Monday, June 15, 2009

Almost on fire

I went with some friends to a recently opened restaurant. We were enjoying the ambiance, good company and classy black silverware when our food arrived. I had taken about two bites of my penne pomodoro and my friend pointed to the window where smoke was billowing into the restaurant.
Several waiters and such rushed over to the window, but it was too late to stop the acrid smoke from filling the room and making the air imbreathable.

We sat at the table, eyes closed and napkins over our faces. Do we evacuate? It doesn't seem to be a fire. Our food just got here--and it's good food.
The other patrons seemed to be leaving.

The waiters came to our table and asked us to please move to another table. They had opened a window on the opposite side of the building and there was a table just beside it for us. They moved all our plates over and we continued eating.
Nothing was really on fire, it seemed, just some short circuit in the signboard outside the window.

One thing that didn't get moved to the new table was my friend's mocha smoothie. She was sad about this. And she asked the waiter about it. They thought it was gone and had removed it, but when she was sad, they brought her a new full one. Very nice.

We were now the only people left in the restaurant (After the man who threw a tantrum over his "long awaited" coffee left--I mean, really, didn't he notice the smoke emergency? Can't he practice a little patience?) and one of the waitresses came over to chat. She wanted to know our names and how our food was and after that she brought another friend over to meet us.

Then we sat there for awhile waiting until finally I asked for the bill, and we were told, there is no bill. Complimentary because of the minor disaster and inconvenience. Even that extra mocha smoothie. Wow.
And then they gave us each a 15% off discount coupon for our next visit. Wow. It wasn't even that much smoke, really.

We left a nice tip.

1 Comments:

Blogger PetFed said...

Are you telling about India ... how lovely!!!

June 16, 2009 4:25 PM  

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