Opinion needed - special meal requests

I'd appreciate some ideas/suggestions on how to handle situations like this. We've had a couple less-than-good experiences recently and don't know who to hold responsible.

When someone has a relatively minor food allergy, tells the wait staff before ordering, but then still receives a meal with the problem item, what should we do?

My wife doesn't get along with tomatoes - not a life-threatening situation, just significant gastric unhappiness can result. We always tell the wait staff about the issue and usually have no further concern. Sometimes, however, the meal arrives with tomato garnish, roasted tomatoes included in a vegetable medley, or sliced tomatoes on top of a salad.

The issue is that dishes are frequently delivered by runners, not the person who took the order - so who dropped the ball? Was our request not written down, did the chef ignore it, or did the line chef not check the order before sending it out?

The issue isn't usually serious enough to send the dish back and disrupt the meal for everyone, but it does detract from a good meal.

What should we do to point out the problem when ordering and hopefully prevent it from happening again?

First, bring the mistake to the server's attention. It should be corrected swiftly with an apology.

As for whom to blame, it will vary from restaurant to restaurant and situation to situation. First, the server is responsible for making the special request clear to the kitchen. Second, the person plating the dish has to quality check and make sure the request has been honored (be this the expediter or the chef on the line). From there, it can vary. In some places the server is responsible for quality checking the dish before it leaves the kitchen (even if they do not run it). In other places, it falls to whomever runs the order out (food runner, etc.).

Either way, there should be at least 3 quality control points where your dish is checked for accuracy before it makes it to your table.

Mistakes happen, so you should not hesitate to send it back to be corrected and the good restaurants out there will not balk at correcting the gaff.

I agree with Ronnie. Any reputable restaurant and chef worth worth his salt(no pun intended) would want to know if ANY dish left their kitchen that was less than perfect, even if it was a special request.

I agree with Ronnie. Any reputable restaurant and chef worth worth his salt(no pun intended) would want to know if ANY dish left their kitchen that was less than perfect, even if it was a special request.

It happens all the time. The kitchens in restaurants in general are very attuned to food allergies these days. Lawsuits can do that. It's been my experience that it is a communication issue between the server and kitchen, or the between cooks in the kitchen. If a place isn't slammed and cooks are alternating breaks, if one cook doesn't tell the other cook before he leaves the line, it could be missed, or the server typed it in the POS wrong. It is very rarely an issue of just an unwillingness to make your dish. We all, if we truely care about our crafts and have any self respect, want to know the compliments and the failures of our kitchens.

We aren't perfect. but we want to be as close as possible. Too often we don't hear about a complaint until after the guest has left or things have progressed to a worse situation, and we can't fix the problem at that point.

We want to hear all and any complaints, we can't fix it if we don't know it's broke. If am not off work, I always handle all specials requests myself and if I get it wrong, I can only blame myself. Even I screw it up occasionally.

But when you do complain, please be reasonable, we have already beaten ourselves up about it more than anything our boss or you could say. I have gotten my "arse" ripped by customers before because the rare steak they ordered wasn't burn't to a crisp like they expected or automatically served with ketchup. And don't ask the server to tell me to burn it, chances are I won't get it right because my idea of burnt and your idea are different. I will never burn something on purpose, but I will blacken it to well done for you, thats as far as I go though.

Sorry for the rant, I know this started about a special request on leaving tomatoes out, that is easy to accommodate. Like I said food intolerances or allergies are something good restaurants take seriously.

Thanks to each of you for your thoughtful and detailed replies.

FYI, it happened again. Well-known local (not chain) restaurant known for excellent food and quirky decor. Ordered the hamburger that was the day's lunch special. We told the waitress about the tomato allergy - specifically "make sure there's no tomato of any kind" with the burger.

Gorgeous burger delivered by a runner - cooked to a perfect medium rare. Big perfect leaf of lettuce sitting on the bun top - along with a bunch of tomato seeds and juice.

Flagged down the waitress and she handled it perfectly. A replacement burger arrived in short order.

So, here we have a case of someone actually noticing the mistake, but somehow thinking that just removing the juicy slice of tomato (but leaving the lettuce) would fix it! Bizarre!