Restaurant Silliness
Mar. 28th, 2022 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneA friend on LJ, Howlin' Wolf, posted a question if you'd ever sent a meal back at a restaurant. I have on a few occasions. Wrong food, or badly done. One time at an Asian restaurant I ordered my regular dish and the kitchen put the absolute wrong spice on it for whatever reason, completely incompatible. And yes, I sent it back as it was inedible! I got back the correct dish.
Anyway, I told HW that I had a funny restaurant story to post that I'd put up later as I was pressed for time this morning. And I did post it in reply. And decided I'd make it a normal journal post. So here it is.
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There's a premium steak house in the USA called Ruth's Chris Steak House, I have no idea what the origin of the name is. My best friend's boyfriend was a really, REALLY high-paid IT guy and took her, me, and another friend out to dinner there once. This is a place where every single dish is charged, you dress nice, and it's going to run a minimum $100 a head. I don't think we had any alcohol, still, wouldn't surprise me if we topped $500 for the four of us.
As we're leaving, I tell the others I'll catch up with them. I stop at the hostess station and in complete deadpan ask for the manager. They say she's not available and ask if they can help me.
I say, again, complete deadpan, that at no time during our dinner did any of the wait staff come up to our table and interrupt our conversation while we had food in our mouth. The poor girl was absolutely shocked, having read my tone of voice rather than what I actually said. The manager, from across the room, saw the girl's reaction and came over, asking if she could help.
I repeated it in the exact same tone of voice. She laughed. I added, 'But seriously, the food was marvelous, the service impeccable. We had a great time. Please explain it to the poor girl, she didn't hear what I said.'
Yes, my D&D alignment is Chaotic Silly.
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I pulled up their Wikipedia entry to find out the origin of the name, and it was pretty much what I expected, and pretty boring at that. The original steak house was the Chris Steak House. A woman named Ruth bought it, but the condition of sale was that she couldn't use any other name at a different location. She had just signed a ten-year lease when fire destroyed the site. Fortunately she had just bought a space that she was going to use as a banquet hall, in a week she had moved her restaurant there, and renamed it Ruth's Chris Steak House.
And so it remained.
She died of lung cancer in 2002. The chain had long since been franchised before then. The location that we ate at in Phoenix has since closed, I don't know if they moved to another site or what. It wasn't a sufficiently amazing experience that I was planning a return visit.
Anyway, I told HW that I had a funny restaurant story to post that I'd put up later as I was pressed for time this morning. And I did post it in reply. And decided I'd make it a normal journal post. So here it is.
There's a premium steak house in the USA called Ruth's Chris Steak House, I have no idea what the origin of the name is. My best friend's boyfriend was a really, REALLY high-paid IT guy and took her, me, and another friend out to dinner there once. This is a place where every single dish is charged, you dress nice, and it's going to run a minimum $100 a head. I don't think we had any alcohol, still, wouldn't surprise me if we topped $500 for the four of us.
As we're leaving, I tell the others I'll catch up with them. I stop at the hostess station and in complete deadpan ask for the manager. They say she's not available and ask if they can help me.
I say, again, complete deadpan, that at no time during our dinner did any of the wait staff come up to our table and interrupt our conversation while we had food in our mouth. The poor girl was absolutely shocked, having read my tone of voice rather than what I actually said. The manager, from across the room, saw the girl's reaction and came over, asking if she could help.
I repeated it in the exact same tone of voice. She laughed. I added, 'But seriously, the food was marvelous, the service impeccable. We had a great time. Please explain it to the poor girl, she didn't hear what I said.'
Yes, my D&D alignment is Chaotic Silly.
I pulled up their Wikipedia entry to find out the origin of the name, and it was pretty much what I expected, and pretty boring at that. The original steak house was the Chris Steak House. A woman named Ruth bought it, but the condition of sale was that she couldn't use any other name at a different location. She had just signed a ten-year lease when fire destroyed the site. Fortunately she had just bought a space that she was going to use as a banquet hall, in a week she had moved her restaurant there, and renamed it Ruth's Chris Steak House.
And so it remained.
She died of lung cancer in 2002. The chain had long since been franchised before then. The location that we ate at in Phoenix has since closed, I don't know if they moved to another site or what. It wasn't a sufficiently amazing experience that I was planning a return visit.
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Date: 2022-03-29 04:12 am (UTC)That is too funny. :p
Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2022-03-29 04:45 am (UTC)I'm very good at deadpan saying one thing with my face while my mouth says something completely different. It's lots of fun!
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Date: 2022-03-29 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-29 10:09 am (UTC)The kitchen was semi-open to the seating area. The waitress brought the plate back to show to the kitchen staff pointing at our table. All were shaking their heads while Dad waived and gave them a thumbs-up. I wonder if they continued to talk about that particular customer up until the day the restaurant closed a few years later.
As to sending a meal back, I've done it twice. When you order a medium-well steak and are served a bloody rare steak, you send it back. In the other case, there was a bit of plastic wrap in my pasta dish at a chain pasta restaurant. It had a label on it reading use by Wed. evening. I called our waiter over, showed them the plastic wrap and commented, good thing it's only Wed. noontime. Manager was quickly at the table resulting in a free meal.
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Date: 2022-03-29 03:28 pm (UTC)Hard Rock Cafe, New Orleans, around '96. I was there for a Microsoft TechEd week-long conference. At the time I wasn't as adventuresome with food. Went there for a BBQ bacon cheeseburger. The cheese was still in the wrapper. Took one bite and discovered the problem. Called the waiter back, mentioned there was a slight problem. Lifted the bun and showed it to him. He was rather aghast. I think my worst experience was an Olive Garden in Phoenix, and come to think of it, I don't think I've been back to the chain since. It was my birthday, and the only reason I was there was to meet my parents there with a bunch of their friends after they got out of church. Place was absolutely packed. Ordered a steak and pasta. Steak was way underdone, I'd ordered medium. Sent it back. Came back cooked beyond well-done, almost burnt. Inedible. As I said, haven't been back. My lunch that day consisted of a couple of bread sticks, salad, and some veg.
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Date: 2022-03-29 04:02 pm (UTC)My favorite weird-name tale has always been a place in Manhattan called O'Neal's Balloon. Legend had it the name was a last minute change from "Saloon" because NY liquor law at the time prohibited use of that word in a bar's name. The place lasted until after the 2008 crash.
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Date: 2022-03-29 04:56 pm (UTC)That's interesting about them being a Limbaugh advertiser, I had no idea. My dad used to listen to him but stopped at some point, I don't know when. That's funny about Balloon! A whole lot of restaurants died in the '08 crash, then a whole lot died in Covid because their model didn't support a delivery model. One in Phoenix that didn't was a place that I enjoyed called Fajitas: you really need that stuff fresh on the table, delivery wouldn't cut it. One salad bar chain, Sweet Tomatoes, also folded. No idea how the salad bar restaurant sector is doing, I expect not terribly well.
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Date: 2022-03-30 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-30 05:11 pm (UTC)We had a GC down here in Alamogordo, they got shut down by the health department. They've since reopened by a local winery as a very nice high-end restaurant/winery.