worst fears come true.

Living here in the US, I always knew that one has to turn a blind eye towards how the restaurant industry prepares food here. On one hand, we value purity of everything esp. food. Imagine all these fast food joints throwing away millions of tonnes of perfectly good food away in trash just because it was lying on the shelf for "X" mins. On the other hand, you hear about things like "beef flavoring" on McDonald's fries, gelatin being used everywhere, crushed animal bones used in allopathic medicines and even toothpaste. Yuck.

So, after coming back from LA and resting for a while, we headed out for dinner to a closeby restaurant (PP for short). We sat down, ordered our dishes, enjoyed the complementary bread etc etc. In no time, our dishes come and we start eating. I finished my dish and helped my son eat his dish. My wife ate hers and started helping my daughter finish her. Midway, my wife stopped and called the server and pointed to a piece of chicken in my daughter's vegetarian dish. Here's how the conversation went:

W: There is some chicken in our dish.
S: Let me see. Oh yes, that's chicken.
My wife is looking at her, puzzled.
S: Oh yes, it has happened before. Chicken and Pasta is boiled together.
At this point we are totally shocked. We ask her 2-3 times just to make sure we heard it right and she says yes they are boiled together.

W (a bit upset now): Now, why would you do such a thing?
S (taken aback and tries to recover): Oh, I mean, they are boiled next to each other.
W: Still how does chciken get into the pasta bowl?
S: Umm. I can get a fresh plate.
We: No thanks.

Now, we are totally disgusted and in no mood to finish out food. But we are polite and do not create a scene.

S; I can have the charge for that dish removed from the bill
W: I don't care about the money part, can you guys be careful??

Server leaves (without apologizing). A different lady comes with the bill, says that they haven't charged us for the dish, puts the bill on the table and leaves.

At that point it dawned on us that these folks just don't get it at all. Mistakes can happen and a simple apology would have fixed it.

We paid the bill and left. PP restaurant has lost our business. Aparently this problem is quite common. On our desi mailing list, quite a few people complained about finding beef and chicken in their order of vegetarian dishes at the local MG restaurant. So, Italian restaurants are definitely out for me for the next several months at least.

THIS SUCKS!!!!!