Three restaurant stories, one from a friend, two from me:
A friend from college and the Army was eating at the officer's club at Illesheim, FRG. He ordered the fried perch. After a little while his meal was served... which was flat and had both eyes on the same side of the head. He got the waitress's attention and said, "Excuse me, I ordered the perch." Puzzled, the waitress said, "Yes, that's the perch." Puzzled, my friend said, "No, that's flounder." The waitress then asked him, "Would you like me to ask the cook?" He replied, "Yes, that would be very good." A few moments later, the waitress returned with the flounder and said, "The cook says that's perch." My friend face palms just as the club manager comes by. The manager asks, "Well sir, how's your flounder?" My friend replies, "That's not flounder, it's perch." The club manager, confused, says, "Oh no sir, that's definitely flounder!" My friend then replies, "Then you'd better have a talk with the cook, because he says it's perch." The club manager face palms and apologizes. Apparently, it was a new (and not very well educated, ichthyologically) cook.
This same friend and I were eating dinner at the Ft. Knox officer's club. He orders fried perch (a glutton for punishment). After rather a long wait, his meal comes out. He immediately noted something odd about the fish. He asks me, "Do you see anything wrong with my perch?" I reply, "Other than it looking like it came out of the cooling pond at 3 Mile Island, it appears to be completely devoid of breading." Yes, they fried his perch without breading it in any way, which was certainly new to me. When we went to pay the bill, the female German dependent who was the head waitress asked us how our meals were. My friend, none too happy, told her. The head waitress, who looked like an extra from "Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS", seemed to take exception to his failure to reply, "Sehr gut, frau Hauptscharfuehrerin!"
After a successful security inspection by the Defense Investigative Service, as was my custom, I took the rest of the day off. There used to be a great restaurant in Berea, Ohio located near the library and police station. They had the best prime rib I've ever had, ANYWHERE. It was somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00pm. There was nobody at the entrance, but their posted hours said that they were open. I stood around for a while before a waitress came and said, "We're not open yet!" I replied, "The sign behind you says you are." She did a Pythonesque double-take and replied, "Oh, I guess we are!" She seated me at a table, and things immediately started to go off the rails. I waited, and waited, and waited, before somebody came to take my order. I ordered a glass of rose and my meal. I waited, and waited, and waited before a round robin of random waiters and waitresses brought me portions of my meal at odd intervals. When my "rose" came, I tasted it and immediately knew it wasn't rose, but something more akin to cough syrup. I managed to waylay a waitress to tell her that I'd ordered rose and gotten something VERY different. She asked, "Would you like me to check on that?" I replied, "That would be very good." Meanwhile various portions of my meal continued to come in a somewhat random order, and of a decidedly diminished quality. When the waitress returned, she informed me cheerfully, "That's sangria. It's the only red wine we had!", as though it was only the most natural thing in the world to expect the customer to drink anything vaguely "red" that they had lying around. Admittedly, at the time I did perceive that Clevelanders were willing to accept a level of customer service that would, in my hometown of Chicago, have provoked at best a torrent of obscene abuse, and at worst serious violence. Instead of a well earned meal, I'd gotten a "Monty Python" skit, and was none too happy about it. I debated not leaving a tip at all, but I was afraid that they'd think that I NEVER tipped, which was quite the opposite of the truth. At the same time, I certainly wasn't going to give them a REAL tip for horrendous service and equally bad food. I left them something on the order of $0.07 and never returned. Shortly thereafter the restaurant closed and is now the dining room of a nursing home.
What the hell, one more:
A co-worker and shooting buddy of mine and I were coming back from the range. He wanted to go to Olive Garden or some place for dinner. I'd driven past a place on Great Northern Boulevard in North Olmsted called Frankie's a bunch of times and suggested that we try them. The first thing they did was get my friend's order completely wrong. Then I got the lasagna that I'd ordered. If you were going to cheap out on lasagna, what would you scrimp on? Logic says "meat". Wrong. This "lasagna" was almost totally devoid of PASTA. It was quite literally "lasagna SOUP". It was bar none, the WORST Italian food I've EVER head. The PX snackbar in Seoul had better Italian food. By this time, my friend, ordinarily a placid and amiable type (ex-Canadian), was seething with rage. He paid his bill, left something less than $0.10 as a tip and stormed out. I paid my bill and left a similar tip. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I saw the waiter throw a (small) handful of change into the street. I've never eaten at Frankie's again, and never will. Unfortunately, they recently took over a marvelous little Italian restaurant called Bovalinos, where I will also no longer be eating due to their association with Frankie's.
