• saltesc@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I dunno. Todd could be exaggerating…

      reads reaponse

      Yep, Todd probably was entertained.

  • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Could easily make it part of the experience.

    “Here’s your food, I hope you fucking choke on it you cunt”

    I’d go 👍

    • moriquende@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I regularly go to a Vietnamese restaurant with work colleagues not only because the food is great, but the entertainment value of the owner berating you for not eating the expensive vegetables or calling you an idiot because you ordered the small drink despite the small price difference is just hilarious. You can tell he isn’t faking it too, the guy really just can’t keep it in. We love it, but I’ve met plenty of people who vowed to never return after the experience.

    • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      This is apparently already a thing. I’ve never been to one but I’ve heard about novelty restaurants where the wait staff demean you while serving you

      • Hikermick@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Haha my city had a Dick’s Last Resort, it was fun! My favorite story about that place is when my boss and his wife (unknowingly) went there with another couple. They were VERY proper Brits (in the US) in their mid 70’s. The husband of the other couple wanted to know if there were seeds on the sandwich bun . The waitress asked if he was a some kind of F●●●ing expert. The guy goes on to explain he has diverticulitis without batting an eye

    • Pringles@lemm.ee
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      16 days ago

      That reminds me of the Amadeus bar in Leuven. The owner was notoriously grumpy and curt. I sometimes went there as a student to play board games. One time he seemed very interested as we were playing, as he was looking at the board. We asked him if he wanted to play with and he just went “No, I’m wondering how much longer this game will take so I can kick you out and close.”

      Not sure if it’s still open.

    • Dvixen@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      There was a place like this in Vancouver, no idea if it is still there.

      The Elbow Room. “Food and service is our name, abuse is our game!”

      One of our group asked for water, he got told his legs worked and he could get it himself. The food was amazing, although we did get told off for not finishing our plate.

  • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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    16 days ago

    One of the oldest Chinese restaurants in the UK crams all foreigners upstairs to share tables with random strangers, where cutlery is thrown at you carelessly and the waiter tuts if you don’t give them a string of numbers as an order. If you go there with a chinese national you’re somewhat protected from the abuse, but they still glare at you.

    Anyway the food is divine and they don’t overcharge, and it’s one of my favourite places to eat.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    A few years ago I was in a local place where the food and service were both entertainingly bad. For decades it had been a wonderful little Greek restaurant, until the couple who ran it moved to Greece for a well-deserved retirement and their son took it over. The son remodeled and reopened it as a combination Greek/sushi restaurant and sports bar, hanging five or six large screens from the ceiling. In a place slightly larger than my living room.

    I was eager to try the sushi. “There’s no sushi tonight. Dennis isn’t here.” Oh, alright, when is Dennis here? “We don’t know. Maybe Wednesday. He never says.” Well alrighty then. Dennis is livin’ the dream I guess. So I ordered spanakopita, another favorite. What I received was a brown chunk resembling a giant Totino’s pizza roll, on an otherwise bare plate, where it dryly slid around all by itself. It looked and tasted like a Costco product they took out of a package and over-microwaved. The driest, crispest spanakopita I’ve ever had.

    I took a chance and ordered the baklava. It tasted okay but instead of being flaky it was actually soggy - not as in dripping with butter and honey, I mean watery. The only watery baklava I’ve ever had, and also the only serving of baklava in my life that I did not finish.

    A guy dining at the next table asked the waitress for the check, but said he would like a cup of coffee first. I was directly facing the clock and happened to notice it was exactly 7pm. At 7:10 she returned with their check and said, “We’re out of coffee.” Wat? They’re open for another 3 hours and they’re out of coffee LOL? And it took a full 10 minutes to return with this info. It’s a tiny place, I could see the coffee machine like 12 ft away. And there are like six customers. Seemed like a dismally bad restaurant in a sitcom, reminding me somewhat of the diner in The Dark Backward.

    There were a couple other things but that’s all I can remember. Anyway, this new version of the place didn’t last long and it’s permanently closed now.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      14 days ago

      Baklava shouldn’t be dripping with grease, I’ve seen this too many times and it makes me vom

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    15 days ago

    If the food was great, shouldn’t that fact alone give at least one more star? Why are people so fixated with 1 and 5 stars? Don’t they realize there are three other possibilities to rank? I’m upset.

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      I actually don’t pay much attention to 1 or 5 star reviews. It filters out a lot of useless reviews.

      If I do look at one stars, I’m usually just looking for trends of people having specific issues. Or if the overall rank is being dragged down by stupidity. For example I saw like five people leave one star reviews in one weekend because the restaurant was closed due to a water main break…

    • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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      15 days ago

      The food was good, but they were out of many options, and the service was bad. The owner then responds, telling them to kill themselves. I’d say the one star is for the food. Otherwise, they’d get a zero.

      • Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        15 days ago

        I would like to point out that a one star is technically 0. A five star review on Google is a rating of zero to 4. As a 1 star is automatically a given, one can assess an accurate rating by subtracting 1 from all ratings and understanding it’s a four star system in disguise.

        Google says this restaurant is a 3.2 rating? That’s a 2.2 out of 4 possible stars. The ratio is corrected. Bringing what google says is a 64% down to the actually 55%. This is the manipulation that an automatic 1 star creates.

  • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    And they go as far as to tell him to Kys… wow. I bet That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

    • Furbag@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I’ve noticed in most cases on Kitchen Nightmares that either the food is good but one or two problem employees bring the entire restaurant down, or the food sucks ass but the service staff are generally sympathetic and will not mince words about the bad quality. In almost every case, management is in denial despite asking for help.

      I wonder if they stage it that way on purpose, because I can’t imagine getting lucky enough to have Gordon fucking Ramsay come to save my failing restaurant and having my ego stand in the way at the moment of truth.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        It was often owner/managers that couldn’t stay the f out of the way of employees who knew what they were doing, didn’t have a menu that was cost- and manpower-effective, or didn’t get rid of bad employees.

        The show was obviously edited for effect, but IIRC the businesses were legit. They were usually on their last financial “leg”, and owners would give up.

        Virtually all the failures otherwise were because the owner or management refused to follow Ramsay’s advice.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        Most of the failure seems to be having a massive menu that forces over use of frozen foods and massive food waste. Combined with management having no standards, so mediocre food gets worse and service becomes awful, which drives away customers.

        Most every rescue is giving them a menu of 5-10 items and establishing basic standards. If kitchen nightmares chose restaurants that weren’t already completely out of runway they would be far more successful. There were way to many places that didn’t have the money to operate for 6 months to even have a chance of turning around.

  • FauxPseudo @lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    When I lived in the Tidewater area I practically made a hobby of going to places with okay food and entertainingly bad service. We were always on a mission to find the worst food. We found it at one of the “Steak Seafood Pasta” places on the Blvd. Everything came from a microwave and the freezer section of some supply company.