Dining Scene
Poor service a common complaint by diners

By Matthew Gray
Advertiser Restaurant Critic

Illustration by Greg Taylor • The Honolulu Advertiser

Whoa. Normally, my food angel is more interested in pleasuring me than berating me, but the time has come, once and for all, to respond to some particular concerns of Advertiser readers. I've received numerous letters and e-mails expressing high-octane consumer dissatisfaction with service (or more precisely, the lack of it) at all levels of our culinary universe.

Keep in mind that people will return to a restaurant where they've had less-than-glorious food, but they'll never return to a place with bad service.

Typical complaints run the gamut. They range from the fast-food outlets that get your order wrong, giving you spicy sauce instead of the mild (or vice-versa), up through the moderately priced places that bring your water while holding the glass up near the top where your mouth goes, and all the way up to fine-dining establishments where the wait staff knows little about the foods being served.

At one restaurant recently, I asked for a split of champagne and a glass of port, two fairly standard items at any fine-dining establishment, right? Well, you'd never know it by the vacant look on our waiter's face. I glanced toward Miss A for a moment with my here-we-go-again expression, and turned my attention back to our waiter, showing him his own menu and the items I just asked for.

One of our readers told me about a place that she and her girlfriend went to recently. The food orders are placed at the counter, and then they are supposed to be brought out to the patrons on the patio. She could tell something was wrong when the person at the cash register didn't know the prices. But she simply shrugged it off. Three simple dishes were ordered — two entrees and a dessert, along with a cappuccino. Ten minutes later, the lukewarm cappuccino arrived at the table, followed by only one of the entrees 10 minutes after that. Dessert came next, and, well, you can see what kind of dining disaster this had become. Frustrated, she and her friend marched inside, paid only for what was eaten, and left, vowing to never return.

Another reader visited a restaurant after reading one of my reviews. He said that he was seated at the most uncomfortable and cramped table in the place, and that service was surly. He took the time to e-mail me, to voice his disappointment, but when asked if he brought this to the attention of the restaurant, he responded with, "I am a pacifist and do not confront management."

An acquaintance of mine tells me that he and his wife abruptly left a restaurant because "the food was unacceptable." As they were leaving, the manager approached them and asked what was wrong. "The fish is unbelievably salty ... it's inedible" was their reason for leaving. The manager offered up a less than satisfactory solution, which was, "If you eat the fish with plain rice, it won't taste so salty."

These true-life incidents underscore a huge problem in the service sector here in Hawai'i. Our hotels and restaurants live and die based on whether they can create satisfied customers. As a matter of fact, our economy on the whole would greatly benefit from better customer service.

Waiters can be, in a sense, goodwill ambassadors. When service issues arise, who's to blame? Even with all the service nightmares outlined above, it is not the waiter who is at fault; this is management's responsibility. Hotels and restaurants have a difficult enough time making a successful go of it, and without proper training of their service personnel, they can never achieve excellence.

At issue here are many things. All too often, management is looking for anyone who can fulfill their immediate need for a warm body to do a particular task. They spend little time, if any, in training and troubleshooting, and when something goes wrong, guess who's out of a job? You guessed it: the poor minimum-wage employee. This ineffective business style costs employers a lot more money in the long run as well tainting their reputation.

I have performed service-oriented consulting for hotels and restaurants over the years. One of the first items on my agenda is to critique management, not the servers. Long before I get down into the trenches with the staff, I get up into the face of the "suits" and let them know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their net worth depends upon the folks wearing the aprons.

As far as bringing your concerns or complaints to the attention of management, I want to urge you to do so in a nice way. Then, and only then, can we expect to get what we deserve, which is a positive dining experience ... service included.

Matthew Gray can be e-mailed at: ChefMatthew@LoveLife.com