When it pays to complain

Remember the sign you used to see occasionally in stores or as a bumper sticker -- “We never make misteaks”?

It served as a good reminder that we all make mistakes, and I thought of both that sign and that truth recently as I was sorting through the e-mail I received in response to my column last month on “The Rude, the Bad and the Ugly” -- the ill-behaved boors who increasingly frequent Los Angeles restaurants.

As expected, some readers suggested that I should write about rude, bad and ugly service in restaurants. Fair enough. But what constitutes bad service? As I said, everyone makes mistakes, and the kinds of mistakes one is willing to tolerate in a restaurant depend on the aspirations -- pretensions? -- of that particular restaurant.

At fancy, white-linen establishments where the check is likely to be as big as the chef’s ego, I find myself far less tolerant of the old “To err is human” axiom. I don’t expect to be kept waiting a long time for my table. I don’t expect the waiter to forget who ordered what dish. Or to argue when one of my guests says a dish is overcooked or a wine is corked. Or to suggest that any problems are our fault, not the waiter’s or the kitchen’s.

When such mistakes are made, I do expect an explanation and an apology. If the transgression is serious enough -- if we’re kept waiting 45 minutes, the kitchen runs out of the nightly special at 8:30 and the waiter screws up our order -- I expect someone to alert the manager or maitre d’ and I expect that person to do something tangible, to offer us a complimentary dessert or waive the corkage charge or offer us each a glass of dessert wine.

When I say what “I” expect in these circumstances, I mean “I” as a normal customer -- any normal customer -- not “I” as someone who writes a food and wine column for The Times.

My worst service experience in the last year came in San Francisco, at Gary Danko, where I had no reason to think that anyone knew I wrote about food and wine.

Rush, rush, rush

Gary DANKO is the sort of high-end restaurant -- all gleaming crystal and polished silver -- where one dines leisurely, with high expectations, so we were stunned when we were rushed through three courses in 35 minutes. We were so rushed, in fact, that our main course arrived before the wine -- or the wine glasses -- were on our table.

When I pointed this out to our waiter, he didn’t take the food back so that it wouldn’t get cold while we waited for our wine, as I would have expected in a restaurant with one of the best chefs in the state and a service team that this year’s Zagat Survey said was the best in San Francisco. A “religious experience,” one Zagat surveyor said. “On the second day, God created Gary Danko,” said another.

Oh well, I guess even God makes misteaks.

Anyway, by the time the waiter found the assistant sommelier, who found and delivered our wine, our food was cold. And the wine -- a 1992 Vosne-Romanee, La Croix Rameau, from Jacques Cacheaux, strongly recommended by the assistant sommelier -- was well past its prime. I pointed this out. So the assistant sommelier, without deigning to taste or to apologize, went looking for the head sommelier, and she provided another, better wine.

I probably should have insisted that our food be replaced as well. But my wife and son groaned when I suggested that. They’re uncomfortable on those infrequent occasions when I complain in a restaurant, and I’d already complained to three different servers about being rushed.

But I shouldn’t have had to say anything in this case. I can think of several times over the years when wine was late arriving or one of my guests or companions was in the restroom when a dish was served, and -- invariably, in any restaurant of this caliber -- the food was replaced without my having to say a word.

A restaurant at the level of Gary Danko just shouldn’t make these kinds of mistakes. Ever.

At the opposite end of the dining spectrum, my favorite recent e-mail about restaurant service experiences came from Doris Resatka, who found herself “chewing on something rubbery and yellow” in a pizza parlor not long ago. The substance was definitely not mozzarella, but when she called this to the waiter’s attention, he huffily assured her, she says, that “there was nothing like that in their restaurant and [he] implied that it was mine. I demanded to see the manager.

“He came out wearing yellow rubber gloves.”

Ugh!

No one would be as demanding in a pizza parlor as he would be at, say, Patina or L’Orangerie -- or Gary Danko -- but I should think that serving a cooked rubber glove wouldn’t be acceptable even in Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing Club. Instead of being simultaneously defensive and offensive, the waiter in this particular pizza parlor should have apologized and taken the pizza off the bill. Either that or he should have eaten the rubber glove himself.

