Last night I get this wicked craving for some Chinese food. I'm not in the mood to cook but certainly want a good meal. I've also decided that I'll try a new restaurant for a change. So off I go to grab the phone book. Our version of the Yellow Pages is about 1/2 a foot thick so you can just imagine the restaurant section.
About 10 pages in I stumble upon one place that seems to have a fairly good deal. It's a combo dinner for 2. 5 Items plus a little munchie plate so were good to go, I'm calling them up and placing my order. An hour and a 1/2 later our food arrives but we decide to wait a little longer before eating. I suppose another hour passes and we dig in.
I think I've made a terrible mistake people .. The dry ribs are enormous clumps of fat in batter, the Special Foo Young is nothing more than Egg Foo Young in a horrible disguise and the Szechewan Beef (my favourite dish) looks like earrings I wore back in the 80's.. Now here's where I must be honest, were a little buzzed so you know... it does look strange BUT .. we have the munchies dag nabbit and were going to chance it anyway!
I'm about 3 bites in to my food and realize that eating a shoe out of the gutter just might taste better than this monstrosity that entered my home in it's little plastic containers... which really, should have been my first clue. We discard our "dinner" and choose pepperoni sticks as our NEW main course.
This morning my partner and I agree that the food outright sucked and were going to call the restaurant up and let them know we were not happy with the order. What follows is a re-enactment of the phone call I had with the hostess that answered the phone ..
Her: good morning
Me: Hi there, we ordered some food from you last night and would like to discuss our order.
Her: what is the problem?
Me: Well we ordered the combo dinner for 2 and to be honest, it was not at all what we expected.
Her: Are you a new customer?
Me: Yes this is our first order with you but why does that matter?
Her: Well, if you've never been here before you may not know how we make our food. It's very different from alot of other restaurants in the city.
Me: Does that mean everyone else uses meat except your establishment?
Her: We have over 100 customers a day you know ..
Me: So .. none of them got meat either then?
Her: You have no meat? Where did your meat go?
Me: Ok, one of the things I ordered was Szechewan Beef, but there was no beef in it, it was all batter with nothing inside.
Her: Well, the beef shrinks when we cook it.
Me: What do you cook it in, acid?
Her: Your new, you don't know how we cook it.
Me: Well, I know that everyone else cooks it with beef, hence the name Szechewan Beef. I also know that the dish you sent me, had none. It was not shrunken beef, it was invisible beef ...
Her: Ummmm
Me: We also ordered some Special Foo Young, to my understanding it's special because you add more to it. BBQ pork, chicken, shrimp, peas and onions. What you made for us was eggs with bean sprouts.
Her: The shrimp is just small and we only use a few pieces.
Me: So your telling me that I paid an extra 9.50 to get something missing most of the ingredients and the reason I cannot taste or see the shrimp is because it's small?
Her: yes, the shrimp is small, so it's harder to taste.
Me: Whether shrimp is small or not you can taste it .. it's SHRIMP!!
Her: Hold on I'll go ask the cook how many pieces of shrimp he put in your dish.
Me: The cook knows which foo young was mine from last night????
Her: I go to other places and the food is gross, I just don't go back. Make a cross on our ad and just don't order from us anymore.
Me: So I'm getting no compensation for this meal is what your telling me?
Her: If you were not a new customer, you would have known how we cook our food.
Me: I would never become a customer after such sh#tty service and excuse making.
Her: Ok, my phone is ringing.
Me: Wonderful .. let's hope they don't order anything with shrimp or beef in it.
Her: Ok, thank you, call again!
So there you have it, $40.00 dollars and a minor meltdown later my Szechewan fiasco comes to and end.. I'm still hungry, still quite irritated and the only thing in my house right now is a box of pizza pops because I said screw it to shopping today and dealing with any form of customer service...
I think I just may need another drink!
7 comments:
bad food - good post
I guess you might not want to reveal the place on your blog but you should write them up on those restaurant online guide.
Uh you know about the online restaurant guides?? I'm sure they cover most major cities.
thanks for taking one for the blogosphere
Bad Chinese is the worst!! We have only one decent restaurant and they are rude and charge a fortune, but I cower to them because I am addicted to Chinese.
P.S. The layout of the blog looks great!
Just wanted to say thanks for stopping by my blog! Happy Friday!
BTW I would have been furious at that restaurant and probably would have marched myself down to complain in person :)
haha So sorry about that. It's awful eating out and finding the food to be yucky. I have had that once with cold dim sum and it sucked big time. I am now married to a Chinese and he cooks well. If you ever come to Canada I will cook you a fab meal!!
You handled the situation well. She wasn't able to wiggle away from the point. But, wow!. $40 bucks.
Positive side? It gave you a good story to post. And you told it well.
I hate bad chinese food. We've lived in our house in the burbs over 3 years and could not find good chinese food. We moved from Chicago, so we were very, very spoiled. 3 years of bad chinese food. Finally about 6 months ago a new place opened close to home.
She must get a lot of those calls if she tells people to cross out her ad in the phone book.
HILARIOUS. I've had this same thing happen to me, basically... I've since learned shitty Chinese food places do not care about the customer, at all, which sort of defeats the purpose of complaining. They're all about quantity of customer over quality, and apparently they can afford to do it that way. Sucks, but all we can do is find a good one and stick to it!
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