Monday, October 06, 2008

Experience at Indi Joe Restaurant

It was my colleagues Bharadwaj's birthday and we decided to go out for lunch to celebrate. After some discussion, we decided to go to Indi Joe Restaurant (from BJN group) in Airport road. We entered the place and were comfortably seated for a while before proceeding for the Buffet. Firstly, I saw a dead mosquito on the plates kept and a while later a moth flying around. When I pointed this to the person in charge, he quickly removed the plate. Then, after picking up the soup, we proceeded further to pick up the starters. I, being a vegetarian was looking for vegetarian stuff. At that point, I saw a dish which looked delicious but looked like a non-veg dish. I mentioned that to my friend, who pointed me to the menu card placed next to it which said 'veg kabab'. So, picked it up. As I was heading back to my seat, I heard a friend of mine who said that there board which said veg-shrimps. How could shrimp be classified as veg? Without giving much thought to it, I proceeded back to my seat and started eating. I tasted the 'veg kabab' and didn't like it and kept it aside. At that point, a friend noticed that the 'veg kabab' we were eating had some meat in that. Then quickly a couple of others noticed it too. That was too much for my veggie friends. This being the dussera season, many of my colleages had given up non-veg food. The host himself was a staunch vegetarian. He doesn't even taste egg. He was very upset as he too had tasted a portion of the same dish. We called the people in charge and told them about what had happened. By now, they had even removed the board next to the dish which said 'veg kabab'. They had realized their blunder.
We decided to walk out of the place. When the manager of the place came to us and apologized for their mistake. But by now all of has had decided not to stay back. But the manager insisted that he stay back and accept their hospitality. He said that he would serve us 'A la carte'. He pleaded us to give him a chance to make up for their mistake. I think that was the least he could do for us. Our lunch which was taken care by the hotel.
What was different about this restaurant and others was that these people were polite enough to accept their mistake and make up for it. Many other restaurants would have probably just apologized and would have probably let us walk out. I have been to many restaurants where they hardly care for your feelings and their negative publicity. I really liked the manager's attitude who assigned a person to take care of our table to see that nothing else went wrong. They even gave a complementary birthday cake.
These small gestures from the hotel staff seemed to calm down the birthday boy a little, who could not eat anything after the incident. He was good enough not to spoil the occasion for others even thought he felt really bad about the whole incident.
But still this was a big act of negligence from such a big group like BJN.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As Nagendra aptly put it, it was the least they could do. For most of the guys it might be big deal, but for me it really was something so bad that I cannot put it in words. I really feel violated and I feel helpless. I am sure there will be notions as to "look at people who have nothing to eat", "big deal its nothing", "it will be out of your system soon" etc... You need to be probably raped to know what it is, if not, its just some tissue which gets torn, big deal. This is not about being religious or spiritual or anything like that. Its much more. I was not forced to be a Veggie nor do I fear any repulsion of being outcast from anywhere, but its just me and myself which cannot come to terms with it. I am a great food lover and people keep telling me, "If you ate non-veg you would have so much more". I chose not to because I believe in something and I had followed it till yesterday, but no more. I feel its not the hotel which handled it well but it was myself who did handle it. Knowing myself it would have been a lot different had it been my way. I know people do mistakes, and that is the reason world has been so scary to live. I know it was negligence which caused this, but at what cost? I am still sure that there will be sympathizers who would say after all it was human error and what is done is done. Precisely what is done is done and only way is to forget it, is it? What did I do? Like any other Common Man, I bit my tongue not to spoil the party and not hurt the Human responsible for negligence, accepted a free Lime water and walked out having lost. Hope this never happens to anyone else. I really cant say more, but this was really a rape of my beliefs.

Parisarapremi said...

ಈ ಕಾರಣಕ್ಕೇ ಅನೇಕರು ಸಸ್ಯಾಹಾರ, ಮಾಂಸಾಹಾರ ಒಟ್ಟಿಗೇ ನೀಡುವ ಹೊಟೆಲುಗಳಿಗೆ ಹೋಗುವುದಿಲ್ಲ. ಕೆಲವು ಸಲ "ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲದೆ" ತಪ್ಪು ಆಗಿ ಹೋಗಿ, "ಬರ್ತ್ ಡೇ ಬಾಯ್" ಹೇಳಿದ ಹಾಗೆ, ತಮ್ಮ ಬಾಳ್ವೆಯ ನಂಬಿಕೆಯ ಮೇಲೆ ಅತ್ಯಾಚಾರವೆಸಗಿದಂತೆಯೇ..