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canyonwalkerItaly Travelog #27
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 29 May 2025, 8:30pm
This evening we sat for an elegant dinner at one of the resort's restaurants. We weren't planning on it originally, but after the oopsie at breakfast this morning the restaurant manager offered to comp us dinner.
At 7pm, the earlier reservation available as that's when the restaurant opens for dinner— restaurants in Italy generally only start serving dinner at 7 or even 7:30pm— the weather was still warm, so we opted to sit out on the terrazza. The view was lovely. Though we still had to stand up and crane our necks to see the beach in the distance. 😅
Hawk ordered a dish of spaghetti while I ordered grilled duck. We shared an appetizer of hummus— "Just one?" the waitress asked, bordering on snidely— and a side dish of roasted potatoes.
The duck arrived artfully prepared on a plate with some kind of stacked scalloped potato and either kale or spinach or something else similar. It tasted kind of like kale in that it tasted like spinach but not as good. 😅 And it was served with a chocolate sauce. Yes, that's chocolate sauce you can see on my plate in the photo above. It's a strange choice on the part of the chef, IMO. While it didn't go poorly with the duck it also didn't strike me as, "OMG, why haven't I ever had this pairing before?"
Dessert was a case of "WTF?" customer service. Every item on the dessert menu seemed to have chocolate in it. Hawk, who can't eat chocolate (it gives her stomach problems), asked if any of the desserts could be prepared without chocolate. The waitress initially said no but then, apparently because she wasn't sure about what Hawk was asking given language differences, brought out her manager. The manager was kind of combative about what was in the food, so Hawk said No to dessert. Forcefully.
The manager then, showing that she actually was combative, brought out a dessert anyway and starting pointing out things about it. The manager and the waitress both had agitated tones of voice and body language that conveyed, "We can't believe you're so rude as to not want our dessert." Hawk practically shouted at them, "I said No three times already!"
The total was €99, all comped. Although that's more than we almost ever spend on ourselves for dinner, these are resort prices. We left only modestly full. If we'd eaten our fill the bill would've been at least €150, and if we'd had two glasses of wine apiece (instead of just me and just one glass) it would've been over 200. Of course, even if dinner wasn't comped by the restaurant it would've been at least partly covered by my company's club stipend.
Alas, our reason for eating cheap at this pricey restaurant wasn't being cheap. It was that there was only 1 entree on the menu that Hawk could eat. Then there was the WTF antagonism from the staff about dessert. That left Hawk seething and made me uninterested in ordering anything for dessert myself, even a second glass of wine. We're past the point in life where we'll eat more food just because it's free.
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 29 May 2025, 8:30pm
This evening we sat for an elegant dinner at one of the resort's restaurants. We weren't planning on it originally, but after the oopsie at breakfast this morning the restaurant manager offered to comp us dinner.
At 7pm, the earlier reservation available as that's when the restaurant opens for dinner— restaurants in Italy generally only start serving dinner at 7 or even 7:30pm— the weather was still warm, so we opted to sit out on the terrazza. The view was lovely. Though we still had to stand up and crane our necks to see the beach in the distance. 😅
Hawk ordered a dish of spaghetti while I ordered grilled duck. We shared an appetizer of hummus— "Just one?" the waitress asked, bordering on snidely— and a side dish of roasted potatoes.
The duck arrived artfully prepared on a plate with some kind of stacked scalloped potato and either kale or spinach or something else similar. It tasted kind of like kale in that it tasted like spinach but not as good. 😅 And it was served with a chocolate sauce. Yes, that's chocolate sauce you can see on my plate in the photo above. It's a strange choice on the part of the chef, IMO. While it didn't go poorly with the duck it also didn't strike me as, "OMG, why haven't I ever had this pairing before?"
Dessert was a case of "WTF?" customer service. Every item on the dessert menu seemed to have chocolate in it. Hawk, who can't eat chocolate (it gives her stomach problems), asked if any of the desserts could be prepared without chocolate. The waitress initially said no but then, apparently because she wasn't sure about what Hawk was asking given language differences, brought out her manager. The manager was kind of combative about what was in the food, so Hawk said No to dessert. Forcefully.
The manager then, showing that she actually was combative, brought out a dessert anyway and starting pointing out things about it. The manager and the waitress both had agitated tones of voice and body language that conveyed, "We can't believe you're so rude as to not want our dessert." Hawk practically shouted at them, "I said No three times already!"
The total was €99, all comped. Although that's more than we almost ever spend on ourselves for dinner, these are resort prices. We left only modestly full. If we'd eaten our fill the bill would've been at least €150, and if we'd had two glasses of wine apiece (instead of just me and just one glass) it would've been over 200. Of course, even if dinner wasn't comped by the restaurant it would've been at least partly covered by my company's club stipend.
Alas, our reason for eating cheap at this pricey restaurant wasn't being cheap. It was that there was only 1 entree on the menu that Hawk could eat. Then there was the WTF antagonism from the staff about dessert. That left Hawk seething and made me uninterested in ordering anything for dessert myself, even a second glass of wine. We're past the point in life where we'll eat more food just because it's free.
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Date: 2025-06-02 11:04 am (UTC)~Sor