Back to the kitchen?

[Johdus Fanfoozal]

My wife and I were at a well-received seafood restaurant tonight in D.C. (Wash Post raved about it; high Zagat ratings, etc.)

Ordered an $18 crabcake, which was excellent until the fourth bite when I crunched down on a piece of shell, the size of a tooth.

Settle a debate between the missus and myself: Is this grounds for sending it back?

 

[kwilkinson]

absolutely. or at the very least have the waitress tell the exec chef so the chef de partie gets yelled at

 

[SField]

Originally Posted by Johdus Fanfoozal

My wife and I were at a well-received seafood restaurant tonight in D.C. (Wash Post raved about it; high Zagat ratings, etc.)

Ordered an $18 crabcake, which was excellent until the fourth bite when I crunched down on a piece of shell, the size of a tooth.

Settle a debate between the missus and myself: Is this grounds for sending it back?

I almost never send anything back but when they give you something inedible and something that might hurt you you definitely should send it back. I can almost guarantee they'll be mortified and comp you something.

 

[enjoiii]

I'm not usually one to send stuff back, but for something like that I totally would. They would probably comp you something for that.

 

[CouttsClient]

Unless you were chomping on a tooth/filling that fell out you should have certainly sent it back

 

[JhwkMac]

It is grounds for sending it back. I would say it is not grounds to badmouth the restaurant or be upset. When you are going through such large amount of crab meat, as I imagine a large DC seafood restaurant would, there is going to be some shell that gets in there.

One neat trick that we did at a restaurant I worked at is in the room where the seafood is broken down, we had a UV light installed so that when we picked through crab meat we would turn all of the lights off and turn on the UV. makes the shell stand out easily from the meat and be easily removed.

 

[Johdus Fanfoozal]

I wanted to send it back. My wife didn't. She argued what the poster above said: that bits of shells often get into crabmeat. I argued that I'm paying $18 for that not to happen. She fluttered her eyes, pouted a bit and had me in the palm of her hand. I didn't send it back.

The crabcake was half eaten by the time I bit the shell. Truth be told, it was still so good and I was so damn hungry, that I gobbled up the rest of it with abandon.