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| Our bill from Jack Astor’s |
And just when we thought we’d have the makings of another Applebee’s disaster on our hands, Jack Astor’s scored a big customer service win for Diane Begin and I the other night.
It was late. We’d just finished class and we were hungry. While Diane ordered fries and guac, I asked if I could have a chef salad with grilled chicken added. The server implied that wasn’t an option and suggested I order the California Grilled Chicken Salad instead. I reluctantly agreed.
Another server brought our food. She arrived with a big pepper grinder in tow. As she proceed to ask if I wanted some pepper, she started grinding it on my salad as I said “No, thank you!” Then she said, “Well, they put some on in the kitchen anyway.” Really? When is the last time you’d seen sliced tomatoes buried under ground pepper in a roadhouse restaurant?
I didn’t want to waste food or wait any longer to eat, so I scraped off as much of the pepper as I could and started eating. Yes, I do use Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to season my food when cooking at home but I’m not a fan of adding pepper to my food at the table.
As we chatted and ate away, about halfway through our meal, I realized I’d been served a large chef salad with grilled chicken after all. Weird.
Our original server came over to see if we wanted coffee and asked about our meal. She knew about the pepper incident and apologized. I commented about being served a chef salad but didn’t complain. She went to speak with the chef. Within a couple minutes, the manager came over. He sat down. Apologized again about the salad and told us dinner was on him. He wanted to see us back at his restaurant and told us he wanted us to leave happy so we’d see him again. Impressive indeed!
And then we messed up by forgetting to leave a tip. Nicole please forgive us. I’ll drop off a tip next time I’m in the area. For now, I hope that you, the parent company and Yonge/Bloor location will accept this blog post as somewhat of a consolation.