My biggest service complaint involves waiters who don’t seem to care whether you like the food -- even if it tastes like a rubber glove. I’ve lost count of the number of times someone at my table has left a dish mostly uneaten, expecting the waiter to ask, “Was there a problem with that dish, sir? May I get you something else?” -- only to have the waiter whisk the almost-full plate back to the kitchen with nary a word.

I don’t know what these guys are thinking. They probably aren’t. That’s the problem. So I encourage friends not to wait for the waiter to ask why they haven’t finished their food.

“Tell them,” I say. “Tell them it’s too salty or overcooked or bitter or whatever. But tell them right away -- not after you’ve eaten half the dish.”

Waiters who demonstrate their indifference to their customers in other ways also figure prominently in much of the e-mail I’ve received.

The disappearing act

The single biggest gripe I hear about restaurant service is that too many waiters, hostesses and maitre d’s, especially in Los Angeles, are either preoccupied or missing in action.

They happily -- if unnecessarily -- introduce themselves by name at the beginning of the evening, said one caller, and they may even gratuitously offer their approval of your menu selections (“Very good choice, sir”), “and then they disappear to comb and re-comb their hair, gossip with other servers or take care of more important people, and we can’t find them when we need more bread or water or wine.”

They see their jobs as “steppingstones to that sitcom or movie role,” said e-mailer Steve (no last name) from Tarzana, so they take no pride in their work and pay no attention to the customers.

A suggestion: When a particularly inattentive waiter finally does come to your table, “apologize” for taking him away from his other, “obviously more important interests.”

I have a few other tips for dealing with the kinds of poor service my e-mail correspondents complained about most often.

When a waiter pours your wine or water too quickly and too copiously, obviously hoping you’ll feel compelled to order more, catch his eye, shake your head and gently hold up a restraining hand -- over your glass, if necessary. If that doesn’t work, politely tell him you’ll pour your own.

When you’re kept waiting for a table, ask for an explanation. Often there is one -- previous parties arriving late or staying longer than expected are the most common legitimate explanations. Overbooking is, of course, the most common illegitimate explanation.

I figure that if you have to wait more than 30 minutes past your reservation time -- regardless of the reason -- the restaurant should not only explain and apologize but also make some kind of concrete gesture of conciliation, such as offering you a complimentary drink or a small nibble while you wait.

What about waiters who argue before grudgingly agreeing to replace a bad bottle of wine or an over- or undercooked (or over- or under-spiced) dish? I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that the customer is always right. But he is always the (paying) customer. Politely tell your waiter that you came to the restaurant to eat, not to argue, and that if he can’t accommodate you properly, you’d like to speak to the manager.

A good wait staff won’t argue or, if you have a complaint, won’t wait for you to ask for a manager. When I was kept waiting 45 minutes for a table -- and then given a table where all the foot traffic passed by, constantly jostling our chairs -- at Doug Arango’s in West Hollywood a few months ago, the hostess and the manager both hustled over to apologize, explain and, ultimately, move us to a better table.

When they subsequently had to tell us they were out of both desserts we had ordered -- including my favorite, the house specialty, lemon meringue pie -- they offered to serve us any other desserts, without charge.

When the bill came, they said they’d also decided not to charge us for our first bottle of wine.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “especially since I brought that bottle from home.”

By now, someone on the staff had recognized me from having waited on me elsewhere, and mortification was present in abundance.

To their credit, the management at Doug Arango’s e-mailed me their apologies -- twice. And sent a whole lemon meringue pie to my office. And invited my wife and me to return to “dine ‘on the house’ for a ‘proper’ Doug Arango’s experience.” I didn’t/wouldn’t accept a free dinner -- I think journalists should always pay for everything -- but I appreciated the offer.

Would they have done the same had they not recognized me as a journalist? Probably not. But they were gracious throughout, and there’s no way of knowing for sure.

I do know that when I wrote a letter of complaint to the chef/owner at Gary Danko -- on plain paper, with my home address, without invoking The Times -- after my disappointing experience there, I received a note back from the head sommelier.

She apologized four times, expressed “chagrin,” “regret” and “disappointment” and said that when I next wanted to eat at Gary Danko, I should not hesitate to call her or the maitre d’ directly to make my reservation. “It would be our pleasure to ensure that your next dining experience at Restaurant Gary Danko is a spectacular one,” she wrote.

I haven’t had a chance to take her up on the offer yet, but her thoughtful note shows that it does pay to complain when you get bad service.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous Matters of Taste columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.