter came back a few minutes later to take our drink order… a bottle of champagne. He promptly returned with the bottle for presentation. This is where the night takes its first turn for the worse.
The way in which he opened the bottle sent approximately two glasses worth of champagne soaking into the back of my head, shirt, down my arm and all over (and into) my leather handbag sitting on the floor next to my chair. He immediately leaned over with the hand towel and started wiping me off, and I politely pushed him off with a smile and said it was OK. He continued to clumsily pour us two glasses before he took our order – the baked sheep cheese plate, the trout tartare and beet salad. The waiter mentioned if we didn’t want that cheese plate we could order the same one, just not baked. We thanked him for the suggestion and went for it. Local time: approximately 9pm.
After we placed our order, he stopped by the table to refill our glasses much too frequently. I felt as if he was forcing it down our throats. We also never received the complimentary bread and butter basket that we saw at every other table around us. Local time now: 9:30. When our bottle got close to the half-way point and we had yet to see a morsel of food, I asked him the status of our cheese plate and if we could please get some bread and butter in the meantime. He said he’d go check before he disappeared for 10 minutes. When he came back, still without the cheese plate (it’s just a plate of toast and cheese), he asked, "What did you order again?" He had forgotten.
We re-ordered and re-asked for our cheese plate. It came out a few minutes later, delivered by someone else. We quickly ran out of the prepared bread to go with the cheese (they only provide about four small toast points) and asked for more. More was delivered several minutes later, not as the accompanying toast points, but as the bread and butter basket we should have received an hour earlier. Again our server was nowhere to be found.
Local time: after 10pm. We asked our waiter to cancel the trout tartare. At that point, we weren’t hungry anymore. He informed us that he couldn’t as it had already been prepared. If I wasn’t showing my anger already, now I was.
I replied firmly we had gotten our cheese plate, a dish that requires ZERO cooking, and we were not going to be forced to eat a plate of food that we no longer wanted, especially if it was already ready and just sitting under a heat lamp, waiting for us to finish our first course. I told him to cancel the tartare and deliver the beet salad. I asked what took well over an hour to get a cheese plate that requires no cooking? He told us he had in his notes that he put in the order around 9:30, to which I replied, "Yes, because you had to come back and ask us our order a second time nearly an hour after we first ordered at 8:30." How was that OK?
He sat there and continued to argue with me, insisting I was wrong/mistaken. I said forget it, just bring us the check. Out came the beets around 10:30, which were lackluster. The champagne was done by this point. When he came by to refill our glasses with a bottle that had been empty for ages, he commented, "Sometimes I just get so busy that I forget what I’m doing!" Then he laughed as if we found it amusing.
When the check finally came, not one thing had been comped in exchange for the massive amounts of spilled champagne (on the customer’s head and back no less) or the ridiculous waiting time for the food. In fact, it was even more expensive than we were expecting since the off-the-menu cheese plate he sold us as being the "same" as the one on the menu was about $10 more.
In retrospect, I highly regret never asking to speak to a manager and I’m not one to shy away from speaking up. I think I was so in shock I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. The waiter should have sent a manager over on his own after everything that had happened, but then again, I guess there are a lot of things that waiter should have done.
Needless to say, I did not leave a good tip, and I NEVER leave bad tips. I waited tables for four years, so I’m usually an excellent tipper. I almost didn’t leave one at all. I can forgive mistakes if you try to rectify them, or even if you just apologize for them. But for the server to laugh it off and call me a liar was unacceptable.
I walked out 10 Downing’s side door around 11pm… for the first and last time.
posted by Mona at 8:15 AM
1 Comments:
This is pretty funny. I was trying to decide if I felt bad for you. But after all, it is you Moni. So I decided on No.
tuna Tartare anyone?
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