How Much Change/How Many Mistakes do you Tolerate?

[Ninetoes]

I went to a new "barbecue and grill" place that opened in between home and work today for lunch.

I had the pulled pork lunch sandwich with coleslaw and a side of fries (and sweet iced tea.)

The fries were bland and unsalted.
The coleslaw was okay.
I had a few fork fulls of the pulled pork before two-handing the sandwich. They were good... but once I started biting into it I started to sweat. It was too spicy for me. After the fourth or fifth bite I simply couldn't taste it anymore. (That's a deal killer for me.)

When I brought it (the excessive spiciness) up to my server, she said "Well we ARE Rochester Bar & Grill" which, having been my first time, meant exactly nothing to me. "Everything's supposed to be a little bit more spicy" she then said.

All other BBQ places I've been to (in Texas OR NJ) have always given a choice of sauces, be they spicy, not spicy, etc.

I might take my fiancee who enjoys spicier foods but since that seems to be their stance, I won't be coming back solo.

Might be a matter of the rub used and not the sauce.

[Mileron]

I'm surprised I didn't update this thread lately, because dayum it's been bad.

Late April 2014, after my fiancee got home from a weekend in NYC for a friend's birthday, we decided to go to a different, brand new Red Robin location right near the bus stop.
We both got food poisoning again within the time it took us to drive home and lost a few days' work from it.

We've limited ourselves to two-a-month "fuck it" dinners - one eating out, one take-out/delivery.
Our eating out option tends to be a local Chinese buffet, and it's usually quite good.

One of those days back in March 2015 we returned to a local Italian place for our third visit.
The first time we'd gone the food was amazing.
The second time was underwhelming.
The third time simply sucked. We won't be going back.

Outback seems to be a consistently good choice.

The first of two remaining local BBQ places has (as I've mentioned in this thread before) simply gone way down hill with regards to their pulled pork quality, and they don't even give you corn mini-muffins anymore. Instead you get a small 1.5" cube of corn bread (likely made in a huge sheet pan, given the pile out of which I saw them dig it.) I haven't even bothered trying anything else from there.

Our go-to quality sushi place is as awesome as ever (we went for Valentine's, and even though we were freezing our balls off in their second floor banquet area due to heavy traffic) we can't wait to go back.

(I'd had more examples mentally listed but they've all been wiped out since I spent the last two hours at a coworker's desk trying to remove malware. Sigh.)

[Merkus]

Our go-to quality sushi place is as awesome as ever (we went for Valentine's, and even though we were freezing our balls off in their second floor banquet area due to heavy traffic) we can't wait to go back.

Point of clarification please. Are you saying your girlfriend has balls or that you consider your balls to be hers and therefore "our balls"?

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Point of clarification please. Are you saying your girlfriend has balls or that you consider your balls to be hers and therefore "our balls"?

deep fried mochi ice cream balls?

[MI Redeux]

For pulled pork, you all are optimizing in a weird way to not follow my linked (elsewhere) recipe on making your own pulled pork in mass amounts of desired. It won't make the greatest of all-time pulled pork, but even the best of the best pulled pork will have minimal gains on the recipe. The take away is that making great pulled pork is easy and unless you have a dire throbbing need for some in your gut when sitting down ordering ribs is the better move. Thanks for subscribing to Better Living Through MIRistry.

[Mileron]

The perils of working in "the big city" and only having 30 minutes for lunch.

The Saladworks on the first floor of my building has become my "emergency lunch" place.
Like if I wake up with a migraine or am running too late to make my own lunch, this is where I'll go.
Thankfully this only occurs once every couple of weeks (or less.)

The cafeteria on the first floor of my building has become my "emergency not-Saladworks" lunch place.
That's because there's this one employee at Saladworks who is a real winner.
I order the "Combo pick two" - half salad and soup - he starts making me a Cabo salad.
I order the "Pick two" and he starts making me a Nicoise salad.
There was a third, but I can't remember and it's not really important.
So if I see him behind the counter, I turn on my heel and go to the cafeteria.
Which is all fine and good, considering for what you spend you get maybe 60-75% of the amount you'd get at an actual restaurant (plus the quality can be hit or miss).


