WHY I SHOULD STOP GOING TO TABERNA DE HARO

Most of you know that I live right around the corner from Taberna de Haro. It's not my favorite tapas place in Boston, but it's decent eough and if you order carefully, you can avoid most of the pitfalls on the menu. Think simple. Think vegetables. Think meats that don't need to be cooked. (like ham) We don't go very often, and if we do, it's earlier in the evening because you can get a seat quickly. (This place is perenially packed after 7.)

Last night I visited with a few of my female friends. Though it was crowded, we got a seat after a 20 minute wait, which wasn't too bad. However, one thing that I will always say is that no amount of excellent, delicious food can make up for bad service. Excellent service can make up for mediocre, ok, food, but it just doesn't work the other way around. Last night at Taberna de Haro, we got fairly decent food and pretty shoddy service. I won't be going back again.

It's funny, cause I just finished reading Ruth Reichl's book, Garlic and Sapphires, which I highly recommend to anyone who reads the NYTimes dining section. As the head food critic at the NYTimes, she had to come up with different disguise so she wouldn't be recognized when she was visiting different restaurants (you can bet that Frank Bruni does not go through the same trouble. He lives for the attention he gets from restaurant owners and chefs. But I digress.) She writes a lot about how depending on how she was disguised, she would received different levels of service. Now, I work in the food industry and I assess my customers, too. Everyone does, but I also try really hard to treat everyone well. After all, I'm often surprised that people visit my shop at all. Last night, we got horrendous service by a waiter who deemed us unworthy of his attention.

The waiter brought out our mens and water pretty quickly. He reeled off the specials, and when it came to drinks, we didn't order anyway. None of us really drink and two of us were driving. He then went off and we didn't see him again- for the rest of the night. Apparently, he decided it was more worth his while to shower attention on the 4-top and 2-top that came in after us. The 4-top had ordered sangria and I could see him lavishing his time on them, explaining the specials and making suggestions for ordering. The 2-top had ordered a bottle of wine. I even made eye contact with him at one point, but we continued to be ignored, sitting at our table with our menus folded in front of us, just waiting for some to take our order. We waited for 20 minutes until another waitress, who wasn't even in charge of our table, finally took pity on us, and noticed that we were sitting there with an empty table. She took our order. I was fuming at this point. My friends were hungry and had it not been for their presence, I would've walked out a long time ago.

What also made me mad was that this is a small restaurant, and I could see the owner of the restaurant circulating about, serving dishes and contributing to the neglect of our table. Thank goodness for the one waitress who took pity on us. I vaguely felt bad for her, since she was handling our table in addition to her other tables, but service continued to be non-stellar. She was concious of the fact that the kitchen had forgotten one of our dishes, so she rushed to get that order in, but I felt it was unnecessary to give us the dessert menu, while the entrees were still on the table. (Especially since no one was waiting for a table) And to hand us our check as we turned down dessert.

As for the food, it was OK, as usual, because basically stuck with my careful ordering. (The only place we wandered off was with an order of octopus, which I didn't try, but was told was chewy)

So thanks Taberna de Haro, for making us feel unwelcome and unwanted and then rushing us out the door. That'll be the last time I dine with you.