In fact I would go further and have a note on menus saying that this restaurant is going through its learning process and that this week the bills are being discounted by 25% to take account of the stuff-ups that are likely to occur. Please bear with us and have a complimentary glass of this great bubbly while you consider your choices and we do our best to overcome our opening days inadequacies.
Only when the front-of-house and kitchen staff had got into a routine would I dare start promoting. Certainly I would not be entreating a restaurant critic to come and eat before the bugs were eliminated.
These thoughts regularly occur to me when I read restaurant reviews from around the country. Most reviewers these days work on a limited budget and don't have the luxury of ignoring a meal in a new place they have been enticed to even when the service or good or both is not up to scratch. So new restaurants get a panning for reasons that don't really tell the readers whether or not this will be a place worth eating at.
The latest review to set me wondering was by the Melbourne Herald Sun's Dan Stock back in early December who gave a caning to a new restaurant in Ringwood's Eastwood shopping centre.
"As for a company that has much experience in opening restaurants, Hunter & Barrel is, so far, manifestly subpar", reviewer Stock wrote before continuing:
It’s a place where more thought has seemingly gone into the fitout than time into training, where the uniforms are more on message than the staff. Where PR releases recite every element of the design but waiters can’t answer questions of the menu (Q. “How does the goat stew come?” A. “In a bowl.”) It’s a place where countless meetings have doubtless been held about every element; restaurant as created by committee.It was hardly the kind of review to have people queuing to get in.
A sign all was not well? Perhaps it was the corn cob ordered late to come with mains (after spying it going to another table), but that was the first thing to hit the table, though starters were MIA. And by hit, I mean dumped with force and little ceremony other than “the rest is on its way”. It wasn’t, so we sent it back.
Perhaps it was when, after waiting half an hour for those mains, a fruit crumble was delivered.
“It’s complimentary,” she said. Um, we’d prefer main course. “But you do realise it’s free,” she reinforced in the manner of someone used to explaining things to the dim. Back it went.
Perhaps it was when that corn reappeared 40 minutes later looking for all the world like the same cob, the honey smeared atop now as crusty as snot wiped on a wall. It, too, went back.
Perhaps it was the ridiculous branch of rosemary doused in a lemony sauce that came atop the roast chicken, the darkskinned chook playing hide and seek in the pointless herb forest. Maybe it was embarrassed — and with good reason, the bland meat dry and chalky having spent far too long on those coals ($20).
Now I know there are a lot of restaurants that serve second and third rate food. I just happen to think that restaurant critics should concentrate on the good rather than the bad. Especially when the faults are of the kind that seem to fit into the teething trouble category.
