RestaurRANT WEAK!!!

           So last couple of weeks here in San Diego have been what my wife and I wait for every year…RESTAURANT WEEK!!! It’s the most wonderful time of the year far la la la la!!!! It’s the time of year where regular Joes or Rudy’s in my case, can go to some of the best eateries in town and get an amazing 3 and sometimes four course meal for prices between 20, 30, and 40 bucks. That may be per person but you get an appetizer, entrée, and a dessert for the price. Trust me it’s worth it, as some places a steak alone can be about 50 bucks. So there are 2, maybe 3 reasons that we hop on this.

Reason 1. We love to dress up and act classy-fied with friends.

Reason 2. We are “almost foodies” and a lot of these places have new things that you can’t get at Olive Garden.

Reason 3. The PRICE!!! Not that we can’t go to these places any other time, but when the price is right….

That being said, some of these places can try and treat you as though you are only allowed in there because of this fact.  What I am about to tell you is about one of those incidents I recently had with my wife and a friend of ours.

Last Friday evening the 3 of us went to a Restaurant in the Del Mar area called Jake’s. From everything I heard they were supposed to be a very nice high-end place that serves beautiful seaside views with great food and a friendly staff… That’s what I heard. What I got was almost the exact opposite. While the view was nice (or would have been during the day) everything else was shit. My wife and our friend Udoka are both beautiful Black women, this is said for a reason. When we were being seated the hostess that walked us made a comment that caught all three of us off guard.  She made a comment on the ladies’ hair. No, it wasn’t the comment that stirred us, it was the tone in which it was said. There was an air of…let’s just say PURPLE. What I mean is this, the hostess said “WOW, you two have nice hair”, but her tone was more like…

Yeah, it sounded just like that. Now I’ve never been one to play the race card, at least not in a serious way, so for me to actually play it based on the TONE of someone’s voice should tell you something. We thought we might have been overreacting so we shrugged it off and went to our table. Like I said the table might have been great during the day, we were at a window table looking out at the beach…but it was night….that means it was dark…pitch black in fact. Basically it was like I was staring out into nothing, not the restaurants fault at all, but it did add to my disappointment and fuck it I’m going to blame them for the hell of it on that one. When you hear about the rest of the evening you’ll know why I am just blaming everything on them. After a few minutes our waiter kind of snuck up on us and scared us by yelling “HELLO!!!” at our table. Both of my dinner guests as well as myself were jarred by the loudness of his voice. He asked us if we wanted any beverages and then took off to get them. When he returned, and we had had some time to look over our menus…scratch that…our “restaurant week” menus, which only show the items that are special for the week, he TOLD “asked” us what we wanted. It went something like this… (all caps are the waiter) “LET ME GUESS (ALSO THE CAPS ARE BECAUSE HE’S LOUD AS HELL) YOU WANT THE CRABCAKE, THE SURF & TURF, AND THE HULA PIE, RIGHT?” Now here is where I take issue with him. I’m all for trying to be insightful but 2 things here. For 1 his tone was condescending, and second we only had the special menu so of all the items there, of course those where gonna picked. We all had a few things we wanted to change with each order and when we said as much he rolled his eyes and said “WHAT ARE THEY and WELL, WHAT DO YOU LIKE. All in a very “how dare you?!” tone of voice.

After begrudgingly taking our orders he left us with some bread hunks and butter. No sooner had we finished taking our first bite of the bread, our waiter was clearing the table for our appetizer. I pretty much had to steal the butter back because I still had bread and more importantly I had a steak coming…butter was necessary.  Especially if your food has no other flavor. Here I was in a swanky place paying 30 bucks for this meal and they brought me flavorless food. Let me explain to you the food they served US.

APETIZER: Crab Cake , this was supposed to be their signature appetizer…they should have left it anonymous. It was made with stringy crab and had the texture of fried baby food. The flavor was almost non-existent , and from my few years in culinary school, the portion was less than appetizer size.

Entrée’: A small flavorless steak “cooked to order” with a shrimp (that was cooked nicely but still very bland) and some lightly seared sea scallops. Again, it seemed as though these “chef’s” in the back have no idea about seasoning techniques. I understand that they may have wanted the food to taste fresh and not be over powered, but my steak needed to be heavily salted and my shrimp tasted like it had been frozen and thawed a few times over. The scallop, to me had no taste what so ever, but like the shrimp was actually cooked quite nicely. So I guess it wasn’t all bad….

Dessert: I ordered a peanut butter tort that was the best thing I had all night. Mind you I didn’t say it was the best thing I ever ate, but it had the most flavor so I ate most of it. My only issues was that the peanut butter was a bit over powering and the chocolate was extremely bitter. It’s like it had directions to where it was going but it seemed to get lost along the way.

Speaking of dessert, before during and after each of the 3 meals our server kind of….pushed us through the meals, just not in the normal “let’s make your wait time a little less” kind of way. It was the kind of way that made us feel extremely uncomfortable. As soon as we would be finished with one portion of the meal our next was ready and it seemed almost waiting for us to serve. Now sometimes this is cool, but when your food is just kind of tossed on the table and you don’t have any time to let the food rest because they are waiting impatiently for you to finish your plate, it’s not. During dessert, let me rephrase that at the start of dessert our waiter placed our check on the table with his best fake smile and said that we can “go ahead and take care of that whenever”….ok so we never asked for the check, and “whenever” turned into almost a “hurry up and pay so we can get you out” because every 5 minutes or so either our waiter or someone else would come by the table and ask if we had paid it. Our dinner companion Udoka was so upset that she spoke to the manager after our meal and also had an email correspondence with him. Here is that correspondence.

