Birthday Dinner Not A Piece Of Cake

April 11, 2009

in Odds & Ends Stories

My sister had recently started college on the East Coast, thousands of miles away from home and from any friends she had. Her birthday was fast approaching and in an effort to make sure she had someone to celebrate the day with, I flew out to Boston to take her out for the weekend.

We decided to take a bus ride into New York for a day, see the sights, and have dinner at a restaurant she had been wanting to dine at for months. I made reservations months in advance and even ordered and prepaid for a customized birthday cake off the restaurant website.

We arrived at the restaurant prior to our reservation time, but was seated fairly promptly. After that, the troubles began. Our waiter approached our table, took our order and then disappeared for the rest of the night. Our food was delivered by the wait staff and while it was bland, dry, and overcooked, we could not flag down our waiter to complain about the quality of the food, as he was too busy catering to the larger parties on the other end of the room. We patiently waited as long as we could, when lo and behold, the wait staff came out holding a beautifully decorated birthday cake and balloons. FINALLY!

The wait staff began to sing “Happy Birthday” and I smiled in anticipation of the surprised look on my sister’s face, only to realize that the cake was meant for another birthday girl in the same restaurant. Forty-five minutes after we finished our meal, I finally got up and went to find the manager, to see where my prepaid birthday cake would be. He apologized for the confusion and hurriedly went to fetch the cake. When the cake finally made its appearance, it did not look anything like the beautifully decorated cake we saw for the other girl’s birthday. Rather, this cake was obviously part of a much larger sheet cake, crookedly cut and haphazardly frosted. It was painfully obvious the restaurant had forgotten to prepare our cake.

At this point, I’ve had enough. I requested to speak to the manager to complain about the lack of service, the quality of our food and the horrible birthday cake. When the manager appeared and I made our concerns known, he knelt at our table and proceeded to talk to me in baby talk. He pouted at me and spoke in a singsong voice, generally reserved for children under 2 years old. Rather than offering to comp our cake or even an apology, he offered to serve us champagne to make up for our horrible night… never mind the fact that my sister is underage and cannot drink! I finally requested that our cake, at the least, be comped and resolved to never visit this restaurant again. $120 for an inedible meal, horrible service, and condescending treatment from the manager was insult upon humiliation!

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

nettie April 21, 2009 at 5:03 am

This is where you find out who the owner of this place is, and send them a letter complaining of your treatment. And demand an response.

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