I really enjoy eating out. It’s a thrill to find a new restaurant or experience a new dish at an establishment already known as one of my favorites. While the food is a huge part of the dining out experience, service plays a large role as well. I think it should be mandatory for everyone at some point in his/her life to work in the food industry as a bartender or wait staff. You learn a lot about people and how to appreciate someone who works in that role. I’ve done it. I have waited on my fair share of tables so I am pretty easy to keep happy, but my goodness - there are some really crappy wait staff out there.
Last week I went to eat lunch at Montgomery Grill in Portsmouth. Usually the staff there is pretty good but on this particular day – SUCKO! The hostess was a complete flake and I am certain she doesn’t have the brain capacity to do anything other than a job where she is trained to repetitiously do the same thing. (Heaven forbid have her think about flow and table turnover.) Once seated one of my dining pals mentioned that the napkins were wet and she gave her this snotty look and declared that they were cold, not wet. (Uh, nope – they were wet.) Not sure how they divide the service sections there but it took about ten minutes for us to wrangle in a waiter. To his credit he did a decent job of making up for the terrible service to that point but made our quick lunch out not so quick.
Good service can make average food better but average food crippled with poor service is just a disaster.
Now on the flip side I have a buddy who adores Bardo and endures the less than stellar staff because the food is just that good. Word on the street though is that Bardo has wised up and have done a staff overhaul, anyone out there been and notice a difference?
