Ed. Note: Our friend Alex, formally the food editor of DC’s Brightest Young Things, recently moved to Boston. While she’s mourning the loss of leaving the District (and her favorite margarita spots), she’s also learned how to identify her grief during unpleasant meals.
This year my fiancé planned a birthday weekend getaway based entirely around getting me a good meal at a well-known and well-regarded restaurant in Portland, Maine. The meal started well enough with a gracious entrée to our table-for-two and a handwritten birthday note awaiting me. The menu was narrative, seasonal and with the help of our waitress, I settled on a roasted Pekin duck.
Unfortunately the dinner was a shit-show: appetizers were small, uninspired and under-seasoned; the lighting was so dim we couldn’t really see our food; and my duck—which was promised to be crispy—came out with pale, wet, greasy skin. When questioned about the lack of crispy-skin, the response was “the chef says it is not ideal to change it at this time…” What? We bagged the rest of the meal, skipped the traditional birthday dessert and were glad to see part of our dinner was comped.
While we were initially angry, this experience got me thinking about other bad meals I’ve had and how I’ve dealt with them. You can apply the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief to a dining experience. While I know some may think this is a tacky exercise, the 5 stages have been used on everything from America’s debt problem to failed efforts of picking up women, so yeah, this is happening.
The Five Stages of a Bad Meal
Denial
This tends to happen during the meal itself. You start second guessing yourself: maybe you ordered wrong, or maybe you don’t understand what you’re eating, or maybe your food is the only food that is bad and everyone else loves their food so you had better pretend to like it. You just can’t believe you’re not eating something delicious.
Anger
Much of the anger you feel during a bad meal is about blame. You blame the person who recommended the place. You blame the reviewer who gave it 4 stars. You blame the waitress who told you the duck would have crispy skin. You blame the person who chose it. Or if you chose it, you feel the hot pointed anger of your dining companions and it becomes a deep, deep shame.
Sometimes anger can be about revenge. Maybe you’re so angry you post a crappy review on Yelp, you blast out a few angry tweets and then spend years telling people to avoid the place you went to.
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