Dear Eric: My favorite local pub has wonderful food except for the fries. They take up half the plate and are inedible. My last chicken sandwich was flanked with a huge serving of flaccid cardboard-tasting fries served cold. The owner would probably save money and keep customers if they served bagged frozen beer-battered fries which are predictable and cheap. Three meals at this pub over a month with no improvement in the fries is my limit. How should I let the owner know his soggy fries are running me off? Just serve potato salad if you like them wet and cold like that. Reliable, delicious fries are one of the pillars of a good pub feed and a trusted bar.
– French Fry Flop
Dear French Fry: I love low-stakes drama, and I love French fries, so I’m eating this question up (with ketchup and sometimes ranch). A simple path: Just tell the owner what your experience has been and what you’d like to see coming out of the kitchen. They’d surely appreciate a direct conversation with a customer willing to give them another chance more than a stranger leaving a scathing online review.
A good way into this conversation, and others like it, is to ask, “Are you open to some feedback?” Now, sometimes the answer is “No, thank you.” But the restaurant industry lives on word-of-mouth (pun partially intended). If you don’t like the fries, you’re not likely to recommend the pub. If you do, you’ll bring friends to the place. You write that it’s your favorite pub, save for this one thing. If I were the owner, I’d want to make it your favorite place without reservation. And if this particular owner brushes you off, maybe next time order a salad or soup on the side instead.
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Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.
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