When you are dining out, how high is your threshold for sending a meal back if it is obviously flawed or not to your liking? Does it increase when you are out with a group versus with one person? Your thoughts.
The main factor for me is:
How badly was it screwed up? Raw or overcooked will always go back. Giving me something I didn’t order → back it goes.
I’ve been known to drive back to McDonald’s after they screw up a simple “no onions” request on a 1/4 pounder in the drive thru.
I don’t think I’ve ever sent a meal back in my life. Never really had anything that was dramatically undercooked or gross. Occasionally had a steak that was overcooked, but only at a steakhouse. (Why is it that a steakhouse can never get temps right, but a normal restaurant can do it with no issue???)
Not often, but 3 justifiable reasons:
1)not the right thing or specific request wasn’t followed (ie no anchovies)
2)meat is off by > 1 level of done-ness in either direction
3)foreign object in food (unless it’s gold or similar, then order seconds)
+1. Remarkably I rarely have to send anything back. By far most places pretty much get it right the first time.
Have you never ordered Tuna which is supposed to seared and served rare, only to have it come out with barely a line of pink in the middle?
I have a range of tolerance on steak. But not on tuna. And when that happens, back it goes.
I have had good luck with tuna and order it seared very frequently. Waiters will sometimes clarify that it is barely cooked, and I express my delight. Maybe they are scribbling “Make it raw!” on my ticket?
I have seen my wife get tuna that way, but she likes fish cooked a lot more than I do. Come to think of it I have seen her squirm when some salmon came out that was pretty rare. No problem for me!
I think I am either just less picky, like things cooked a lot less, or just really lucky!
I too rarely send stuff back unless there is a foreign object in it. I’ve had risotto that was too al dente for me and I asked the chef to cook it longer.
Very rarely send anything back.
I can only remember two times in my recent history, both times it was an overcooked steak.
Once mine, once my wifes.
Did find a quarter-size piece of plastic in some nachos at a sleazy TexMex restaurant recently, but that’s another story…
Pretty rarely will it go back. Generally, I only complain if they got a special request wrong, e.g., bacon on a dish (I don’t eat swine).
If something is inedible it might go back (this has only happened a couple of times) or well undercooked, but if I just don’t like the flavors much, I won’t complain.
I’m far less likely to send something back if I’m in a group.
Oddly, I thought about sending food back the other night. I was at one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago (Avec) and the food was really off but not inedible (one dish was underseasoned, another overseasoned). Might drop the manager a note, but nothing went back.
Only twice. One was a piece of “pork belly” that was more like a chunk of uncooked salt pork. The other was at a Mexican restaurant in San Diego where a roach ran out from under the plate and across the top. They brought me out another plate of the chili verde that looked pretty much like the first. I have been fortunate with tuna cooked correctly, etc. I have probably rarely eaten some stuff that I could/should have sent back.
Though I do it only rarely, I have no problems sending things back. Mostly if its overcooked or waaay undercooked. I’ve been known to ask a server (on more than one occasion) “Would YOU eat that?” Usually that takes care of it and away it goes.
I will send back when dining solo with one other or in a group if…
hot food arrives cold.
request to medium rare is well done- medium or rare is OK not sent back
hair bugs or something that doesn’t belong on the plate is present
I sent back a dish last week at grill room at Gramercy Tavern.
Advertised as Smoked Pork Shoulder Sweet Potatoes, Salsify and Bacon Broth. Pork was dry not smoked overcooked and had no cracklin or any intramuscular fat. Bacon broth was fine but there was a bunch of raw savoy cabbage chunks floating in the broth.
You stayed and ate more food there??? ![[shock.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0b1dcf699ec319f43254f92e3f145786dcd93904.gif "shock"){kind=small}
The only way to get the kitchen to work right is to send it back. I once had a piece of salmon that was oversalted, and I mean oversalted. The fish was replaced. On the way out, the chef approached me and said that he tasted the fish when it was sent back and yes, it was oversalted. Nice of him to admit it.
I never keep something that is served incorrectly. It’s not my fault, and I shouldn’t have to accept it.
I once had a roach walk past my beer at Saska’s in North Mission. I bought him a drink so he’d go away.
Read “Kitchen Confidential.” Generally I will not send anything back because you never know what will be added to your food when it returns. Occasionally when something completely wrong is delivered by mistake, but that’s about it. I did, however, return the yellow Jello that they gave me with my hospital “clear liquid” dinner last month with the following message, “I dare the guy who runs the kitchen to eat this. I have had no food or water for 4 days so you can imagine how horrible this must be for me to refuse to eat it.”
Bruce Hubbard wrote:
The other was at a Mexican restaurant in San Diego where a roach ran out from under the plate and across the top. They brought me out another plate of the chili verde that looked pretty much like the first.
You stayed and ate more food there???
The roach was alive. . .at least he (she?) was healthy.
I have no problem sending food back if it is not right. Biggest problem is when it is cold
I don’t remember ever sending a meal back. We generally eat meals at restaurants where we know the chef.