In another weekend trip to Touristville, the GF and I ended up at our favorite steakhouse (but at a different location). The last time I had to write about this, the dining experience was up and down. This time, it was pretty much a plunge into despair. I won’t bore anyone with tedious details, I’ll just sort of hit the high points (which are the low points).
When we got there, 6 pm on a Saturday, we were informed that the wait was 90 minutes. They actually said, “an hour and a half”, which actually makes it sound a lot worse. At our last touristville experience, we were told there was a 45 minute wait and we were seated pretty quickly. So, I agreed to wait. Well, they kept their word and then some. We didn’t get to the table until almost 8.
When you’re seated at a community table, it’s always a crap shoot as to who you’re going to be with. In tonight’s group, we had a Hispanic family that included a vegetarian. But it wasn’t a cool vegetarian, it was a “I’M VEGETARIAN!” vegetarian. There was also a man so old he couldn’t do anything for himself. I actually suspected he could, but his female partner ordered (and I use ordered in multiple meanings here) everything. He tries to speak up for himself and his other half shouts over him. So you know, a boisterous party.
The other side of the table had what seemed to be a mother and her two daughters and a dude. At first it was a little hard to tell if the dude was the brother or the boyfriend of the older girl. And “older” is really pushing it here; she looked like she was about 12 and the dude looked about 15. But it was made clear that they were a couple in relatively short order. At one point the girl wanted her mom to take a picture of them and as they snuggled up, the dude kind of raised the girls shirt or maybe tucked his hand under it. In any regard, it was all a little weird and uncomfortable.
The chefs at this location were fucking spazzes. I guess you have to be a little over the top to get the attention of tourists who’ve been at theme parks all day, but holy shit. So much yelling and banging and fire. And in spite of that, the chefs seemed to not be engaged with the table and would get distracted to chat with other employees walking around. As far as quality, my extra side dish was overlooked and the food was very light on the soy sauce. When I asked for extra soy sauce on my steak, the chef tried to talk me out of it. And in the end, it was just a couple of drips, nothing to really taste.
And the last anecdote comes from the GF on her disastrous bathroom visit. As it was told to me, there were three stalls. One had a pile of shit-covered toilet paper on the floor. The second held an employee, who had her apron off and laid out on the bathroom floor. The third had an overflowing sanitary receptacle. There are no good options here.
The whole 3+ hour ordeal made me miss my personal home steakhouse and turned me off from touristville locations.
The next day, I seized the opportunity to verify that Pollo Tropical had changed their operations chain-wide. And I have confirmed it. The location we went to had the same cheap white Styrofoam plates, plasticware, and single-size cups. There were no onions or limes on the chicken and there was no table service or cleanup.
We also had a slight order problem that highlighted a flaw in their new operational procedure. When you order a meal, you now wait for your order number to be called. In our case, we picked up the order and when we got to the table, found a side was missing. So the GF went to the cashier, who ignored her because she wasn’t in line. After getting the cashier’s attention and explaining the situation, the cashier yelled to the order picker, who ignored her. GF came back to the table furious.
I went up and stood where the orders were picked up. The order picker kept her back to me. And I kind of understood that. There’s always a crowd of people waiting for food. You could say her communication was unidirectional. She called the order numbers and that’s it. There was no consideration of a communication coming inbound to her. And when she turned around and called a number, I caught her eye, but she still turned back around, requiring me to verbally interrupt her. And then we got the problem resolved.
As I mentioned in my earlier post about Pollo, there’s been a significant decline in the customer service department. The GF vowed that Pollo would become a drive-thru-only option, and I would agree. There is nothing compelling about the dine-in experience.
So, that’s the report on dining this weekend. If there’s news, it’s probably not good news.
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