Thursday, December 27, 2012

Eating Out, Don't Be Shy About Complaining

The other day my friend and I met for lunch at Bleeker Square, a dairy restaurant just off of Zion Square in the heart of downtown Jerusalem.  I've eaten there many times before.  Their "business lunch" includes soup with the main course, making it a better deal than the very nearby
Rimon. Rimon does have a cheaper option, ns45- versus the ns49, they both have, but the ns45 choices are all high in carbohydrates.  And Rimon doesn't give a complementary soup with the meal.

When I had been at Bleeker barely two weeks earlier with a different friend we had a choice of soups and chose the delicious vegetable one.  This time we were told that there was only the lentil soup for the business lunch.  When they served us, we noticed that it looked a bit strange, nothing at all like a good lentil soup, neither color nor texture.  But since I had always liked their soups I didn't think twice about tasting it.  Yuck!  It was sour, spoiled, yes, absolutely disgusting.  I quickly called over the waitress and told her that it should be dumped and that we needed a fresh substitute/replacement.  They were very polite and gave us their onion soup.  Now, I don't like onion soup.  It's usually too salty and too full of cheese.  This one didn't seem to have cheese, but it did have some artificial thickener.  I didn't finish it.

For the main course, my friend and I decided to order different salads and share them, the Bleeker Salad and a salad with mushrooms and quinoa.  The waitress was nice about bringing extra plates for us.  The quinoa-mushroom salad was better than the Bleeker one, but both were too salty for my taste and covered with that cheese a lot of restaurants use.  I suffered the rest of the day from that salt burn feeling in my mouth and had to drink a lot of water.

If I ever return to that restaurant I'll stick with their tuna salad or try the quinoa patties.

But one thing for sure, I'm glad I complained about the soup!  They had a lot of nerve serving spoiled food to the customers!

PS they also give a free glass of juice with the business lunch and although they charge more for juice on their menu than coffee, they refused to let us substitute coffee for juice.

8 comments:

"the other friend" said...

really surprised that they served spoiled soup. the food was fine when we ate there before, including both the vegetable soup and the quinoa patties.

Batya said...

yes, friend
surprised and disappointed

Lorri said...

Oy! I am never shy about complaining if the food is spoiled. After all, it can definitely affect one's health. One can't be too shy about it.

Shabbat Shalom!

Batya said...

That's for sure, Lorri. For the following two days I was nervous about food poisoning.

Ester said...

Thanks for this review! I went to Bleeker in Yokneam once, and while we weren't served spoiled food, I wasn't so impressed...
The food looked pretty but was lacking in flavor somewhat.
Oh well.

Batya said...

Ester, I didn't realize it was a chain.

Ester said...

It is indeed a chain!

Also, just wanted to let you know that this post was included in the Shvat Kosher Cooking Carnival. Ask your readers to check it out – http://www.kosherfrugal.com/2013/01/kosher-cooking-carnival-shvat-edition.html
Thanks!

Batya said...

Ester, today I had an even worse experience there. Yes, I'll have to blog it.