Medium rare deal

Went to Quo Vadis on Dean Street last night on the Sunday Times £15 for three courses deal. These deals are a funny business. Presumably, the thinking by the marketing people is to get people who would not otherwise consider dining at Quo Vadis to try the restaurant. If they really like it, they will come back at full rates. However, what actually happens is that because the people who turn up for the deal don’t behave like the usual clientele, the staff at the restaurant aren’t used to it and get all snotty, reinforcing the behaviour of the new clientele to which the staff originally took exception. So you get a self–perpetuating cycle, where the new guests think “stuff this, these guys think we’re arseholes, we’re not coming back here” and the staff think “thank Christ we don’t have to deal with chavs like this all the time — when does this blasted deal end”?

Last night, I reckon more than half the people in the restaurant were on the deal. Let’s have a look at what was going on… The table of four next to us on one side all sent their fish back because they considered it undercooked. Once they had eaten, the waiter enquired whether everything was OK. One of the men replied “it was fine, but there wasn’t much of it”! The waiter looked somewhat askance. One of the women said “Derek, I think they think we’re plebs”. Derek said “that’s alright, we’re off somewhere else to fill up with another dinner when we get out of here”.

One of the couple to our other side merely insisted on talking loudly into his mobile phone during dinner — admittedly a sin so common it is scarcely to be remarked upon. To be fair, it was not long before his dining companion shushed him.

Meanwhile, across the room, a women in another group of four was causing a colossal scene because the restaurant had allegedly run out of her chosen dessert. Insisting on seeing the manager, she launched into a tirade about how “a premier London restaurant at 10 o’clock” shouldn’t have run out of stuff, even if it was a promotional deal. She pronounced herself “absolutely disgusted”. Strangely enough, the rant produced the desired dessert, so maybe the restaurant had been playing a bit fast–and–loose. She later called the manager back out post–dessert for an almost exact repeat of her earlier points; for reasons I don’t quite understand.

So now we come to the two of us. We’d had a great dining experience with good food and a good bottle of sauvignon blanc. All was well until we decided to order an after–dinner drink with our coffees. First, they gave us the menu card with beers, Coke and Fanta on it. No, we said, we want more of a digestif. They came back with the menu card with the Baileys and Malibu and Midori on it (which I swear they must have had specially printed when they knew that they would running this deal… “what will zoze barbarians drink comme digestif, Pierre? Ch'ez pas, Jean–Marc, go and buy ze Malibu from Safeway, eh?”). No, the real menu. The one you normally give out after dinner.

We finally got there. We’ll have the Armagnac, please (there was only one Armagnac on the menu). When the bill arrived, I was surprised to note that two vintage Cognacs appeared on it, at a price which came to about the same as the total value of the food we had eaten. We called the waiter. “Yes, I pour ze Cognacs, of course. Ze Cognac is complettlee different from Armagnac — you should have refuse immediately, is unbelievable!”. Well maybe it is, but unfortunately I don’t go out quaffing French brandy in nice restaurants often enough to know the difference in a blind tasting, without comparison, after a bottle of wine, when I am anyway predisposed towards believing that what I have been presented with is actually what I have ordered. Also, how the heck did you come up with the Hine Antique 25 year old from the middle of the Cognacs list when we asked for “the Armagnac” and pointed to the one and only Armagnac on the menu (separate from the Cognacs)? I mean, even if you were confused, wasn’t it worth checking? Slightly odd that two punters on a Sunday Times deal decide to finish up with the third most expensive brandy in the joint?

Well, we paid just for the Armagnacs, felt like tossers, the staff no doubt thought “bloody Sunday Times deal scum” and we left after what was nearly a perfect night feeling pretty patronised by the waiter. I almost paid for the Cognacs, just to prove that I wasn’t bothered, but I decided I could afford more self–confidence than that. I have nothing to prove to those guys, it was their fault and they treated me like a tosser. Will we go back? Don’t think so, dude.

Reality 1 : Marketing 0.