I have never been a great fan of Thai restaurants. In fact, I don’t really like any of cuisines from Far East Asia – they give me the creeps. And more than the food, I hate entering their restaurants: A typical stench, that of a fish, dead, fried, dipped or otherwise constantly hangs around the area, and most of Thai dishes use fish oil to cook their food, which makes it all the more not likeable. And then the coconut – I don’t understand why Thai food over does coconut – coconuts are meant to garnish, not make a garish preparation.
Nonetheless, given my misgivings, I and my friends decided to visit a restaurant in Bethesda area called Sala Thai (Kiska Saala? U may ask). Now, we being typical desis, always manage to enter the restaurant right when its about to close, or close in ten minutes. Somehow I and my friends love doing that – this was no different, though we called in much earlier about the closing time from the restaurant people.
The restaurant closed at 11.00 pm, we were informed so, and we reached the restaurant by 10.15 pm. We were escorted to our table, and for a change, we were served water before we even asked for it – it was going good we seemed to believe. The waitress who was serving us looked bored to death about her job, seemed snooty and almost didnt want to serve us; The moment we had take one sip of water she declared, albeit in her Thai-English accent:
“Kitchen closes in 10 minutes! Can you order?â€
We were like – you just gave us the menu – how about a few minutes?! And because she stood on our heads, we ended up ordering quickly. One of my friends ordered a green curry and the other a red curry – she seemed to take our orders casually and disappeared.
After a while, she re-emerged with our food – wow – that was fast, we thought. However to our friend’s dismay, she had got both green curries, and no red curries. Now, that was a mistake by our snooty friend in taking down the order.
When my friend told her “Excuse me, I asked for a red curry not greenâ€, her answer, as casual as possible, stunned me:
“Oh, I am so sorry†and then suggested “They taste the same!†indicating we should simply lap it up.
I was like, what did she just say? Here were we, one of the best 100 restaurants in D.C area, being told that two dishes taste the same by a snooty waitress.
My friend suggested – “Well I wanted the red curry, can you exchange it?â€
And snooty booty quietly replied – “The cook will get angry if I ask him to exchange it!â€
Whoa?! And because she didn’t want her dear cook to come down on her, we were supposed to yap her mistake up – because she made a mistake in our orders, we were supposed to eat it up? Unfortunately, instead of walking out (which we should have done!), we simply ended up eating the food. Though, I made up my mind once and for all that it was the first and the last time I would visit that Thai restaurant again. Mind you the food was excellent, no complaints, but this incident just ruined it all.
When it came to leaving a tip, we were still generous to leave a 5$ tip, (which by standard rate is quite less compared to the bill we footed, a point we were trying to make for her service) – her reaction on seeing the tip was that of disgust and contempt – as if she didn’t deserve that for her ridiculous service.
Now compare this with an American restaurant in this area. This is not the first time that we have gone to a restaurant near closing time, but there is a clear difference in the way American restaurants cater to their customers and how others behave – in an American joint, either you are in or you are out – you are not in between. If we’ve been allowed to eat inside, then the service to the table most of the time is absolutely apt and proper.
We’ve been to several American restaurants before, and each time (well almost every time), if there has been a mistake in order, however late it can be, we were given a different dish. At some places, we’ve got discount in our final bill for their mistakes, at others, we were tendered a very good apology either (in extreme cases) – but nowhere have been treated like the Thai restaurant Miss Snooty.
This goes a lot to illustrate why American restaurants make money and in general the service level of any American restaurants – they may not serve the tastiest food in town, but they sure as hell know how to serve their customer!
…Which unfortunately, neither the Indian restaurants, Thai, Chinese or any other regional cuisine here know how to do.
If you are in D.C / Virginia / Maryland area, and if you happen to see this restaurant, give this a miss – pronto!