Waiter, where is my food (or wine)?

It was the smell that the table noticed first, which was reminiscent of a burnt rubber tyre. This would be exciting enough in the pit lane of the Goodwood Revival, but not what you expect in a fashionable Mayfair restaurant. My wife was hosting the departure of a much-loved member of her magazine. It started on a high with old stories being told and personalities dissected with the assistance of some excellent cocktails. In fact, all went swimmingly until the food turned up. She had ordered Chicken Paillard (in my view, like Wiener Schnitzel, a brave choice), but what she hadn’t expected was that it would be accompanied by a stench, wafting ahead of its arrival. Once it was on the table, with its latticework of burnt charcoal stripes, it was clearly not fit for purpose. Not wishing to dampen the fun around the table, she took a bite. It was nasty and inedible. The waitress nodded in sympathy and took it to be replaced.

Shortly afterwards, she very reluctantly brought the plate back – still with the bite out of the chicken. Covered in embarrassment, she told my wife the chef refused to replace it because that was how it was supposed to be cooked. Rather than face further awkwardness, she left it uneaten and ordered something else. She can’t even recall if it was taken off the bill – when things go as badly wrong as this, it’s hard to focus on the follow up.

It is a puzzle how people, allegedly in the hospitality industry, can get something so egregiously wrong, but it happens more often than you would think. What makes it even more puzzling is how little official advice there is on what needs to be done when problems arise with a meal. I checked out various manuals for restaurants, including the Bible of them all, The New Catering Repertoire, a 1300-page work devoted to everything you need to know to run a restaurant. Volume Two goes into the minutiae required, such as Receiving Customers, where to place the caviar knife and Dealing with Spillages on Tablecloths. However, nowhere in all of these detailed pages of common-sense advice is there is a single word about how to deal with a complaint – valid or otherwise – from a customer.

It would probably be difficult to categorise all the sorts of issues that can go wrong, but I was impressed with one ad hoc solution to a customer complaining to a Soho chef about a grub in her salad. He simply bent down, picked it up and then ate it.

A recent trip to Marseille provided me with some virtually textbook examples of how to both ameliorate and to inflame an unhappy customer. We hadn’t been back since some memorable meals at Gérald Passedat’s Le Petit Nice, which is arguably the greatest seafood restaurant in France, if not the Mediterranean.

On this occasion, time was in shorter supply, since we had to visit the recently completed MuCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations) on the site of Fort St-Jean, which dominates the entrance of the Old Port. There are any number of simple restaurants nearby, so we chose Chez Madie les Gallinettes, known for its classic take on Provençal Cuisine, including such obscurities as couilles d’agneau (lambs testicles) as well as more conventional offerings like bouillabaisse. The outdoors space looked full but we were more than happy to take the last remaining table, which was only half in the shade. What more could one desire? A sunny table within paddling distance of the two and a half thousand year-old port and a commendable €18 set lunch?

The drinks and gazpacho turned up within ten minutes, but then we entered the dreaded limbo of waiting interminably for the next course. After nearly half an hour, anxious enquiries to the scurrying waiter elicited off the shoulder comments about how it was coming in five minutes until the owner, a kindly middle-aged woman, apologised and said she would sort it out. Before she did, a complimentary plate of delicious hors d’oeuvres arrived, including fresh asparagus stalks, grilled red mullet and fried squid. Fifteen minutes later, the main dishes emerged, including my gardiane de taureau, a sticky Camargue bull daube. We rather rashly then ordered some glasses of wine, though alas, they made it onto the bill, but not the table. On departure, we pointed this out to madame, who was already furious with her staff and kept apologising and offering us wine. Overall, the service was extraordinarily incompetent, but we left with no hard feelings as we felt that every effort had been made to sort it out. The secret here was to leave us with the feeling that the management were on our side.

If only the same could be said of our attempt at an evening meal at Le Bistrot des Dames on the opposite side of the port. Located at the far end of Place aux Huiles, it was a buzzy place with tables spilling onto the street. We ordered drinks and food and then absorbed the atmosphere, which was confirmation that the revival of the Old Port was well under way. French friends had warned us that service in Marseilles has always been problematical, not just for tourists but anyone who was from beyond the city limits. Twenty minutes on and still no sign of the drinks, which prompted me to walk into the restaurant to speed things up. Ten minutes later, the drinks arrived, but any attempt to discover when the food might appear was met with a vague promise that it was on the way.

After another delay, the waiters would simply ignore the request and simply pretend we were not there. We decided the only correct response was to become invisible ourselves by leaving, which is the first time I have ever done this, though the staff almost seemed relieved to have fewer people to deal with. Although I rarely rely on TripAdvisor before eating somewhere, it was salutary to read the comments from others. Everything seemed to be fine there until the past year, when the majority of comments were about the interminable delays and rudeness of the staff, including one poor customer who was threatened with violence after he complained.

Ultimately, it is the sincerity of the response that matters – I still fume about being kept from our allotted table at a smart place in Manhattan, because some “personality” turned up unannounced. We were given a conciliatory glass of champagne while we sat in reception but it felt robotic and hollow.

All of this pales into insignificance compared to the story an hotelier told me. An elderly couple had wanted to celebrate their wedding anniversary at one of the most famous hideaways on Bali, so had a special bottle of Romanée-Conti 69 (retail price £10,000 plus) shipped out weeks in advance. They arrived for dinner but were puzzled not to find their treasured bottle decanted and waiting by the side of the table. It turned out it had been sent to the wrong table, where the guests thanked the sommelier profusely before drinking it. History does not relate which shack on Kuta Beach currently employs the sommelier.