From Udoka to the Manager:

Hi Perry

Thanks again for taking the time to listen during our discussion regarding my and my dining companions' sub-par dinner experience on Friday.  As we were discussing, from the moment we were seated, our server (Greg) seemed to be bothered at our presence. When he arrived at the table to greet us, instead of asking if we dined here before and offering us a menu, he stated something to the effect of he was sure that we had looked at the Restaurant Week menu prior to coming in and would be ordering from that - which normally would seem like an innocuous inquiry, but coupled with the fact that he didn't even bother to offer us a regular menu as if we only had the $30 to spare - his comments came off a bit condescending.

Our largest issue with the evening was the level of unwelcomed and unnecessary rush that was forced upon us. We were seated by 7:45 pm and were finishing our entrees by 8:20pm. The moment our appetizers touched down, Greg was there removing the bread plates and butter. But, not in a normal "server tidying the table" way, but in a deliberate manner that let us know that no more bread would be offered (and he didn't ask if we wanted a refill, either) and that the quicker the meal went, the sooner we would be out of his section. As one who has worked as a server (in college), it is common courtesy not to adamantly clear plates while the patron is eating. 

When my entree arrived, the food runner placed my entree in front of me and announce that it was the surf & turf, ordered medium. I found this was interesting because I specificallyrequested that my meat be cooked well. The food runner was kind enough to take it back to have it prepared the way I ordered it. Greg, however, was the one to bring it back. His statement when he returned with it, "Here you go." No apology for messing up the order and causing my dining companions to wait to eat their meal (as they did out of courtesy). Further, the moment each of us finished our entrees, Greg was there to clear the plate before the fork even hit the table. Interestingly though, he didn't seem concerned with keeping anyone's beverages topped off, as both of my dining companions beverage glasses remained empty and were not refilled until dessert.

The straw that broke the camel's back for us occurred at dessert. The food runner had just brought our desserts to the table and within 30 seconds, Greg appeared and dropped the check on the table...without even asking if we wanted to order anything additional. To make matters worse, throughout dessert, Greg would walk over to the table and peer over to see if the bill was ready to be processed. He came directly to the table to check on it two times and after that, would just walk over to about 4 feet away and look over my shoulder in hopes that we had put a credit card in the check folder. At one point, it appeared as if Greg sent other people to check on the bill because another server came up to peer at our table, as well as a woman in a light green top wearing a ponytail (looked to be a server of some type, not a hostess). This behavior almost caused us to want to linger, just to spite our server who clearly wanted us out. In fact, even after all of our lingering, we were out of the restaurant by 8:45pm...that's how fast paced our dinner was: 3 courses (plus lingering) and still out of the door in 1 hour. Honestly, we all felt so rushed that our food didn't even settle well. 

I do not know if Greg was having a bad night, but his unpleasantness was very apparent and appeared to be directed at us. And unfortunately, his demeanor negatively impacted our dinner and impression of Jake's. Further, it is always good for a server to never make assumptions about his customers. My two dining companions (who just happen to be seasoned fine diners and food bloggers) had never been your restaurant and had only come at my suggestion. Needless to say, they were disappointed in the entire experience.

I know that you asked why we didn't call for a manager during the meal, but we didn't want to make a scene and to be honest, we were quite upset at the time. So, I thought it would best to send an email after emotions had settled.

Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me before we left and still requesting that I email you about what happened. I truly do hope that our experience was an anomaly, as I would hate to think that this is the way people are treated at Jake's. And if not all people, then I hope this isn't the way Greg treats certain people.

Sincerely,
Udoka Nwanna

From the manager to Udoka

Hi Udoka,

Thank you so much for such a detailed description of your evening. This gives me great opportunity to further coach on the specifics that created your rushed meal and missed steps of service. I will use your letter as a bullet point of "do's & don'ts" to make sure we don't make these mistakes again!

I do appreciate you taking the time to report your feedback as I would much prefer to be able to fix an issue instead of potentially losing a guest. We are always striving for excellence but as your experience shows we certainly are not immune to tripping up along the way.

I would love to treat you to a nice time at Jake's and have you enjoy our hospitality at it's best once again. Would you consider accepting a gift certificate from us? I do not want to "buy" your confidence back in Jake's. I just want to thank you for being a loyal customer and giving us feedback instead of taking off for good.

If you are good with my idea would you send me your address? If so, I will include my business card and you can call me anytime to set up a priority reservation. I am certain we can win you back so please let me know...  

Sincerely,
Perry Ustick
General Manager
Jake's Del Mar
858-755-2002

As you can see, their response to us being completely unsatisfied with their performance was to kind of bribe us to come back. I don’t know about my friends but I will not be going back unless my next few meals were comp’ed and I got formal apologies from both the manager and the waiter. Seeing as how I don’t see that happening…. FAT CHANCE!!!!! So that was just one of the experiences we had during restaurant week, not all of them are that bad I can assure you. Just go out and try a few.

Editor & Chief of The Penguin Gazette,

Rudy

P.S. Check out some of the new stuff at the top of the page and tell me what you think!