Restaurants - pet hates

I hate it when they serve everything with rocket. There really is no need. Is there a glut of the stuff somewhere which must must be got rid of at all costs? What is this obsession with rocket?

Imagine being in a restaurant and surrounded by half a dozen very polite waiters... each time one of us spilt the tiniest crumb one of them would rush up with a miniature dustpan and brush and sweep it up. And yes, everything was served on slates or boards. Delicious meal though.

I dislike salads served to the table with dressing or sauce already on it. I want a fresh crispy salad and the sauce/dressing separate so that I can add as much or as little as I like.
I can’t abide soggy salad.

Esspee

Another pet hate is brioche buns. They are cake. Why oh why do they think we want cake with burgers?

Disagree .. I love brioche buns with burgers

Not a hate (because really isn’t hate a bit strong for a bit of a niggle ,…). But I find it weird when a sandwich for example arrives on a plate but sitting on the napkin which is then often covered in Mayo for example and therefore useless.

Mollygo, you made me laugh with the deconstructed crumble! Which leads me to think of pretentious menus.

Thinly sliced pommes-de-terre fricaseed in hand pressed oil of locally grown canola. In other words: chips.

CanadianGran that could be a new quiz!???

I do not like slates I ask for a plate I ask for a clean glass if there are watermarks on my glass. I don’t like gravy or sauce poured over a meal. I like a little jug of sauce or gravy so I can pour it on my meal myself. I don’t like a mound of food on a plate it’s off putting.
If it’s just me and DH I do not like being sat at a table for four. I refuse to sit near the toilets. I don’t like going upstairs to eat as I am not good on stairs.

I always checkout the menu online before we go too.

Canadiangran- that's crisps to us!
Chips are what you call 'French Fries'!

When drinks arrive after the food!

haha, getting my language mixed up. Yes, your crisps, my chips.

Yes, Lucca! I always think it’s stupid serving food on top of a napkin. It inevitably renders the napkin useless. Don’t know who originally thought this was a good idea! ?

OH lived and worked in Albania for a couple of years. I would visit during my holidays. The food was plentiful and tasty but… if you ordered, say fish,salad, bread and chips, it would arrive over the course of about an hour. Maybe chips and bread first followed by fish when you had nothing left to eat it with. Salad might arrive just before the bill. I think there was one restaurant we went to which got it right. But if we ordered wine the waiter was dispatched to a nearby supermarket to buy a bottle.

My pet hate in restaurants is loud music

Six of us ate in a very pretentious celebrity-chef restaurant one time. A waiter circled our table constantly.
My husband took a sip of water and put his glass down. The waiter immediately stepped forward and moved the glass by an inch, presumably to the "correct" position.
We found it intrusive, overbearing and rude.

The overuse, imho, of the word ‘enjoy’ seemingly used by whoever is serving you something to eat. It’s almost a command lol.

I dislike incredibly long menus as it must mean they have a huge variety of food pre prepped and frozen ready to pop into the microwave.
I don’t serve microwave ready meals at home so why go out for one and pay huge amounts of money for the privilege.

I dislike undercooked food. The family eat steak in various stages of cooking. DH eats his steak ‘Bleu’.
I can live with that, but pink pork, oozing lamb, and a slice of beef from a joint that looks as if it saw the oven for a few minutes, once upon a time and has been waiting around in a warm atmosphere? No thank you.
Another dislike is fiddly bits that are added by hand. I hate the thought of my food being touched and messed about with. If you can’t add a garnish with tongs, don’t add it.

My pet hate is people using their phones and not comunicating with who they are with,especially families.
And it`s ignorant not to look at the person serving them to say thank you when their order is placed in front of them.

Slates? That’s a new one, hope it doesn’t come here ! I agree with phones and also lukewarm food. I always ask for extra hot coffee, too . I don’t care about their safety rules. Warm coffee is warm coffee. Euuugh.

My pet hate is in bar restaurants where the customers have to help themselves to cutlery/napkins from a communal table. The cutlery is often packed tightly together and almost impossible to just touch what you’re lifting.

I haven’t been in any of these places since easing of restrictions but hopefully it’s now regarded as poor hygiene practice.

Restaurants where everything comes with chips, potatoes, pasta or rice! Also when they plonk a huge plate of food in front of you, so wasteful and off putting. We met friends for lunch the other day and I struggled to choose something off the menu, I don’t usually eat lunch and wanted something light, I eat low carb. I asked if I could have a poached egg instead of fried with the gammon as they used vegetable oil, no, not possible. Ended up having a huge ploughman’s but left half of it, too much bread and pastry. Not going there again!

When I order fish and it comes with a small sliver of lemon that’s impossible to squeeze. I always ask for a bigger piece, i.e. at least a quarter.

It only happened once, but in a relatively expensive restaurant where we were treating 4 old friends to dinner, after dh asked for the bill, the waiter actually stood at the table and read the total out loud!

We had never encountered such a thing before.
Dh phoned the next day to voice his disquiet. There were fulsome apologies and the promise of ‘re-training’.