Complacency is one thing I absolutely hate about good hotels. But it is the strongest force that takes over a place rated good, and ends up being at its very root cause of downfall and unpopularity within a year of its ‘good’ rating, or so I have observed!
While its tough to get complacent when it comes to the taste of the food served, given that the cook follows the same steps each day, it is very easy to lose track of quality once a restaurant has established a reasonable amount of fame. But am surprised how little attention, restaurants pay to this key factor, after arriving at the threshold of success. Don’t they realise that even though the food is excellent, customers might not turn up if they found stapler-pins in their kababs or hair in the upma?
Yes, it is astonishing, isn’t it? That they manage to make big goof-ups like this!? What started me on this topic is the chip of crockery that I found in the tamarind sauce I was dipping my chandini kabab in at Samarkhand last Saturday. Given the dim lighting within the place, I mistook it to be a seed or such-like and tried chewing at it. I donot give up easy, so after a bit of struggle, I accepted that it might be a bit of bone, carelessly mixed up with the kabab. And then, sorry about this absolute lack of dinner-table etiquette, but my curiosity leaped over all that etiquette and I pulled out the bit to have a closer look. Guess what!? Yup, it was a bit of the crockery indeed, brown and smooth on one side and chipped and pale-white on the other. It was confirmed as much, upon being shown to the manager.
What really amazed me was the nonchalance of the restaurant managers, the absolute lack of apology or any smooth words at all from the whole bunch. They just took the piece back with them. To do what, you ask? To put it back in the jar of tamarind sauce perhaps!? You will probably go on to say that this is my fault when I narrate to you that this is the second such instance I have come across in this same place, Samarkhand. Six months back, over similar dim-lighting I pulled out a stapler-pin, after it gashed lightly in my mouth. Yes, it was in my piece of starter again!
Forgive me, but I have a weakness for their Dum Biryani, which has been overcome with the last bit of crockery piece I stumbled upon. No more of Samarkhand for me, even if it means missing the perfect Dum Biryani and their out-of-this-world kababs. I might have reconsidered and continued with my weakness for their biryani, had a simple apology come my way. But Samarkhand and its bunch or pin-feeders refuse to step down from the ladder of complacency. Bah!
This kind of taking success and popularity for granted is not just Samarkhand’s fault. I have seen this kind of stupidity at many good places. Hair under muffins at Cafe Coffee Days, hair in the upma at the moderately-scaled Sukh Sagar, hair in idli, eye lashes (surely not mine!) in lemon soda, coffee, sugar. Why? Why give up when you are so close to being someone’s favourite eat-out!? Why take the pleasure out of eating-out for a person who is choosing to come to you!? I simply donot get it!
Surely it is foolish to believe that you will continue to have this rush and this huge demand for your food when it is equivalent to a health hazard? Surely it is foolish to believe that customers will flock, no matter what, even though there are so many more new places to explore? Surely it is not good business sense this, absolute disregard for quality? Tell me?
eeek… there goes my fav dum biryani haunt