Altercation at pub

[Chellyp]

My partner and I had a roast dinner at a pub. The dinner was awful. The gravy was burnt, stuffing was burnt and carrots were hard. I just ate it as I don’t want to complain in case they spit in the food. My partner complained and he never complains. They brought him another dinner but the same issue and he ate some of it. They said the chef burns the gravy and just don’t use the gravy. Why pay for gravy you can’t use because a chef don’t know how to make gravy.

My partner said to a couple how was your roast dinner and the said they enjoyed theirs. I could hear they had New Zealand accent and they got really aggressive to him as they were leaving saying you English are grizzlies, always complaining and never happy.

We were shocked they were so aggressive and being stereotypical. My partner did not say anything as he was not expecting it and in shock. I saw the guy pay the bar his final bill and said you were really rude speaking to my partner like that and left.

I said to my partner it is not his fault but don’t speak to people in the pub as we don’t know how they will respond. My partner said they had been watching us a lot when he had complained about food.

Where can you go without bad service and rude customers?

Not sure what you're after here, OP. If it's recommendations, you need to say roughly where you are.

If it's opinions on what happened, the people who called you grizzlers seem to have been unnecessarily rude. Hard to say about your partner without being there - the complaint in itself sounds reasonable, but it does depend if he got arsey with staff who were stuck with having to serve poor food.

You should have sent the food back and refused to pay; it sounds disgusting.

As for the New Zealanders, I'm not sure why your partner was soliciting reviews but you can't always be sure of the reaction you'll get from strangers.

Where can you go without bad service and rude customers?

I find Trip Advisor really helpful in this regard.

My partner was very polite with the staff. I will be leaving a review. Yeah, I don’t get why he asked them as they did not complain so clearly enjoyed it. Just a bad experience all round.

I’m not sure where you are located so I can’t recommend places but I live in Cornwall, England and there are LOTS of nice places to eat with great customer service.
if I’m not happy with the food then I would have sent it back.

Please explain a stereotypical new zealander
A disgusting generalisation, factually incorrect

I believe the OP means the Kiwis were being 'stereotypical' ie using British stereotypes which are disgusting generalisations.

If I was having a nice, peaceful meal somewhere and someone else tried to drag me into their drama, I wouldn't be best-pleased either.

Well, as a pp has said, reviews are usually a good indicator, you will find a bad review for every establishment I would think because it's impossible to keep everyone happy all the time, it's just a fact of life that some people cannot accept that humans make errors at times, processes don't work for every single situation that could ever occur, things break and some people are professional complainers. But if the overall picture is good then it's usually a good sign.

As for no rude customers, unfortunately you're going to be hard pushed to find that I'm afraid, they're everywhere, and when you instigate the interaction you don't control the response, nor does the establishment.

Leave a factual review about the food, but I'd leave the bit about the other customers, seems like your partner was trying to garner support (maybe a "See! They didn't like it either!") as 'proof' you weren't unreasonable? And on this occasion it backfired. You obviously have different standards to them, that's allowed and they shouldn't have been aggressive and confrontational about it, but then that's the risk you run I'm afraid, they defended the food/service because they didn't see an issue with what they had.

And nice view you have of hospitality staff there, assuming they'd spit in your food because you complain. Why do you assume that? Do you assume all hospitality staff are disgusting thugs and would lower themselves to do something like this in petty revenge? You've complained about the New Zealanders stereotyping you as grizzly English but then have basically done the same thing about hospitality staff.

It was rude to involve strangers, and especially for you to admonish the man afterwards. They may have really not wished to get involved in your complaints, say if it was a rare treat or if they have their own issues.

Perfectly fine to send the food back. Better to find somewhere else if everything has turned up burnt though as that shows the standards are poor rather than one element going wrong.

i worked in hospitality loads as a student and nobody I worked with would have dreamed of spitting in food.

Try trip advisor for good recommendations.