Smitty’s Family Restaurants

I had the single worst dining experience of my life at this particular Smitty’s location on the weekend.
There were 5 of us, and this is what happened.
Our waitress came and took our drink order shortly after we sat down. She returned with our drinks fairly promptly. One of the glasses was dirty. It took her far too long to bring a clean glass.
We ordered our food a few minutes later and waited. And waited… and waited. Finally, after waiting for at least 30 minutes for our meal, my girlfriend flagged down the waitress and asked what was taking so long. She claimed that the hold up was due to the kitchen accidentally putting dressing directly on my mother’s salad (she had requested it on the side). Apparently, it takes 15 – 20 minutes to make a Caesar salad.
Shortly after that, some food arrived at our table. My dish came out first. Except… it wasn’t what I ordered. The side was correct, but the main was wrong. The server didn’t apologize, but rather said, «Oh…» and walked back to the kitchen with the food.
A moment later she returned with all of our food. The side dishes were all mixed up, but once we sorted that out, we had all of our food and started eating.
The waitress checked on us maybe once more in the duration of the meal, which meant that no one got their water refilled when they ran out.
After a few bites of food, all but two of us (my dad and I) realized that the food was burnt and tasted awful. But, they were hungry and we couldn’t track down our server to get it fixed, so they ate a fair amount of it before finally giving up.
Here’s a list of what was wrong:
— the chicken on 3 people’s chicken sandwiches was burnt
— the my mother’s tomato was so hard that she couldn’t pierce it with her fork
— my brother’s fries had a scrap of lemon rind in them (this speaks more to poor presentation and a lack of care on the part of the kitchen than of poor food, but it still says something about the quality of this restaurant)
— Remember also the dirty glass, and there was also a knife that had dried lettuce on it.
After waiting quite a long time for the server to return to our table, my girlfriend finally got up from her seat and went to find her. She returned with the server, explained the problem, and asked to speak to the manager.
When the manager came over, we explained the situation to him. He didn’t apologize. He asked if we wanted the meals replaced with new ones. We said no. We didn’t want to wait for a second meal that might be just as bad as the first. He walked away.
A few minutes later he returned with a $ 5 gift card and said, «I will take $ 10 off the bill, as well.» He then walked away again.
All of us at the table kind of looked at one another and finally someone said, «Did he mean $ 10 of each of the bad meals, or off the total bill?»
When the server brought us our bill, we saw that it was only $ 10 off the total. Given the ³⁄₅ of our order was screwed up, and each meal cost about $ 10, this was unacceptable. We were more than willing to pay for the 2 meals that weren’t burnt, but we didn’t feel we should have to pay for food that was essentially inedible. We told the waitress as much.
During this time, I excused myself to use the washroom, so I’m not sure what transpired, but when I returned to the table the waitress was there again, telling us that she couldn’t change the bill and that the manager was saying that everything was her fault (including the food that she, as a server, had no hand in cooking). We again demanded to speak to the manager.
This time, the server went to a different manager — possibly the owner — who was sitting a few tables away from us. They talked for 5 or 10 minutes before she left him, walked past us, and went to talk to the first manager again.
When our waitress didn’t return to our table for another 20 minutes, all of us were very angry and someone in our group finally said, «OK, we’re leaving.»
As we walked out of the restaurant, we saw the manager and waitress at the front arguing over our bill. As we walked past, the waitress ran out to catch us, telling us, «Please come back. I’ll have to pay for this if you don’t.»
At this point, we had all but forgiven the waitress and decided that the blame for the whole situation sat squarely on the shoulders of the manager. We didn’t want the server to have to pay for a meal that should have been comped, so we went back and again proceeded to tell the manager that we would pay for the meals that weren’t ruined, but that was all. We said that the waitress was NOT to pay for his error and that we were absolutely appalled that he wouldn’t come over and speak to us for the 20 minutes before we finally decided to leave.
At that point, he finally said, «OK, we’ll take care of it.» Never once in this encounter did he make eye contact with any of us, and he never once apologized. We left, but are pretty certain that he made the waitress pay for the meal, even though he said he wouldn’t.
I will never go back.