How bad was Panarotti’s last night? Let me count the ways.

(with apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning).

Firstly, I am not a particularly fussy or unreasonable customer, and when stuff goes wrong I am the first one to shrug my shoulders, smile and move on. But by the time I left Panarotti’s last night my sense of humor was pretty much gone.

Richard is in London this week, meeting the powers that be, so I thought I’d treat the kids to Panarotti’s for dinner. Thinking it would be a quick and fun way to sort out dinner, so we could have enough time to do Quinn’s homework and everything else that needed to get done.

We tootled off at about 6:30pm (if not before).

At first things were fine, we got seated, the kids knew what they wanted, told me and went off to play, and I was able to relax. The waitress arrived quickly. She was sweet, young and very French. So much so that she barely speaks English, and even that weeth a wery strong accent.

I asked for a coke lite, and ordered the kid's food, a pizza with ham, and a fettuccini alfedro. Pretty simple really.

A loooong wait ensued. But I was relaxed and we had time so it was fine. Finally a coke arrived. I drank some. I drank some more, and I was convinced it was regular coke. Quinn came back played out and tasted it, and immediately said, yup that’s normal coke. So when I could get her attention I call her over, and she nods and smiles and says ‘yes that is sugar coke’, yet she remembers I did order coke lite, so she comes back with half a glass of that.

In the mean time I ordered my food, a roast vegetable fettuccini, as recommended by her, I ordered this at about 6:50 (I sent an sms at the same time so I know). We also ordered a special bar one milkshake for the kids, I thought it would arrive after they had eaten.

The milkshake arrived and was finished and we waited some more.

Eventually an adult’s ham pizza arrived. Now this is Wednesday – kids eat free night at Panarotti’s and only KID’S food qualifies. So even though Griffin was chopping to start eating I had to hold him off until I could confirm that he had the right order. After 5 minutes and talking to 3 people, they agreed he could eat it.

We ended up sharing it between the 3 of us, since no other food was forthcoming, except a chicken pizza which suddenly arrived, and there was much confusion when we said we didn’t order it.

Then the kids got dough to play with. They made their dough creations and took them to be cooked.

Finally a delicious looking bowl of vegetable fettuccini was placed in front of me, by the sweet French waitress, with an apology for it having taken so long and saying the alfredo was on its way. No matter! I picked up the salt and shook some onto the food, when another waiter came and took the bowl away - without greeting me at all. Turns out it was one of his orders, but still!

So we wait more, and eventually Quinn’s food arrives. But it was alfredo sauce with raw mushrooms and chewy bacon on spaghetti, not fettuccini. I wasn’t going to send it back so took the biggest raw mushrooms out and he ate what he could.

By now it was 8pm, and I was getting less patient, as I needed to get the kids home and to bed and my food hadn’t even arrived yet after well over an hour. Plus although the kids went to find their dough it was gone.

Finally my food arrived. Some sad vegetables on SPAGHETTI! I was SO annoyed. I could have made that at home, far quicker and much tastier too.

I went to the manager and asked for it to be put in a take-away container, paid and left.

The thing is the waitress didn’t cope. The manager knew that. I don’t actually blame the waitress; because she is young, new and was trying hard. She stayed sweet and apologetic and attentive throughout, but she was not in control. She was given a large table of around 10-12 loud drinking adults, which even some experienced waiters battle with, and most people can’t handle other tables if they are serving a big lively table! I saw her going to the manager for help. The manager should have taken over and made sure we were ok, but she did nothing.

I normally like Panarotti’s and the fact that it is cheap, fun for the kids, quick and convenient makes it worth it, but that just sucked!