We ordered last Friday from our go-to Chinese take-out place.
The boneless spare ribs were the best out of the lot, and they were lacking. They were properly cooked (crispy and chewy and minimal fat) but had almost no taste.
My roast pork with broccoli didn't taste like much of anything.
M'Lady's House Lo Mein had no vegetables in it at all, where usually it has carrots, onion, and slivers of bok choy.
The Wonton soup however tasted like window cleaner. We tossed it.

[Lithiun]

Late April 2014, after my fiancee got home from a weekend in NYC for a friend's birthday, we decided to go to a different, brand new Red Robin location right near the bus stop.
We both got food poisoning again within the time it took us to drive home and lost a few days' work from it.

Thus far, the worst food poisoning of my life occurred after eating at a local Red Robin.
Never.
Again.

Thinking about it now still makes my stomach clench even though it happened a few years ago.

[Mileron]

We've written off two Chinese takeout places and our primary Chinese buffet due to decreasing quality.

The usual pizza/sandwich place has one more chance to redeem themselves after two consecutive deliveries in one ten day period having a marked difference in quality and quantity. (I got a veggie stromboli that was of a wonderful size, but then days later was 20-25% smaller!)

We've agreed that our local Wawa (convenience store with sandwich/hot food area) is a very last-ditch place to go (like if everything else is closed if m'Lady gets home late and wants something not-in-our-fridge) because again, declining quality. Not to mention ongoing issues with the management and staff there.

I've been to Sunday after-church breakfast several times this year with Mom and Bro. I refuse to eat anything that includes eggs or fried meats at two of these places. One was so bad that I spent the better part of twelve hours in and out of the bathroom.

We've tried a couple new places this year, including a Mongolian Grill (won't touch their sushi ever again, but the rest of the food was fantastic) and a shabu shabu place. Both are worth making return trips.

[Eremius]

Where is karma balancing out for you? You have some seriously bad luck with food service.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Where is karma balancing out for you? You have some seriously bad luck with food service.

My wife and i eat fast food for dinner probably 20 nights out of the month. There are stints where we remove its consumption entirely, but before we can properly meal plan for the next stint before the current is over, we find ourselves stuck in the fast food rotation once again.

Besides the obvious health and cost issues, we narrow down or selections from large availability of variety into a vanishing list of choices by the number of mistakes made by each location.

Granted, we should be thankful that we almost never are made sick by our dinings out of choice, but the number of times we have items left out of our produced and paid for order has just gotten routinely worse as time marches on.

What used to be just one incorrect drink, to a size of fries mistakenly accounted for has gotten to food preference (hold the onions) ignored, and now, more routinely, entire items left out of the bag.

Workers just want to cast us away as quickly as possible. I always ask if specific items are in the bag, am told us, only to find them not there. We visually account for everything on the receipt now, before we drive off.

I used to call when we would get home after making these discoveries. Our name would get taken down, amanager might call and send a gift card, but nothing ever arrives or is honored.

We just order extra food, now, in hopes that if something is forgotten, there might be something else to enjoy. And if there is no mistake, Dad the Disposer will eat the extras.

It is silly, and if i got home an hour earlier, i might still not cook food.

But whether i do or don't, as soon as i can keep my wife as a stay at home mom, the better.

I prefer her cooking over most restaurants, anyway.

[Bonlainy]

Instead of fast food go to Trader Joe's and load up on their frozen or refrigerated meals and dishes, pretty much all of it is really good and a lot healthier than fast food. Probably cheaper in the long run as well.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

That is a great idea, Lain.

I have a picky eater for a wife, but I am the one who pays for our food, so i think 4 days out of the week from TJ shoukd be fair.

Our microwave is broken, though. Guess its just time to pony up.

[Daxil Solshok]

I've been seeing a lot of these free delivery services on facebook lately. At least free for the first few meals. Might be something to check out they seem healthy, and essentially popped right into your mouth.

https://www.facebook.com/sunbasket/?fref=nf

[FilanFyretracker]

Mistakes threshold depends on the place, If its something fancy the threshold is much much lower because for the money of a four star you are not wrong to expect perfection.

