My husband and I spent our honeymoon over Christmas in London a few years ago. We had heard Christmas tea at the Ritz was (while of course a bit touristy) a special thing to do in London around the holidays. So I booked a champagne tea for two months in advance and swallowed our sticker shock at the price – it was $2 to the pound back then but we knew it would be a memorable treat.
Well, the tea was memorable, but for a different reason than we anticipated. The decorations were lovely, I do remember that. The service was mildly attentive but not what you’d expect from a hotel of this caliber. What we both vividly remember was the two year old at the table squarely in the center of the tearoom, behaving in a manner not suitable at any family-friendly restaurant, let alone the Ritz tearoom, where all men are expected to be in coat and tie and ladies in their smartest afternoon dress.
This child was not only screaming, he was climbing over his chair and pulling the hair of the lady behind him, messing with the delicately adorned Christmas tree, and I repeat, screaming at the top of his lungs repeatedly through the meal. The parents made no effort to remove him from the tearoom, there were no visible disciplinary measures taken other than “shushing,” which did not have any affect whatsoever. I felt for this kid, who was receiving his fair share of ugly looks thanks to his lack of parenting and need for attention.
I glared down the waiters, who appeared unfazed as the toddler continued to scream in the middle of the tearoom. Surely they will do something! Any place with a strict dress code should know that this is far more offensive than any jeans or trainers would be to one’s fellow diners, who are paying a high price for the privilege of being there. All the other patrons were visibly shocked and irritated as well – and the poor lady who was most affected deserved a medal for her patience (or perhaps should have been the one to say something on all of our behalf?). I don’t care if little Prince William is sitting in that chair, it was intolerably inconsiderate.
Shame on his parents for taking him to an expensive restaurant and expecting him to behave, and shame on the Ritz for not doing anything about the situation. Looking back, shame on us for not fighting them on the bill. I can’t believe we paid £100 to sit at TGI Fridays!
Tagged as:
babies & children,
holiday,
hotel
Welcome to the updated Dinners From Hell website! You’ll still find all of the stories and comments that the previous site had. But you’ll also find that surfing through our pages offers a much more enjoyable and satisfying experience.
Changes were made out of necessity as well as for desired improvements. The software previously used – Microsoft FrontPage – is acutely outdated and non-supported. It also lacks a lot of features that people have come to expect from today’s websites and blogs. WordPress was selected as its replacement because of its compliance with web standards, for the many great tools and resources that are available for it, and because it’s much more suitable for sites with dynamic content. It provides improved organization and easier navigation, quicker load times, a cleaner and less cluttered appearance, unique web addresses for posts (permalinks), tags for sorting of stories by key words, and a more prominent display of comments.
Accompanying the change in software were changes made to the site itself. Dining link resource pages (Restaurant Reviews, Dining With Kids, etc.) were removed, as were the Dining Videos and Dining News pages. The changes were made in order to be relieved of the chore of maintaining hundreds of active links, and so that Dinners From Hell could singularly focus on what it was originally designed to do – provide a venue for dining hell stories. Other changes include renaming Dining Features to “Dining Blogs” and adding a Fast Food category.
Unfortunately there was no way to transfer requests for comment notifications over to the new site. Those seeking to find comments that they made on the previous site can use the search engine to find their names on the updated one. Also, story ratings could not be moved over. And for the record, noted publication days for stories that originated on the other site aren’t necessarily the day in which they were originally posted (months and years correctly reflect when the stories were posted on the previous site, however, except for some posts in Dining Hell Blogs).
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Here’s to many more years of sharing a cornucopia of foodie fun in Dinners From Hell.
