Despite having a 1 year old, Friday is still date night. Grandma, who lives near-by, has the baby-sitting honors. And it works out quite well. Usually the friday night date is dinner in Paris and, if it’s not raining, a walk around the city (especially when the dinner is in my favorite “quatier” (“neighborhood”) – St. Michel). But sometimes my wife gets off work early and I have to work late until a normal hour. In that case, we meet at home and walk to a restaurant in our small town. And that’s what happened a few weeks ago.
We decided on Italian food and headed towards our favorite of the two Italian restaurants. The server, and only employee not counting whoever is in the kitchen, is a very kind man who is actually Egyptian. But the food is very good and he is so nice that we go back as much for him as for the food. So on our way we discover the lights were out. I proclaimed that he is not open tonight. We go a bit closer and yes, he’s not open. Having already decided on Italian, we decided to go to the “other” Italian restaurant in our small town. It’s not our favorite because the service isn’t as good. It does seem more Italian, the employees speak a little Italian, enough to fool me. The Egyptian tells us they’re really “Corse” (“Corsican”, from the island of Corsica).
So we go in and we find all the employees sitting watching TV. We like to eat early, actually I like to eat late but with the baby we have to eat early so we can get back home and get her to bed. So the guys tell us they’re not open until 7pm. Ok, that’s understandable, we’ll just walk around the block and come back. Turning to leave I look at my watch, it’s 6:55! We were 5 minutes early and they’re turning us away! But it gets better. As we’re ready to leave they say we can be seated if we don’t mind waiting. Good deal. They didn’t want to get up so they just tell us to sit anywhere. We’re not stupid so we go for one of the two tables by the window. “Any table but that one!” they yell out from across the restaurant. Ok, so we take the table next to the table by the window. I didn’t get it, we were the only ones in the restaurant!
Overall they weren’t very friendly and we didn’t feel welcome. As we finished our meal we decided that was the last time. A few weeks later we went to our Egyptian friend. We got a warm welcome, a free aperatif, great service and great food.
One can draw several conclusions from this story but for now I’ll let you draw your own. And I’ll be writing more about restaurants and customer service in future blogs.
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