Save us Gordo!

It's not very often I'd wish Gordon Ramsey on an eatery but today was that day. And I didn't want him to just stroll in tieing up his chef whites and throw out a few suggestions, no I felt in this case he needed to parachute in and stage a coup, confiscating the salt before anyone else got hurt.

The town was a short drive from home and rhymes with 'Back Verandah', festooned with expensive junk shops you can easily and frequently lose your way in and crawling with tourists. 

Today being Easter Sunday that was definitely the case. The town was jumping more than Jack Flash as a bustling Stones gig. As we strolled in to one of the pubs, we were warned that lunch was at least a 50 minute wait. Fair enough then. We found a table, ordered and then watched an hour and a half drag by while bemused patrons wondered if the kitchen had run out of puff.

No such problems at the bar though, where four bar staff stood ready take your order and if that included an ingredient they ran out of, well one of them was already used to making the occasional supermarket stop up the road. If only they could have spared a staff member to take on the backlog in the kitchen where both confusion and a lack or order seemed to reign. 

I watched meals exit and a couple make a return for whatever reason but very few actually stopped at any of the tables around us. Amazingly after waiting for a touch over an hour for anything, one of the diners was told the kitchen had run out of squid. They had a choice of calamari or a refund and knowing how long it had taken to get to that point, they wisely took the money.

Finally 15 minutes after the initial 1.5 hourd the meals started to arrive, in no discernible pattern. They'd fix up half of one table before moving onto the next. The two pork bellies for our table arrived...well before the kids meals. Considering one was the very quick and easy nuggets and chips and the pork belly had more parts than my Subaru parked nearby, this didn't really make much sense. Neither did the chicken burger orders (there were two) because one came out while the other lagged another ten minutes behind, arriving with some grapes in the salad where the first one came with none. Surely two of the same meal on the same docket would be cooked at the same time or was there only enough space in the kitchen for one burger every ten minutes? I'd ask but I wouldn't get an answer for at least another hour.

Sadly my last to arrive crispy chicken burger seemed to have lost a royal rumble match in a Himalayan rock salt mine as everything was drowning in it. Except for the chips however, they seemed to be made out of salt rocks themselves, cunningly disguised as potato. I'm chugging through a bottle of water while I write this because an hour and a half after the fact, my mouth still feels salty. Ooof.

Okay, I get its a busy day for trade. I get there's staff shortages across the hospitality industry because post covid, everyone suddenly realised how much they enjoyed not working on weekends and changed careers. But I'm also fairly good on my own limitations and if I don't think I can perform your life saving triple bypass while giving my car an oil change, I'm going to say that and tell you up front. A simple 'Sorry guys, kitchen is flat out with backed up orders and you might be waiting a while for food' is more than enough for us to thank you for your honesty and try the bakery two doors up instead. I'm sure the kitchen would probably appreciate that too.

As for the salt issue, well that's where I'd love to see Gordon Ramsey point out the problem loudly enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear. Something along the lines of..

Save us GR!