When the Restaurant Drops the Ball

A restaurant reservation is a verbal contract: The customer agrees to show up at an eating place at a certain time with money to spend and an appetite to spend it on; the restaurant agrees to provide the customer with a place to sit while dining, and to make that place available at approximately the stated time. Customers violate this contract frequently, simply by arriving late to claim their table (or not bothering to cancel the reservation). Restaurants violate it too, most commonly by not honoring reservations promptly.

There are other ways in which a restaurant can fail to fulfill its end of the bargain, though, as the experiences of two readers have recently demonstrated:

Jinny Sasse stopped in at Santa Monica’s Broadway Bar & Grill to reserve a table for six for a birthday dinner. The hostess was very cooperative, showing Sasse where the party would be seated, and even giving her a menu to take home. When her group arrived up at the appointed time, though, Sasse found a “Closed--Private Party” sign on the door. It was a Saturday night, and fearing that they might not easily find another restaurant willing to accommodate them on such short notice, Sasse and company appealed to the management, and were finally, and reluctantly, seated--not at their promised location, but at a window table near the reception desk. The food turned out to be excellent, Sasse reports, and the restaurant offered the party a complimentary bottle of wine--but Sasse understandably still felt cheated. This was not the evening the restaurant had promised.

Susan Epstein of Los Angeles called Pasta Maria in Brentwood on Feb. 5 to reserve a table for a party of 10 on Feb. 19, leaving her phone number as requested. She reconfirmed on Feb. 15, adding two more diners to the group. When the party arrived on the 19th, they found that the restaurant had closed for President’s Day.

What happened? How did the establishments attempt to correct their errors? The folks at the Broadway Bar & Grill, it seems to me, made the best of a bad situation; good food and a free bottle of wine excuse a lot of sins. When Susan Epstein called Pasta Maria the day after her aborted dinner, though, she was told, she says, that someone had made a mistake, and that the proprietors were sorry, period. That didn’t seem quite enough to her, nor does it to me. Epstein wrote a letter to the restaurant, and got no response.

When I called owner Maria Giordano, she was very upset. “Somebody, some waiter, must have taken the reservation even though he should have known we’d be closed,” she says. “Nobody will admit to having taken it, so what can I do? I’ve never had anything like this happen in my life, and if I had known there were 12 people coming in, I would have stayed open anyway.” She adds that she had tried to call Epstein twice but had not reached her. After talking to me, she tried again, and succeeded. She apologized to Epstein personally, and offered her a complimentary dinner for two.

EAT WELL AND DO GOOD: On March 29 chefs all across America get together to fight hunger. At 7 p.m., Taste of the Nation, the annual food-tasting event of Share our Strength, a nonprofit network of chefs and other food professionals will take place in 75 different venues across the country. The event here will be held at the Rodeo Collection in Beverly Hills. Such star restaurants as La Toque, Michael’s, City, Campanile and Patina will be featured, with wines provided by Acacia, Edna Valley, Sonoma Cutrer and Grgich, among others. All proceeds from the sale of tickets are distributed to groups fighting hunger. Tickets are $50; call (213) 234-3030.