Valentines Night- a cautionary tale

Ok so the restaurant is booked, I have paid the £40 deposit. We are expected at about 9:15 as I am working on Tuesday night. We look forward to a romantic dinner, listening we are told to the gentle strains of a saxophonist!


We arrive at 9:15 as planned and are shown to our table where we sit. And we sit and sit. After about half an hour of sitting, we have run out of romantic chit chat and am fed up of yelling over the blare of the saxophone and the three piece band that seems to have been fitted into a small box . We are now both fidgeting on our chairs. A waiters comes by, I catch his eye. ‘Has someone taken your order sir? He asks. ‘No’ I reply. He takes our order, I remind him that I am a vegetarian and that I had informed the restaurant of this salient fact when I booked, it was ‘no problem’.

We wait for the appetiser. I have eaten all the bread, the rose looks appetising, but on inspection it is a false rose (cheapskates!) About 10 minutes later the waiter turns up with a plate of Oysters which he places in front of my wife, we wait for my appetiser. After another 10 minutes, I get up and go looking for the waiter. He tells me that ‘there isn’t a vegetarian appetiser’. I sit and watch my wife eat her Oysters.

10 minutes later he’s back saying very sorry but there is after all a vegetarian appetiser, although he hasn’t got it with him, he goes away, I wait, my wife eats her oysters (3). I wait and wait, we play with the foil hearts strewn across the table trying not to think of Kenny G whose music at this moment is quite appealing.

After another 10 minutes I get up in search of the waiter and find him on his way with lentil soup. I start to complain, but he insists that its not his problem and they are really busy, do I want to speak to the manageress? I say yes.

I sip my soup, the lentils are chewy, uncooked. This is clearly a soup that has a hint of desperation about it. The bread thing floating in it, tastes bad. I remove it from the soup. Well I call it soup but it was basically brown water, enlivened with chilli and ginger at the bottom of which were a couple of teaspoons of uncooked lentils. I can make better lentil soup and I know you cannot cook a lentil soup from scratch in about 20 minutes unless its out of a tin – which at that moment I would have preferred. – I left it.

The waiter came back, ‘is every thing OK sir?’ ‘No, the soup is uncooked’ I said. He whipped it away from under my nose and stalked off. The manageress had still not appeared to listen to my complaint.

The saxophonist blared away in the background.

The manageress turned up bearing our next course, all chatty and smiles, she didn’t ask what was the problem and my wife had asked me not to cause a scene. So I left it and ate my gnocchi.

We ate and drank a little, we yelled sweet nothings at each other. They bought a flaming sambucca to finish the meal. It was now nearly midnight.

I went to pay. There was a obnoxious drunken guy arguing with the manageress about something to do with their evening, and she was attempting to totally ignore him while serving me. I was edging away from the desk as it seemed likely that the fracas in front of me was going to escalate as his tone and language also escalated.

She couldn’t seem to find our ticket, so she just wrote out a total on a bill sheet. £130!

I said What?

She said £130.

I said ‘No way, you told me £35 a head when I telephoned and booked, plus you have already had a £40 deposit off me’.

‘Well you have had a 5 course meal’ she said, Its £65 a head.

‘And the service was crap’ I parried ‘I sat there for the best part of 40 minutes without being served and when I was served the food was uncooked’! Plus you told me it was £35 a head, if you had said £65 a head on the phone I would not have booked it.

‘You don’t want to pay then’ she said

‘Well’ I said, ‘I’ll pay the £35 a head’

‘You’re not going to pay then’ she said

‘OK, I’m not going to pay’ I said.

She turned away and ignored me

So we left.

That was our romantic night out!

I cancelled my bank card this morning because she has the number from when I gave it to her over the phone and no way is she getting that money.

This always happens to me in restaurants, I always seem to get bad service, poor food or the waiters forget we’re there. Or is it that I’m one of the few who will complain about bad service in this country.

And its not any excuse to say ‘we’re really busy’ – its Valentines Night for Christ sakes, you knew you were going to be busy!

The food of love hey!