Are You Being Served?
At Nara, a sushi place at the corner for 40th and Spruce Streets in West Philadelphia, I most certainly was not. Nor will I EVER go back.
Last night, after seeing Brendan Cooney’s masterful score for “Battleship Potemkin” (a one-night-only performance), Christina and I hurried over to Nara for birthday sushi. The restaurant closed at 10:00, so at 9:25 we were pretty assured of a nice meal to cap off the evening. The waitress greeted us at the door, led us to a table, and gave us a couple of menus.
Then she left, and never came back. We could see her alright, having a perfectly lovely conversation with the guys who roll the maki, but she didn’t so much as offer us a glass of water for the next ten minutes.
It wasn’t like the restaurant was filled to capacity. Far from it: the only other guests were at one of the long banquet tables, a gaggle of screaming girls from UPenn whose parents clearly never took the time to teach their ivy league progeny how to behave in a restaurant. They were so loud that I literally had to yell at the top of my voice for Christina to hear me. In addition, these shrieking young ladies had already been served.
I spent 1984-1998 working in restaurants. I understand how hard it is to give customers individual attention when the dining room is packed. But this wasn’t the case at Nara.
Dining out it expensive, and doubly so when it comes to sushi. When I’m paying top dollar for my food, I expect to be treated like a valued customer. As I sat at the table, hungry and at a later hour than I usually eat dinner, I remembered that this had happened to me before at Nara. The first time is a fluke; the second, is a pattern.
Finally we got up, and as we walked out I delivered a loud “GOOD BYE” to the cooks. The waitress never turned around once. By this time, it was pushing 10:00 PM, which is when restaurants typically close in Philly on weeknights. Christina suggested heading to South Philly to find eats, but I rejected that: who wants to gamble a 20-minute drive if there’s no guarantee of food at the end? I suggested hitting a bar for some grub (not that I wanted pub food, but whatever, I was hungry), but she pointed out that with the Phillies about to make it to the World Series for the second year in a row, we probably wouldn’t get a table. And she was right: every bar we passed by was packed with screaming fans.
Instead, we headed home and I made myself an impromptu eggplant parmegiana. As it cooked, I went to every website that reviews restaurants and trashed Nara for their shitty service.
Once again, that’s Nara, located at 40th and Spruce, downstairs. Shitty service, dingy atmosphere, screaming Penn students.
You’d be better off eating out of a dumpster behind a fishmarket, and the feral cats would probably be friendlier than the staff.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Many years ago, a friend and I went to a Mexican restaurant in a suburb far far away. I won’t mention its name, but it rhymes with Carlington, Virginia.
We got seated. And waited. And waited.
After about half an hour, I went up the the barkeep and asked, “Who do we have to mug to get some service?”
Moments later, this leggy blond came over, apologizing profusely, saying, “I don’t know why, but the person with this station didn’t want to wait on you.”
Oh well. We ordered appetizers and a meal.
In about 20 minutes it all came at the same time. We pointed out that appetizers are, well, normally ordered as appetizers. She said, “Oh, but you said you wanted everything at the same time” and showed us the check, where it was written, “Same time.” Now, we were pretty out of it, but we hadn’t ordered everything at the same time.
Whatever she had taken, it was better than what we had taken.
Fortunately, the cooks were competent.
Then, at the end, she asked if we wanted anything else.
I said, “Do you have Mexican coffee?”
She gave me a blank look, then said, “No, it’s American.”
“It’s Folgers.”
That was the perfect coda to the evening.