Last night, at one of my favorite restaurants here in Bangkok, I was about to serve myself some rice from a bowl and looked down to see a little cockroach making its way out from the mountain of rice.
I sat there for a few seconds, wondering if what I was seeing was real. A mixture of being shocked and a little grossed out. Thankfully the cockroach was only a little one, perhaps 2 cm long, not quite like those massive street cockroaches or I would have been jumping out of my chair screaming.
After showing my girlfriend, I signaled for the waiter to come over. I showed him the rice and without delay, he took off with the bowl. He stopped at the counter and showed it to a few of his colleagues before running off to the kitchen. A few seconds later a fresh bowl of rice was delivered to my table. Thankfully it was a different color bowl so I knew they had replaced it, hopefully…
The waiter then turned and left. No apology (in Thai or English) and I was left to dig through the new bowl to make sure there wasn’t a critter hiding away in here too. The problem was I wasn’t feeling so hungry at that point and struggled to eat what we’d ordered.
In the end, I understand that restaurants can have problems but my sense of this being a pretty big issue seemingly wasn’t shared by the restaurant. This lead to a conversation with my girlfriend about complaining. I knew it would be pretty useless to complain as it was obvious the restaurant saw this as only a mild inconvenience. The fact they had replaced the rice was probably enough on their part (in their view at least). Also for most of us who’ve been here in Thailand, we know that making a scene doesn’t usually get us what we want.
I certainly wasn’t trying to save a few baht by asking for a discount or a free meal and, as I said, I go to this place quite frequently as it is one of my favorites. The thing which really bugged me (sorry) was that there was no hint of an apology. If the waiter, or manager, had come over and said sorry then that would have been more than enough in my opinion. It also got me thinking back to another issue I had around eight years ago when a group of friends from the UK came to visit…
A Hair In Her Soup
On that occasion, we were at a restaurant around Makkasan and one of my friends found hair in her soup. She was pretty grossed out and called the waiter over and showed him. The waiter apologized and went to get a new soup. Again, my friend was a reluctant eater after this but in the end she finished her meal. The problem came when the bill arrived.
The restaurant charged her for two soups, the original and the replacement. Luckily the bill was in English otherwise none of us would have spotted this right away. It was a pretty upmarket restaurant and, at 250 baht a soup, wasn’t an inexpensive mistake. We instantly queried this with the waiter and he said that because she had eaten some of the first soup she would have to pay for it.
When we argued the absurdity of this he eventually agreed that we may have a case but he was powerless to change the bill as the manager, who had the authorization to do so, had already left for the night. My friend was adamant that she wouldn’t pay for the extra soup and there was lots of talk about calling the tourist police and blah blah blah from both sides. In the end, the waiter agreed to remove it from the bill. I thought we had everything sorted until my friend noticed one other problem.
The restaurant had added an automatic 10% service charge to our bill and, after what had happened, a few of my friends said they didn’t feel it was right to leave a tip and could the restaurant remove it. Back in the UK customers can ask for this and the restaurant will remove the service charge. The problem was I didn’t know (and still don’t know) if this was, or is, possible / legal in Thailand.
Between the four of us, the service charge would have been an extra 50 baht or so each. I was ready to pay it to just get out but the others weren’t moving. More talk about calling the tourist police started again…
The waiter claimed if we didn’t pay the service charge the money would come from his salary (not sure about this either way?) but in the end he said we could pay the bill minus the service charge. Perhaps he was just wanting to get rid of us at this stage.
Sorry
Two pretty similar events where neither group left the restaurant entirely happy. Of course, when you find something in your food you shouldn’t, you’re not going to be in the best mood.
My friend certainly had the worse experience, being double charged in that situation is pretty daft. For me, I was just gutted I didn’t get an apology, I’ll probably skip that place for a while I guess.
