It's not that we're extremely impatient people, but dh does have a lot of stress in his life right now and when a meal exceeds an allotted time, it makes him unbearable to be with.
Even if that were not the case, restaurateurs should realize that mediocre food might be saved by brilliant service, but that good food can be completely annihilated by poor or slow service. Note that I am referring to good food, not excellent food - for truly excellent, Iron Chef Morimoto type food, one might put up with a bit of slow service. Fortunately, when one is paying $40+ a plate, one doesn't often get lousy service.
So the first place to piss dh off recently was Truffles. The food was quite tasty, as, for an average of $25 a person, it should be. But, the service went from slow to nearly a dead stop. Dh was not happy as we still had to drop by his dad's place afterwards and he had had a long day prior. The kids were not happy as we had to cancel our dessert order because it was taking forever. As dh said, how long does it take to dish out a few scoops of sorbet?
The other place we will not be going back to for a while is Casablanca Cafe. Here's the review I posted at Google Maps:
"We have always had terrific meals at Casablanca Cafe in the past. The food, such as their charmoula sauce, was delicious, and the service was reasonable. Today, we went for lunch, as usual, but not only was the hummus overly salty and not enough yogurt sauce was served with the gyros, but the service was extremely slow. In this downtown/university area, people who run restaurants should know that people have to be back at certain times and don't have over an hour to spare for eating.
To top it off, their excuse for being slow in bringing our food was that our gyros sandwich orders (my husband and son ordered that) were taking a long time so they had to switch them to "plate orders" to make it come faster. Maybe it's because we don't know the food biz (more likely, they're just lying), but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
And, here's the kicker, whereas the sandwich order would have been under $8 each, they charged us $11+ dollars per order when they changed them to plate orders, something we had NOT asked them to do. A good restaurant would have charged the same (what the customer ordered to begin with), no matter what "special changes" or embellishments they felt they did to the dish."
"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
