Ever send food back in a restaurant?

[KiloFox]

i wouldn't exactly call sending this back... but here's the story anyway

i was at a buffet of some kind (i forget which and where) and i had grabbed a bunch of pineapple for my plate (because i love pineapple) i tasted one piece and realized something was a bit odd about it... believe it or not the pineapple had been there SO LONG it had started FERMENTING! (which for those that don't know is the process of turning sugar into alcohol...) so i was essentially left with booze-pineapple... i was pretty obviously underage at the time, so i told my dad who then brought it up to the staff. they replaced the pineapple almost immediately, and actually thanked me for informing them.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I've never been in a situation where I felt compelled to send my food back. I'm surprised there are so many people who have encountered such poor quality service. To be fair, I did get food poisoning from a seafood place, but I didn't realise anything was wrong until after I got home, and then I just resolved not to go back. Most of the things that people have complained about I wouldn't really care about though. I'm not bothered about the exact degree to which my food is cooked as long as it isn't charcoal black, which it never has been. I don't care about the odd hair either. I'm pretty easily pleased and I don't like causing commotions, so it's unlikely that a restaurant whose practices are appalling enough to upset me would stay in business long. I might be a bit bothered if I were to find meat in one of my dishes these days, but even so, I'd probably just push it aside rather than cause a fuss.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I did when it was something I didn't order. I ordered a chicken plate and was brought a burger and fries. I'm certainly not a cook, but I can't see many similarities between the two.

 

[Hungry Donner]

I don't like tomatoes, and there are numerous times I've had to return a pizza because I asked for no sauce and they put it on anyway. This particularly sucks if we've decided to get delivery, but we don't do this often.

 

[srm79]

My boyfriend is a chef, and he wanted you all to know that if you send food back and there is genuinely something wring with it, chefs don't, by and large, spit on it or fuck with it like that. It's gross and they hate the implication.

However, if you send it back for no good reason, well... just don't.



[sub]He's a very angry man though.[/sub]

I've worked in a kitchen before, and this generally holds true. Any decent chef is (rightly) proud of his/her art and if the customer has a genuine reason for sending it back then it's never a problem.

 

[KelsieKatt]

I have a bad habit of just putting up with what I get and don't complain enough most of the time.

In particular, I've had tons of incidents where I order my food as the spiciest option they offer because I really like spicy food. However, instead I keep being given the mild options which is really frustrating.

I get a strong feeling that nobody takes me seriously when I order food. This happens far too often.

Similar thing seems to happen when I order steaks as well. I like to eat mine rare primarily, and a lot of the time I'll wind up getting them medium to medium-well instead... Where as any guy friend who is with me who orders Medium Rare or Medium, their food comes out rarer than mine. Same goes for spices too, I'm usually given the mildest dish despite them only liking medium or mild spices.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

A few times, kind of. Once I ordered a bacon cheese burger with no veggies on it, they brought me out a plain hamburger (so I would have ended up paying $3-4 more for cheese and bacon that weren't there). Even after that, they brought it back with bacon and no cheese. We just told the cashier that there wasn't cheese on it and she fixed the price.

Only other time I remember was at a Mexican restaurant, and I found a bone in my chicken enchiladas. The waiter insisted on taking it back, and gave me the meal for free.

 

[snowpuppy]

Only once, there was an earwig in the salad.

 

[DanielBrown]

Never. Not even when I got a piece of glass in my found. Discovered something odd when I was chewing... luckily I didn't swallow.
Damn you, Jante Law!

 

[Dwarfman]

My boyfriend is a chef, and he wanted you all to know that if you send food back and there is genuinely something wring with it, chefs don't, by and large, spit on it or fuck with it like that. It's gross and they hate the implication.

However, if you send it back for no good reason, well... just don't.



[sub]He's a very angry man though.[/sub]

And what do chefs see as genuine good reasons and what not?

Genuine Good Reasons...

If the item has been cooked incorrectly.

If there was a special requirement to the dish asked for by the customer - eg allergies, intolerances, religious beliefs - that has not been met.

If the wrong dish has been sent out (usually a floor staff error but anyways).

