Labour Day Weekend Woes

Looks pretty doesn't it? This is the meal I enjoyed at Mecca café, a casual eating space within the Esplanade Hotel  in Devonport.  Devonport is a 10 minute boat ride across the harbour from Downtown Auckland.  A tourist venue with the dirtiest ferry terminal I've seen in a long time.

These are the Greek Dolma from the lunch  menu .  Dolma  can be stuffed with either rice or meat. The menu said rice but mine was stuffed with couscous and they were quite nice.  Nice but not fantastic, and I would order the dish again.

My complaint though is with the service.  We were about to be seated at a table under the speaker when I suggested we would prefer something a little quieter.   We were shown to another area in the restaurant and the waitress's  outstretched arm indicated we could choose our own table. I'm happy 'cos I love to choose where I sit!

Not a good sign when you need to signal the waitress you are ready to order.  Our meal was delivered quickly enough but our empty plates were  left on the table, as were other tables.  We had other plans elsewhere for dessert and coffee so called the waitress over and asked for our check. At this point she asked how the meal was so we made our small comment about the oil in the  dressing on Bryan's salad  tasting rancid. Despite the staff insisting it was the sumac in the dressing I know it was rancid.  I have cooked with sumac so I know the taste of sumac.

It was Labour weekend and the staff may have been annoyed at having to work on a holiday weekend. If you take a job as a restaurant worker that is the life.  You don't choose the music you want to hear  and turn up the volume without considering the age of the diners in the restaurant. You don't stand around morosely, looking like you'd rather be elsewhere.  You don't act like you are doing me a favour by serving me.  Because I won't be back.

Comments

[Mikako]

Bad service changes your impression of the restaurant very quickly even the food there is fantastic. I also hate to hear the lame excuses from the restaurant when I point out something unpleasant. Once I found a HUGE fly in my heavenly tasty portabella mushroom salad in a posh restaurant and they said, “oh, sorry because we are using organic vegetable.” It was not a caterpillar and if they had washed their vegetable very carefully they could have noticed the black big fly. They gave me US$50 gift certificate for the restaurant but as you can guess, I have not gone back there and I won’t.

[Barbara]

Hi Mikako - finding a fly in my meal would be so upsetting. You should have gone back and just ordered a bottle of wine!

[plum]

I can't stand it when bad service ruins a meal. And it's not fair on the kitchen if they've done their job.

[barbara]

I agree Plum.