Connecticut Restaurant Confidential: Strange Stories, Odd Orders, + Twisted Tales in the Industry Vol. 1

How many times have you heard bizarre restaurant requests? How about ridiculous customer orders? What about those tales that are strictly between BOH and FOH staff?

I’m sure you’ve even overheard whispers as a customer or you have firsthand experience in the hospitality industry and you know about all the “crazy” that goes on, but either way, there are some doozies out there!

“Lemme get a bacon cheeseburger, minus the beef and the cheese, with lettuce, tomato, and mayo?”

Uhhh…what?! That’s a fuckin BLT.

One time at a bar, I remember a gentleman walked up. Bartender goes, “Hey! What are you havin’?”

His response: “Mmm…I need something good. Oh! How about a blackberry schnapps!”

Safe to say they didn’t have that…because who the fuck steps to a bar and orders a blackberry schnapps?

What we’re getting at here—and what we want to bring to our readers in an ongoing column—is a bit of the wacky, the funny, the puzzling interactions that customers ask of chefs, owners, and all the front of house staff and some of that behind the scenes stuff that’ll leave you saying, “Umm…WHAT?!”

Have a laugh! It’s good for you!

“I wasn’t in yet, but Dave (Cook) tells this story all the time. Guy orders a pizza, comes in to pick it up and when he comes in, he’s talking about how hungry he is, like ‘I don’t think I can wait to get home.’ He’s sitting in his car, and we see him take a bite out of it. He’s having a slice before he gets home. No big deal, right? About 20-25 minutes later we get a call from a furious woman who said, ‘You must have sold me a slice pie! There’s a piece missing!’ So, first of all, it was a Sunday. We don’t sell slices on Sundays. Dave, who was working the front that day, says, ‘What do you mean there’s a piece missing?’ She says, ‘It’s not a full pizza! There’s a piece missing!’ So Dave comes back with, ‘Well, you might wanna talk to your husband, because he was talking about how hungry he was, and he sat in his car for a long time before he left to go home.’ Then there was just silence, about 20 seconds of silence. Then she goes, ‘Oh. I’m sorry about that.’” – Danny Segers, co-owner Letizia’s Pizza

“Around 2006-2007, while working as pastry chef for a high end hotel brand, a high profile celebrity was staying in the hotel and requested a cake for his son’s 21st birthday, on the fly of course. He wanted the cake to be a detailed 3D image of a woman’s vagina, spread eagle. It caused a considerable amount discomfort to the staff, and we wound up not fulfilling the request. It was the only time I can recall not fulfilling a customer’s request while employed with the company. For the record, I was not offended. I was going to make the cake but the concierge that requested it squashed it.” – Susanne Berne, pastry chef and owner of Sweet Brioche Artisan Pastries

“A customer offered me cash, booze, and an unlimited supply of benzos to watch her kids. And then, after a few drinks, asked me to find her someone other than her husband to spend the night with. Saddest part…I did. I had a friend who was into married women only. They had fun.” – Anonymous bartender

“I used to have a private client in the city years ago that I would have to call every morning and find out what he was allergic to that day! And yes, each day was different.” – Chef Plum, celebrity + private chef

“There’s a young lady that comes to (La Taqueria) The Avenue, and she orders two burritos. The first one was grilled chicken and the other is mushroom. She places the order, pays for the order. Then after, she says, ‘Oh, by the way, I need both burritos to be vegan.’ Uh, vegan? Just so you know, the beans are cooked with pork and there are two kinds of cheese. I asked her if she wanted to switch out the chicken to mushroom. She goes, ‘Yeah, OK. So, I’ll do two mushroom burritos.’ So I said, ‘No beans, then?’ She goes, ‘No, the beans are OK. I like the beans.’ Me being me, I repeated back to her the order, ‘Two mushroom burritos, no cheese, but with the beans (that aren’t vegan).’ I swear this is almost verbatim.” – Dennis Lake, chef/owner of La Taqueria

“11 p.m. the restaurant closes (the now closed Restaurant North in Armonk). A couple came in during Hurricane Sandy. They ordered a mushroom flatbread with everything burnt…the mushrooms and the flatbread.” – Chris Cariello, private chef

“In the beginning of the pandemic before any of us had a handle on this thing, we were all saying absolutely foolish shit like, ‘You know, I think we all might learn something about humanity from this. Maybe we all will become better people. Maybe this is the universe’s way of making the world work together. Maybe this is the true dawn of the age of Aquarius.’ You know, stupid shit like that. Well, I realized about two weeks into COVID taking over the world that I was dead wrong in that thinking when I received a specific Facebook notification for the restaurant page. It seems a woman was upset about a dish she recently had and decided to write a nasty review about it. So, me being me, I reached out to this lovely gem of a woman to learn more about her bad experience, which was especially odd to me seeing as how we hadn’t been allowed to have guests in our restaurant for a little over two weeks.

I inquired, ‘Please tell me more about your dining experience so I can refund you your money and try to make things right. When did you dine with us?’ She responded, ‘Oh, I have never been to your restaurant. I work at the hospital. My food was cold, I didn’t like it.’

Now ya see, we had sent 250 meals to a local hospital that day for frontline medical workers. They were sent cold, and prepackaged, because they were meant to be reheated whenever they were needed. It appears that this lady (not even a frontline worker, but that’s not important) got her hands on one of these meals. What’s important is that this “person” and I use that term very loosely, received a free meal and felt the need, no worse, felt that it was acceptable to go online and leave a negative review about their opinion of it, during a time when restaurants were being absolutely crushed and we were just trying to be good people and do something nice for the community. So I called the hospital and tracked down this lady’s boss and sent her the review she posted. I also posted the review on my Instagram.

