How to Send Food Back In a Restaurant
Why is it so difficult for the majority of people to let their waiter know that they are less than satisfied with what’s on their plate?! Its seems that the dining public has such a fear of letting the restaurant know that they were not satisfied with an aspect of their dining experience, that they would rather sit quietly through the meal than speak up. This often results in the diner going away feeling disappointed and unsatisfied, and often bad mouthing the restaurant.
Most restaurant owners want to know if you have an issue with the food or service so that they can improve it, as reputation is everything to them. They will often look at replacing the dish, and sometimes even chuck freebies in to make up for your misfortune. A friend of mine recently ate at a local restaurant that has a rather good reputation, however somehow this particular dish was not best cooked. My friend very politely sent it back and got a free drink, along with an improved dish in return. The staff where very friendly and apologetic about the whole situation and my friend left the restaurant with a positive outlook about eating there again.
Now I know not all restaurant staff will be this helpful, but unless you give them a chance to fix your issue you cannot truly be aware of whether the restaurant you have dined at was really that bad. A few various scenarios where the problem would lie with the restaurant includes: when your meal is the wrong temperature, stale, has a foreign object (a hair or something similar) in it, or is not what you ordered. In this case the fault lies purely with the restaurant, which means that you are entirely within your rights to send your order back (that is to say, you shouldn’t receive any complaints or trouble from your waiter).
If any of the above problems arise whilst dining you should politely request a replacement, and make sure that you are specific about what you would like to be changed. This means you should know whether you want the meal to be fixed, or cooked entirely from scratch. Another few tips to remember are -
•Be Light-hearted and smile, smiling cures everything. A kitchen is busy and people make mistakes.
•Never demand a server to work for you. Remember, they are handling your food.
•Unless they are having a bad day, most servers will not care if you send back food. As long as you’re not rude and ask politely, they should be happy to help.
•Your Server is not 100% to blame - if there is something wrong with your food, remember you are tipping on service.