On the other hand a fast food place I find them more acceptable. Though I rarely encounter them because I do not really do special orders, I get some people get mad when McD's screws up their custom order but I also get these people are minimum wage paid and when you are at a busy location and just cranked out 120 Big Macs because a few tour buses rolled in and then someone orders Big Mac 121 with no special sauce I can see the kid still being in automatic and throwing the sauce on.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Fwiw, i should note that del taco almost never messes up an order.

Sometimes portions are inconsistent, but at the end of the day, we always get what we ordered.

[Mileron]

Went to a new (to us) Mexican place. Highly recommended by friends who live nearby.
Environment: Quiet, nice decor, clean, music appropriate but muted.
Beverages: Soda in a can, presented with a glass of ice.
Freebies: Two types of corn chips - fine-ground and coarse. Both wonderful, crunchy but not too much, lightly salted and not overdone. Red salsa was too hot for me to reasonably try, but the wife was happy with it. Green salsa had a creamy consistency and was full of flavor.
Appetizers: Chicken taquitos (fantastic, flavorful, not overly spicy, crispy). Empanada de mariscos (crab empanada) and empanada de camaron (shrimp empanada). A little small, but also very tasty. The crab one tasted like eating a Maryland Crab Soup dumpling.
Entrees: Her Burrito Loco was small, 6 inches, and had more lettuce than chicken. Also, it was warm, through and through - the cheese was melted and had started to congeal. My burrito de carnitas consisted of a 4-inch burrito, with small (dime-sized) over-fried bits of pork, and a LOT of cheddar cheese. Also congealed to near solid.

It's not like it was busy - it was a Wednesday night and there were two other tables (six couples total, other than us) - so the food shouldn't have been sitting long under a heat lamp or anything. It should have been instantly fresh.

The failure in the entrees left us feeling very disappointed.

[Mileron]

Went to a new (to us) Americana-style "tavern" bar-restaurant.
(Originally it was built a few years ago to be a Polish restaurant, touted as big-and-special because it had a million-dollar kitchen, but it was open less than a year before folding, then stood vacant for close to a year after that, opened as a tavern under a different name for a month before closing, then was gutted and became this new place not too long ago.)
Environment: Modern wood finish with too-shiny marble floors. Kind of tacky and not "warm" in a cavernous tavern style. Garishly placed large TVs all over for sports.
Beverages: Iced tea (was actually rather good), she had soda
Appetizers: We ordered crab dip (cheesy crab dip with chips) and "Philly cheesesteak pierogies with cheesy fondue".
Both were "out of stock due to a menu rework" so we ended up going with Thai chili chicken fingers, and something with a silly name like tri-dip tricolor chips.
The chicken fingers were dry, and bland, and the Thai chili sauce tasted like the Frank's Sweet Hot Chili Sauce from a bottle.
The tri-dip tricolor chips were red/green/yellow corn chips on a plate with not-home-made guacamole, pico de gallo, and what was supposed to be sour cream. Except, it wasn't sour cream. It was fucking cream cheese. Who the fuck puts cream cheese out with chips as dip? And yes, I mean, straight up fucking cream cheese.

Soup: One of our go-to "this is how you tell if a place is good" tests is the french onion soup. And the french onion soup here was fucking disgusting. It smelled like fucking vomit. Someone doesn't know what cheeses you put on french onion soup, and you definitely do NOT put provolone cheese on french onion soup, because I've done that and that's what you end up with - pukey fucking smelling french onion soup. Not to mention, you don't put the crouton sticking straight up out of the cheese like a fucking cheese covered cock (so that it burns, naturally) and there should also be some broth with the onions and cheese (there wasn't, it was literally just onions and cheese and burnt bread).

Entrees: She ordered the half rack ribs and half rotisserie chicken with fries. I ordered something called a "smothered short rib sandwich".
Come to find out that they were out of stock of the short rib... due to the aforementioned menu change... so I ordered a rather tasty-sounding patty melt.
Come to find out they're out of stock of tuna (and they're right across the street from a fucking Wal-mart, come on, walk across and buy a couple cans, I'd never have known the difference, really, but I do kind of appreciate the honesty) so I ordered a basic "fresh ground angus burger".

