Do you give a well-liked restaurant a pass after a bad meal?

One bad meal at a favorite place gets a pass. Two in a row and I ask about changes in cooks, policies, managers. Three and I’m done.

Yes, once. Anyone can have a bad day. But I hope you mentioned it to the manager.

There was an old faithful place here where I live – we went regularly.. They got a new manager – things were bad. Tried them a year later – talked to the manager. He invited us back, their treat.

No improvement.

They are now off the list.

One bad visit after other good experiences there? I’d give them at least one more chance.

I am with @canidmajor three strikes before they are out. But if it is a place I go to a lot, and they know me, I will say something to the server. The waitstaff doesn’t like being sabotaged by lousy kitchen work.

everyone has a bad night eventually.

I’m so picky that I pretty much only eat grilled cheese and fries when I go out. I can’t think if a time when that was messed up.

If I had a bad meal at a restaurant I liked to eat at, I would let the manager know specifically what the problem was. If I continued to get bad food, bad service, etc after that I would stop patronizing that eatery.

One bad meal does not a greasy spoon make. As my old pappy was wont to say.

I eat at McDonalds all the time

I hope I would say something, but I probably wouldn’t. I’d give them a second chance, but maybe not a third. I eat out so seldom that I really can’t shrug off a poor meal when it may be one of fewer than a dozen such occasions in a year.

Of course, my expectations of a nice place downtown are a little different from what I have in mind when I pick up a fast burger and fries to go; but there’s very little room for departures from a standard there. However, last year a McD did leave the cheese off my cheeseburger—it was just a plain, naked, ungarnished patty, off center on a limp bun—and I went all the way back on a rainy night to get a make-good.