Rant: Giving Restaurants A Second Chance

Sometimes you decide to no longer patronize a restaurant. Maybe the food was subpar, the service atrocious, cleanliness was an issue, or some other problem. There are certainly plenty of other options available to you, different restaurants which will be happy for your business.

However, what might get you to give a restaurant a second-chance? What might cause you to put aside your prior issues and dine once again at that restaurant? Or would you never give a restaurant a second-chance?

In part, those answers might depend on the reasons for why you no longer patronize a place. Some issues are easier to fix than others. For example, I once dined at a new restaurant where I witnessed the chef/owner engage in a rather unhygienic act in the open kitchen. It turned me off so much that I've never returned there. Except for getting a new owner, there's nothing else that could be done to get me to dine there.

There's another restaurant which I once enjoyed but I felt that the quality of the food had declined over time. I didn't return there, until very recently, for at least a couple years. What persuaded me to give them a second-chance? They hired a new chef, someone I knew and whose culinary skills I very much respected. A number of appealing photos of some of his dishes posted on social media further convinced me to dine there once again.

This might be the one of the main reasons why diners would give a second-chance to a restaurant, especially if the food quality had been an issue. A new chef can provide the added boost which elevates the level of the cuisine, correcting prior faults. I'm sure there's some people who wouldn't even be persuaded by this, but they might be doing themselves a disservice, missing out on a delicious opportunity.

When I returned to this particular restaurant, I was impressed by the cuisine from the new chef, hearkening back to a time when I very much enjoyed this place. It brought new life to this restaurant, boding well for the future, and I plan on returning in the near future, to try more of the menu. It will be the subject of a future restaurant review, and I'll be glad to recommend it once again.

Sometimes restaurants are deserving of a second-chance. And we should be willing to give them that chance to convince us that they are a worthy destination once again.