Her ribs looked and tasted relatively fantastic.
The half chicken though, was fucking tiny. I'm talking cornish-hen sized. She made a fist, and the chicken was smaller.
The cornbread that came with her chicken was bigger than the chicken. It wasn't very corn-bready, but it was alright, I guess.

My burger came out and it was assembled... with no vegetables inside.
AND the store-bought bun (I'm talking the kind you find at someone's 4th of July backyard barbecue) had the fucking tavern's name stamped/branded into the top of the bun.
So as I'm peeling the cheese off the meat and putting in the badly cut tomatoes (they didn't cut out the stem section, wtf) my wife's looking at me like I've lost it. I ignored the wilted lettuce.
Oh, and my "medium" burger patty was markedly under medium, and definitely not a fresh fucking ground burger - it was a frozen boxed patty and tasted like it.

Oh yeah and our fries? Crinkle fries from a bag. Not hand cut, like the menu described.

We didn't order dessert, but as "consolation" for our "understanding with regards to the menu changing" the waitress "gave" us some danishes from their "daily bakery". Wife ended up trying to eat one for dessert later that night but told me it had to have been several days old, based on how hard it was.

Thankfully the meal was "free"... the wife's sister gave us a gift certificate for Christmas, but it feels like a waste.

When driving home, my wife asked me why I was shaking my head and cackling.

I told her how, in my head, I was having Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares-style conversations in my head about how you "don't advertise on the menu that your burger is fresh ground angus then feed me a fucking frozen burger patty let alone on a store-bought roll that has the audacity to brand the fucking restaurant name into the top next to crinkle cut fries from a bag with wilted lettuce" etc etc... I couldn't stop laughing.

TL;DR: Never going back there again.

[Mileron]

Two-fer special here.

Went to new-to-us Asian Fusion place.
Menu consists of sushi, dumplings, dim sum, pho, some generic "Chinese-style" entrees, pad thai...

Environment: Dark wood. That's all I remember because they had NO lights on in the place. At 4pm on a Friday. Even though the sun was shining directly into the front of the restaurant. They sat us in the only table that received direct sunlight (which made it hot as fuck). We were the only customers there the whole time. The tables were super-cramped.
Beverages: We stuck with water. It tasted dirty. And that was after asking for clean refills, to which we got rolled eyes.
Appetizer: Got a "dim sum sampler" which came with two pork soup dumplings, two pork shu mai, and two crystal shrimp dumplings. Having been to two different dim sum restaurants in Philly's Chinatown, these were definitely sub-par. The pork soup dumplings were dry, the shu mai were overfried, and the shrimp dumplings' wrappers were over thick and grossly gummy.
Entree: By this point we'd decided we weren't going to stay, so we just ordered a single roll each.
She got some kind of "sashimi roll" which basically consisted of tuna, yellowtail, and whitefish, rolled, with more on top. It was decent but masked by some kind of sauce. Over-sauced, imo. She really liked it.
I got a "bonzai tree roll". It was... fantastic. In a larger soup bowl came out what was left of a cucumber (the outside solid parts having been used to make up the rolls), standing like two trees in the middle. Around the outside "wide brim" of the bowl were 7 rolls. Each was tuna, yellowtail, and salmon, wrapped with super-super-thin sliced cucumber "paper". It was topped only with some red roe and a few flecks of ponzu sauce. It was really damn good. It was like biting into a summer seafood fest. The fresh crispness of the cucumber, with the slight pungent twang of the ponzu and the definitely quality fish... mmm. My mouth is watering just remembering it.
Service: However, the service left a lot to be desired. We told her when we sat down and she asked what we wanted - before even having menus - that it was our first time in the restaurant*. As mentioned, we were the only customers in the ~45 minutes we were present. We got guff for asking for clean glasses or water. We received no water refills. No soy sauce refill (which we'd asked for, when she brought a nearly empty soy "crock" to the table). She never checked on us until she unceremoniously dropped off the bill. It took almost as long to receive my wife's card back as it did to get the dumplings - which we received -after- the sushi.