2,100 people liked my post, and over 100 people commented that this woman was a real asshole. One person, literally one person, and there’s always fucking one, commented that I was self-righteous for sharing her bad review and that I need thicker skin. He also told me that if I felt the need to share that I donated food by exposing this poor woman, then maybe I was donating food for the wrong reasons. I sincerely hope that the dingleberry who wrote that idiotic comment and the lady who wrote the initial review find each other because they’re star-crossed assholes if I’ve ever seen them. This is only one example of about two million that I have as to why the customer isn’t always right.” – Dan Kardos, chef

“Here's a kitchen story: Back in 2002, there was a kitchen in Greenwich that hosted “Porn Fridays.” A kitchen full of hard cooking, bong ripping, shot taking line cooks and wild, table turning, up selling FOH. There was this grill cook/gamer who decided to take the broken standalone fridge and turn it into a skin viewing station with the help of his PlayStation. Mid 90's pornography was the Friday theme. Wait staff, bar staff, kitchen staff all gathered on the line with shift beers and stolen shots of tequila. Massive amounts of giggles and laughter combined with ungodly amounts of pubic hair the likes of which I’d never seen. The soundtrack is hard to recall, but I remember Naughty by Nature's Hip Hop Hooray was playing during one scene. Managing partner walked in, analyzed the situation and decided to partake in said debauchery. Shortly after the viewing he disappeared into his office with a gram of coke, his favorite hostess, and a bottle of house cab. Twenty years later they are married, three children, and live in Cos Cob. Post shift love affairs are real.” – Henry

“I dealt with a woman who chose the day before she placed an order as her shipping date and ground shipping. She was angry her cookies were “late.” She stayed home all day to wait for them and then was sent the tracking number that had a later delivery date. She says, ‘Even Goldbelly ships in two days and I chose a delivery date,’ Said she was going to call her credit card company. So, I had to send her a screenshot that no, she chose the shipping date and ground shipping, not expedited shipping. And she only got the tracking number yesterday when it shipped so why did she stay home all day to wait for it or think it was arriving yesterday? I explained to her we are a small business and aren’t/can’t be Goldbelly, not to mention it’s all outlined in her confirmation email. She didn’t respond to that.” – Anne Grossman, owner of Rebel Daughter Cookies

“One time when I was working as a cook in a snack bar at an entertainment venue, I had a guest on a pretty slow summer morning order French fries. Easy enough. I make and deliver the fries. Then the guest approaches the counter again with empty plate in hand and proceeded a to complain that ‘the fries made his balls feel funny’ while cupping his ball over his shorts. ‘I’m like huh?!’ He then repeats himself more agitated, and this time, with his hands in his pants. My 19 year-old sassy self replied, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.’ He continues the dramatics while a manager pretends to call 911, and he is yelling about calling the health department. As he exits the building he chucks this large soft drink at the general manager’s office door.” – Victoria Lundgren, former snack bar cook turned nail artist

“We served mussels to a person with a shellfish allergy after they repeatedly assured us that mussels were fine.” – Charlie Gilhuly, GM at Barcelona Waypointe

“Tween boy buys a six-pack of mini cupcakes, the price of which we hadn’t raised in eight years. Tween boy’s mom comes in five minutes later with empty box and asks the price. She starts yelling at the high school girl behind the counter about what a rip off it is and yells ‘Tell your boss this is grand theft of money!’ I’m not sure if that’s a misdemeanor or a felony but we have yet to face arrest.” – The Cake Box (Robert Byrnes and Jordan Gregory)

“May I have a French onion soup with no cheese and the onions strained out?”

“May I have a sour apple martini with blue cheese stuffed olives?”

– Patti Minami, assistant manager/head bartender at BJ Ryan’s East

“About a month ago, some dude comes in and says that his truck broke down in front of the cafe. So, he orders breakfast and hangs out in front. He got so comfortable there. Literally has his massive dog with him, his backpacks on our tables, he removes his shirts, his shoes, and takes out an acoustic guitar. A regular customer calls me and asks, ‘Do you know there’s a half-naked dude playing guitar in front of your store?’ I had to go kick him out.” – Breno Donatti, founder of Winfield Street Coffee

“I have customers order veggie burgers with bacon. All. The. Time. And once I had a customer claim they chipped a tooth on a stuffed mushroom.” – Joe Attonito, owner jjStacks in Brookfield

“With patio season officially in full swing, it wouldn’t have been a week without the most glorious of humans coming out. Here’s a few of my favorite people from the week.”

“A woman complained the peach mango cider tastes ‘very peachy and wasn’t expecting that.’”

“Someone complained we didn’t have enough gluten free beverage options. We have a gluten free beer, 20-plus seltzers, four ciders, and a full bar.”

“And the absolute classic was someone telling us we should get stuff from Tree House.”

(For context, Tree House Brewing DOES NOT DISTRIBUTE. They never have.)

– Amanda Fromerth, GM at Elicit Brewing

“Christmas Eve 2020, a customer called while we were cleaning up after closing. We proceeded to tell her that we are closed, and the kitchen was already cleaned up for the night. She then asked to just hear the menu. She kept us on the phone for a while asking what’s in everything then convinced us that she’s been driving and hasn’t eaten. She asked if she can just get a falafel. We reopened the prep station and fryer and made her a falafel. She then called back because she couldn’t find our store and had us giving her directions. When she arrived, she complained that we gave bad directions and sent her the wrong way. She left with her food. Not 10 minutes later the phone rings and we answer. She complained about not having enough cucumbers, not enough tahini, and the falafel wasn’t to her liking. We refunded her. Next thing we know she’s posting a negative review anyhow.” – Ladle & Loaf (Ephrat and Benny Lieblich)

This column will return…