Sending meal back in restaurant..plate warm -pie cold

Phew! What an exhausting read!
Many of you heartily agree with sending back sub-standard offerings in restaurants, thinking that the matter will be resolved amicably???
Well, let me just recant my experience of working as waitress as a student in a quaint little café.
Lady sends back rumbarba complaining its not quite right.
Mr H, the chef & owner grabs the cherry & replaces said cherry with a bit more cream & the same cherry!
I am then sent out to delight the disgruntled lady with the lovely, new fresh desert!! Which she said was just perfect, thank you. 🥴

My grandson is an award-winning chef at a very smart restaurant, he told me that if food is not up to scratch it should be returned immediately so that things can be put right.

Madeleine45 unfortunately I lost interest before I finished your extremely long piece which rambled rather.
I think the original poster was wrong to accept the original meal after reheating. That was an insult. She should have been assertive but polite and ordered a different meal. Much better getting good service at the time than having to complain on a review later.

If you order a pie in a restaurant you can virtually guarantee it came from the freezer. The thing they did wrong was not to heat it up enough. Not much is made from scratch.

I had something similar happen at a normally good restaurant. I suspected the cook of reheating the casserole and watering the sauce down because he didn’t have enough - though obviously I had only intuition to go on. The waiter noticed I left most of the meal and asked if there was a problem. I explained, including that I had ordered this dish there before. The deducted it from the bill, but said that the chef was new and they were monitoring his performance. I think they’d had issues with other diners.

I think I would do like the lady on here who decided to forget about eating after her meal was bad and she just drank her coffee. You never know what is being done to your food when it's out of your sight and then kitchen staff annoyed.

A pie is obviously NEVER going to be made from scratch it’s always pre prepared, often from the freezer, sometimes from a batch made that day.
A few times I’ve had an open pie with a loose top nicely crisped on top but a “pie” is probably not going to be my choice if I’m eating out

I can tolerate a lot of things in life but paying food that is not fit for consumption annoying. I would have had my say in fact I would have called the waitress over and asked for a new whole complete meal not for it to be reheated. And make it known that I will be leaving a review. I can't afford to waste money

David49

A pie is obviously NEVER going to be made from scratch it’s always pre prepared, often from the freezer, sometimes from a batch made that day.
A few times I’ve had an open pie with a loose top nicely crisped on top but a “pie” is probably not going to be my choice if I’m eating out

Due to ongoing dental issues/extractions in the New Year, I'm limited to what I can chew ..wouldn't normally be ordering a pie dish. I love a steak in red wine sauce but its off the menu at the moment! I've had plenty of salmon recently and pasta dishes so a Malbec Red wine pie was the next thing to a meaty steak😊

Mum used to be a silver service waitress as a young woman and in her older years I would try to treat her to a meal out but she wasn’t keen. She told me if people complained, the chef normally spit on the plate and send it back out. My first husband worked as a waiter in high end restaurants in Chelsea, the Strand etc. and told me the same thing. Hasn’t put me off eating out.

Catterygirl

Mum used to be a silver service waitress as a young woman and in her older years I would try to treat her to a meal out but she wasn’t keen. She told me if people complained, the chef normally spit on the plate and send it back out. My first husband worked as a waiter in high end restaurants in Chelsea, the Strand etc. and told me the same thing. Hasn’t put me off eating out.

Yes I’ve heard that some chefs might spit on the plate but didn’t think this was a true fact…oh dear, I actually liked this restaurant and it’s a bit off putting…
Hope we have some good chefs on here🤞🏻

I went to a well known local restaurant with DC and I ordered
Duck Confit, DH ordered steak. When both meals arrived it was immediately clear to me that mine was a chicken dish so I sent it back. After about ten minutes the waitress re-appeared with the same dish and told me they had run out duck so I just ate it, even though it was nearly cold.

When we came to pay we found that I had been charged for the duck which was much more expensive than the chicken
dish I had been served. We were told that "The bill had gone through and couldn't be changed" so asked to see the manager. We waited and we waited and eventually gave up, paid and went.

I contacted the restaurant the next day and was told there was nothing they could do as they had no record of our visit. In other words I was a liar and had made it all up. Unfortunately, I had paid in cash.

I left a review online and they replied saying "There was no record of the incident. If a dish was not available the customer was ALWAYS asked what they would like instead and as the bill was not made up until the end of the meal, it would ALWAYS reflect what they had actually had."

Had I not been with DH when it all happened I would have begun to doubt my sanity.

I have no recollection of being offered a receipt. We were both so keen to get away that, stupidly, neither of us thought to ask for one.

Indigo8

I have no recollection of being offered a receipt. We were both so keen to get away that, stupidly, neither of us thought to ask for one.

Report to HMRC.

You will never get feed back, but the satisfaction of potentially catching a tax cheat.

When the you realised the pie was cold I would have asked for the manager and I have done than in the past . Then if it came back and still a problem with the food I would have asked for the manger again and asked him or her to taste it . And I have left a restaurant and only paid for any food that was edible .
And gave them a bad review.
People are frightened to complain but unless you do complain then companies will not change . Especially places that service food .