If the food seems off (Probably isn't but the average line chef is working at a pace where they can't check everything. Sent it back let the Head chef deal with it)

Foriegn matter in the Dish (Hairs, but I don't have any and my beard is well managed don't even try that one on me; Bits of plastic, it happened to me once; bandaids etc.

ALL of these are good reasons to send back your food. All YOU need to do is be polite and mature about it. Any chef that has the balls to call themselves that title will have the pride to suck it up and send that dish out looking even better than before. The dishes we send out are an expression to who we are as cooks. If we insist on sending out shit or deliberatly fuck with a dish on it's way out to a customer then what we're saying is we have no pride, no integrity, no passion and no right to put on whites and lift a knife...EVER.

 

[aristos_achaion]

If it were really something I couldn't eat (say, if they'd given me something I were allergic to, there was something nasty in it, &c), I'd be really apologetic while sending it back. (A couple of "I'm so sorry"s and "I don't want to be that customer, but..."s can really go a long way to getting the waiter on your side.) I wouldn't send it back over a slightly messed-up order, though...I once had a friend insist I send back a pizza they brought out with pepperoni instead of sausage, and we ended up waiting nearly an hour for our meal.

 

[Dwarfman]

My boyfriend is a chef, and he wanted you all to know that if you send food back and there is genuinely something wring with it, chefs don't, by and large, spit on it or fuck with it like that. It's gross and they hate the implication.

However, if you send it back for no good reason, well... just don't.



[sub]He's a very angry man though.[/sub]

Yes. Yes we are angry. Very angry. We're also sado-masocistic, obsessive compullsives but you already knew that right? :-D>

 

[Awsomeotaku]

Once at a McDonalds when I got a chicken Burger instead of chicken nuggets

 

[Togs]

Rarely, as people have said if it's not what I ordered back it goes.
This includes stuff like finding goddamn crabshell in my linguine- no I didnt order that, no that cant be how the dish is supposed to be.
If i just dont like the dish I suck it up and eat it or swap with a willing sap on my table.

 

[thylasos]

I'll send it back if the food's cold (when it's not meant to be), certainly. Or if there's meat in it after specifying it without. Or if there's something otherwise wrong with it which makes it either inedible or edible but disgusting.

I'm paying for it, man. If I'd whack it back in the oven at home, they can fling it back in the microwave for a minute at the restaurant.

 

[VanityGirl]

I had. If they don'tget my food right that I paid for, then I'll send it back.
I mean leaving pickles on a hamburger is no big deal, but if my steak comes out well done, I'll send it back. My steaks have to be at most, medium. I prefer medium rare. I like red in the little of my steak. That's the only thing I'm picky about.

 

[breadsammich]

I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to food issues. If there's a hair in it, I usually discreetly remove it and just continue eating. Unless the cook/waiter had some kind of hair disease, I see it as more of a weak-stomach issue, which I don't really have.

I've only not been able to eat the food once. One time I ordered a burger and when I bit into it, the little wax cheese-divider thing was still in it and it burned the crap out of my tongue. The waitress was hilarious about it--she came back after we were almost finished eating and she was like "would you like me to box that up for you?" We all had a good laugh.

 

[EricKei]

I've only ever sent back food if I ordered "item A" and received "item B7" -- which has been really, really rare at anything other than fast food places. One time I regret NOT sending the food back was at Friday's when I ordered a chicken fried steak, and it came out hot and crispy on the outside but still frozen in the middle -- this was, apparently, shortly after they made the shift from mainly fresh dishes to flash-frozen and thawed crap dishes. This was...say, 14 years ago and I've never been back.

I suppose I've just lucked out (at real restaurants, anyway) and seldom gotten anything done improperly. At burger joints, yeah, if I ask for "x only" I mean "x only", not "the works"...I don't feel as bad having them remake it if the entire process takes less than a minute ^_^

 

[KingofallCosmos]

I think you get better with practice; after a stint of weekly dinners I can now send anything back if it's not up to par. Hey, you pay for it right? when I say bloody I mean bloody you koks! (dutch for chef).

 

[Joshimodo]

Hell yeah I do. I also send back anything that looks unclean.

If I don't plan to eat it for any reason other than hunger or taste, I send it back.