Monday, December 5, 2011

How to lose customers in 10 easy steps.

1. Open and new bar/restaurant.
2. Don't have a soft opening
3. Don't get organized for your very busy opening weekend. Run your open kitchen like a shithole. Wear jeans with your chef jacket.
4. Serve a customer a poorly cooked product.
5. When customer sends item back, position yourself so customer can hear what you say.
6. Pick up food with fingers and gnaw on it.
7. Pass food in your hands to waitress and insist she gnaws on it.
8. Pass food in your hand to another chef and insist he gnaws on it.
9. Repeat above with other staff.
10. Insist loudly that the product is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. The customer is an idiot. What's his problem.

To prove I am not an idiot I will explain what was wrong with the food, although this is not at all the point.

The offending dish was a portion of chicken wings with harrissa.
The wings arrived white, flabby, palid and with wingtip and quills still attached. Not an attractive look (even if you like chinese white-cooked chicken as I do). They were clearly not cooked long enough. This was proved by the fact they were impossible to separate with your hands. I mean impossible. I tried and tried to pull them apart, but the joints rebounded like a catapult. The knife and fork managed to get some flesh from the bones but the tendons were rubbery and unpleasant. It was a simple error of timing. The waitress was lovely and immediately offered for them to be cooked longer. I knew they would need another 30 minutes so declined. She immediately refunded the money. She was great. For what happened next refer to points 5 to 10 above.

Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone deserves to be cut a lot of slack when recently opened and very busy. Accepting a mistake graciously is hugely impressive and always wins the day. But nobody wins from adopting the arrogance, attitude and aggression that this chef did. Not me as a customer and certainly not him as a businessman. What a shame.

By the way, the harissa was bland and too tomatoey, but the other dish I ordered, a kind of warm rillette of pheasant on toast, was superb.