Verdict: We'll probably go back for rolls, or rolls-takeout, but nothing else. And probably order soda.

So we walked across the vestibule that they shared with a Thai place next door because we were still farking hungry. The gal behind the register stand visibly lit up and welcomed us. A man who ended up being our waiter came out and asked if we'd been there before (we hadn't). He stayed with us for an extra 2-3 minutes at our table pointing out things on the menu.

Environment: Brightly lit (even with the setting sun on the other side of the restaurant) and they sat us out of its rays so that I could see my wife's face without being blinded (except by her beauty, of course). Nicely spaced tables. Plenty of room for people to come-and-go without feeling cramped. (Which turned out to be a good thing**).
Beverages: We both received clean-tasting water but also ordered Thai iced tea without bubbles. (We hate tapioca bubbles). Thai iced tea was on point - we got to mix it ourselves if we so chose.
Appetizers: We ended up not getting appetizers because we considered the sushi we'd just had to be so.
Entrees: She ordered a vermicelli noodle dish with beef that came out and looked very good but very, very dry. She ended up requesting a side of green curry sauce (which tasted wonderful to me, even though I can't eat much at all) and even though the waiter seemed a little taken aback that she'd requested it, he brought it out for her.
I ordered Thai bbq chicken, which was very moist and quite tasty. Not my usual Thai pick but I wanted something simple.
Service: In addition to the waiter's obvious pleasure in being of assistance to us in pointing a few things out on the menu initially, both the hostess from the front checked up on us as did another seemingly random woman from the back (owner or his wife perhaps?) and we were never wanting for water.

Verdict: Definitely going back

* Okay so, in my opinion, if someone walks into your restaurant and says "I"ve never been here before" I'll find it to be a great bit of service if they spend an extra minute or two with me to go over their menu. For example, I took a coworker to a sushi place once who would not have tried something based on my description, until she verified it with our server, who described it better, and she ended up loving it. And she learned more about sushi than I thought to mention at one time. Same thing with my brother. Taking him to his first sushi place, he garnered a better idea of what he might like from the server's descriptions and reactions to his questions than my own (possibly biased) statements about what sushi might be.

** As we were eating in the second location, it started getting super, super busy, to the point that when we left, most of the tables were full, and there were over a dozen people standing and waiting to be seated. The other place was still empty.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

This reminds me of a story from my boss the other night.

He and his wife were headed up to a wedding something-to-do about 40 miles away, one way. Knowing there was no food provided, they stopped at a McDonald's.

He orders a quarter pounder meal, she orders a fillet o' fish meal.

He scarfs his down in the parking lot quick so he can do the driving, she's chatting about her day to him. Once they get on the road, she opens up hers a few miles down.

Huh, that's funny. A fillet o' fish doesn't usually come with a sesame seed bun.

Or pickles.

Or cheese.

Or lettuce.

Or special sauce.

Sure enough, in the middle of that thing that LOOKED like a big mac was a fillet o'fish patty.

No middle bun, just a tiny little fish patty, about half the size of the bun, covered in big mac toppings.

She ate it anyway.

She apparently later said she didn't feel all that well.

As someone who worked at a McDonald's at the ripe old age of 15, I told him he should have taken a picture, phoned back, and gotten some nice free food coupons.

His response?

"Why would I want more food from a place that shoved a fish patty into a big mac setup?"

Point taken.

[Mileron]

Positive mistake:

We found an all-you-can-eat sushi place (check what you want off on a paper and they bring it to you).

The service is kind of lacking - as soon as the plate is empty, someone's at your table pulling it out from under the chopsticks still holding the roll, which then drips on the table - but the food's quite good.

Last night we stopped in and got our usual stuff.

And then the server drops off something for us that we didn't recognize, wasn't on our order slips (I've been taking pictures out of habit, because we forget what we order sometimes), but she said it was ours so we ate it.

It was basically fried scallions wrapped in a strip of fish with a little bit of sauce. It was amazing.

Then with our rolls, she dropped off what was basically a fried breaded chicken breast, pounded super-thin. Also not something we ordered. But it was super-tasty.

On the way home, we decided that with those two plates, we got someone else's selections. Oops.