So this evening the wife and I through caution to the wind.
We’re both keen on living for the moment and whilst that can be a challenge when you’ve got an array of commitments to meet, this particular Friday is free of any MIR stuff. No, I am not flying to Prague tomorrow morning at some godawful hour. No I am not in Rome. No I am not taking bucketloads of equipment to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.
She was planning on cooking a Chicken Pie for dinner. Although how she was aiming to do that without any kind of pastry is beyond me. We flirted with the notion of flying off to somewhere interesting for the evening. San Sebastián? Somewhere Spanish? Eurostar to Paris? That sort of thing. But at gone 6pm it was just a little bit too late to make it happen. We could have got a flight to Edinburgh — that’s not entirely the same. Not when you’re imagining some kind of Spanish Tapas late night experience.
We dumped that concept and hit up the cinema website.
All was going well until we realised we’d have to rough it with the Bas Vegas Cru at peak time. Yes the screen for ‘Young Victoria’ was relatively empty, but the queues would almost certainly send me into some kind of rant.
So ‘let’s go out for a meal’.
There’s not that much choice in Shitsville Billericay, Essex.
We eventually settled on Strada on account of having passable service there during the week. I looked up the website to try and book.
Of course not. They still do it on sodding paper. So I had to do it analogue style — and actually speak to someone. The chap was pleasant and we were booked in with 30 minutes to go.
We took a walk up to the High Street. Entered the restaurant. All was good.
All was good, if you don’t mind the cretinous arses speaking at 1.5-2 times the volume of any normal person. I did my best to focus my hearing on my darling wife and soaked up the godawful yet strangely serene atmosphere.
At the desert course I hit a snag.
I ordered Chocolate Cake. Warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream — was the actual description. So did my wife.
It arrived in double quick time. I was about to find out why.
Hers was fantastic. A nice dollop of Vanilla, dusted with chocolate powder sat atop a warm, melting chocolate ‘cake’. Press into it with your spoon and woosh, it came gently apart. Very nice.
Mine, on the other hand was: A nice dollop of Vanilla ice cream et chocolate powder dust sat atop a just-above-frozen chocolate lump. 60 seconds in the microwave at 600watts would have changed it’s state into something more pleasing. Unfortunately I didn’t qualify.
The chef chappie, the sous chef or whoever, negated to microwave my chocolate lump.
I discovered this on account of having to use extreme force to separate the lump.
“It’s not cooked,” I announced to my darling wife.
“Oh, dear…” she said, prodding it and testing. To put your fork through the chocolate lump required — I estimate — roughly the same amount of force that I’d need to put my fork through the chef’s chest bone.
“Send it back!” she said.
I glared at her. She looked at me for an explanation.
“It’s not about sending it back,” I explained. Although I think her and I have been through this before. She is patient with me.
“It’s about right-first time,” I continued, “That’s what I demand. Right first time or not at all.”
Sending it back doesn’t fix my problem. My expectations were completely, completely floored. Yes I can send it back. Yes I can argue with the manager and the chef. Yes I can demand money off. Yes I could write to Strada and get some vouchers.
None of this fixes my problem. I need right-first-time. Right-second-time isn’t right at all. Not when you’re talking food — and such a stupid, stupid, STUPID oversight. It’s the sort of thing you see on some Gordon Ramsay show and you find yourself thinking, “That’d never happen. What sort of arse would send out a warm chocolate pudding cold?”
What’s the sodding point on sitting in the restaurant at a table and being delivered a warm chocolate cake that isn’t actually warm? Sending it back would only generate suitable amounts of nervous ‘I’m so sorry’ bollocks and then I’d get to attempt to ‘enjoy’ a warm one. The experience is shattered. The illusion vanishes when this shit happens. It’s not a chef behind the wall. It’s a food-processor that works to British standards — you know, 20% failure rate per 1,000 whatevers.
Who was it? Someone was telling me about a British company that was dealing with a Japanese or Far Eastern firm. Forgive me, whoever told me this. They were telling me that the British company’s contract DEMANDED that the Japanese supplier deliver parts to them that were 80% accurate and working — that is, ONLY a 20% failure rate. This being the standard British acceptance. Order 1,000 car parts from a British manufacturer and routinely, 15-20% of them would be what’s known in the trade as bolloxed in some way.
That doesn’t happen with the Japanese. They work to something in the region of 0.5% failure rate. So if you order 1,000 televisions, half of one will arrive with a fault. The other 999 will be perfect.
Trouble is, the British company insisted that the Japanese firm meet their perfection guarantees. 80% of parts must be perfect. 20% (must) have flaws.
How did the Japanese manufacturer deal with this weird request? Simple. They sent 80% of parts to their client without error. Then they simply sent a huge big crate of broken parts in another container. Simple. Job done. Client gets what they requested.
Which brings me back to Strada.
I made the mistake of mismanaging my expectations.
When I go to Gordon Ramsay’s Trianon restaurant at Versailles, service is flawless, everything is cooked to perfection. There are *no* errors. It is 100%. The meat is cooked just so. The wine is perfect. The service impeccable.
My mistake was to assume that I’d get an OK service level at Strada having had similar, that same week, from the same restaurant and, one imagines, the same team.
Even McDonalds has a higher guaranteed success rate than Strada, based on my 5-10 Strada experiences over the years. Yes the McDonalds food is typically rubbish — but I haven’t ever been served a raw Big Mac. I haven’t ever had an ice cream from them that was pure ice. I haven’t ever purchased a Coca Cola from McDonalds and been served a glass of water and a lump of Coca Cola ‘flavour’ with assumed instructions to mix my own Coca Cola.
So I didn’t complain. I don’t generally. I just never go back. And I make it my business to ensure no one I know goes to the restaurant — in this case, Strada, under the expectation that it’ll be ‘quite nice’. It will if you’re in the 80% British tier. But if you slip into the 20% bolloxed tier, remember to take your own sodding Microwave.
It’s not specifically about money, or value for money or service level, or you-should-have-sent-it-back. The point about going OUT and having other people cook for you is that it should, as far as I’m concerned, be right-first-time. Or you might as well do it yourself.
Rubbish.
