I know that you'd help and I'm hoping for the best
Because nice things are important: last night ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I ordered dinner from Saloniki. We had found their Fenway location on Caviar. We were overjoyed, especially since the day had been terrible. We ordered the meat combo known as the Quarantine Feast, figuring it would feed us for days.
Caviar delivered a single pita which we could not even eat because it contained onions, to which Rob is allergic.
Skipping over the part where it felt like the last unsupportable straw, especially since Caviar's website had no obvious means of redress that did not turn into an eternally redirecting catch-22, I called Saloniki Fenway to see if they could help. The person who answered the phone recognized the situation at once: our order had gone out for delivery at the same time as the inedible pita. (And somewhere out there in their delivery range was someone who had been looking forward to a delicious pita and may or may not have appreciated receiving in its place a meat faucet with loukoumades on the side.) He explained apologetically that if the restaurant itself had handled the placement and delivery of the order, he could be re-making our meal as we spoke, but since we had used a third-party website, we needed to sort it out with Caviar. I asked if he had a number we could use to reach them, since their website was giving my husband the seamless runaround. Cheerfully, he said he would get it for me. A sequence of increasingly less cheerful noises proceeded to emerge from the other end of the phone. Eventually he returned to explain that Caviar did not have a customer-facing number, only a number for restaurant support.
He volunteered to call Caviar for us. If he couldn't get them to authorize a re-order free of charge, he was confident he could at least get us a refund. I thanked him profusely. He said that he was just doing his job. I said that it seemed rather above and beyond his job when his kitchen had kept their side of the deal and the screw-up was the third-party service's fault and it was incredibly kind of him and a lot of people are not being kind right now. He took my name and number and promised to call me back no matter what.
He called back within half an hour to let me know that Caviar had agreed to the free re-order and the food would be ready as fast as the kitchen could make it.
Last night, at the end of a spectacularly terrible day, we ate lamb meatballs and braised pork and grilled chicken and halloumi and melitzanosalata and tirokafteri and loukoumades with cinnamon honey and we do indeed have leftovers that will feed us for days. We wanted to call Saloniki back and let them know that the food had arrived and was delicious and we appreciated so much their wrestling with third parties on our behalf, but the restaurant had closed by the time our order arrived. So I called back this afternoon. I got the other person who had been on call last night. He remembered our order, which had indeed been re-made as soon as his partner got off the phone with me; he remembered it had taken the driver a full half-hour to show up for it; he had hoped it would reach us safely; he was delighted to hear that it had; and he also made disclaiming noises about just doing their job until I finally said that whether it was their job to make up for other people's shortcomings or not, it was still really considerate and really supportive and really just nice and he said that was the best thing he could hear. I told him to stay safe and he wished me the same.
We will not be ordering from Saloniki via Caviar again. We will be ordering from Saloniki. Sometime in the next month when our refrigerator is not filled with feta fries.
spatch and I ordered dinner from Saloniki. We had found their Fenway location on Caviar. We were overjoyed, especially since the day had been terrible. We ordered the meat combo known as the Quarantine Feast, figuring it would feed us for days.Caviar delivered a single pita which we could not even eat because it contained onions, to which Rob is allergic.
Skipping over the part where it felt like the last unsupportable straw, especially since Caviar's website had no obvious means of redress that did not turn into an eternally redirecting catch-22, I called Saloniki Fenway to see if they could help. The person who answered the phone recognized the situation at once: our order had gone out for delivery at the same time as the inedible pita. (And somewhere out there in their delivery range was someone who had been looking forward to a delicious pita and may or may not have appreciated receiving in its place a meat faucet with loukoumades on the side.) He explained apologetically that if the restaurant itself had handled the placement and delivery of the order, he could be re-making our meal as we spoke, but since we had used a third-party website, we needed to sort it out with Caviar. I asked if he had a number we could use to reach them, since their website was giving my husband the seamless runaround. Cheerfully, he said he would get it for me. A sequence of increasingly less cheerful noises proceeded to emerge from the other end of the phone. Eventually he returned to explain that Caviar did not have a customer-facing number, only a number for restaurant support.
He volunteered to call Caviar for us. If he couldn't get them to authorize a re-order free of charge, he was confident he could at least get us a refund. I thanked him profusely. He said that he was just doing his job. I said that it seemed rather above and beyond his job when his kitchen had kept their side of the deal and the screw-up was the third-party service's fault and it was incredibly kind of him and a lot of people are not being kind right now. He took my name and number and promised to call me back no matter what.
He called back within half an hour to let me know that Caviar had agreed to the free re-order and the food would be ready as fast as the kitchen could make it.
Last night, at the end of a spectacularly terrible day, we ate lamb meatballs and braised pork and grilled chicken and halloumi and melitzanosalata and tirokafteri and loukoumades with cinnamon honey and we do indeed have leftovers that will feed us for days. We wanted to call Saloniki back and let them know that the food had arrived and was delicious and we appreciated so much their wrestling with third parties on our behalf, but the restaurant had closed by the time our order arrived. So I called back this afternoon. I got the other person who had been on call last night. He remembered our order, which had indeed been re-made as soon as his partner got off the phone with me; he remembered it had taken the driver a full half-hour to show up for it; he had hoped it would reach us safely; he was delighted to hear that it had; and he also made disclaiming noises about just doing their job until I finally said that whether it was their job to make up for other people's shortcomings or not, it was still really considerate and really supportive and really just nice and he said that was the best thing he could hear. I told him to stay safe and he wished me the same.
We will not be ordering from Saloniki via Caviar again. We will be ordering from Saloniki. Sometime in the next month when our refrigerator is not filled with feta fries.
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oston...
As Cavafy said,
Generous when they're rich, and when
They're poor, generous in little things
Still helping others all they can;
Telling the truth always, and yet
Holding no hatred against liars .
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They really were.
I feel like ordering from them myself, except they probably don't deliver slantwise across the continent, sigh.
I always thought I needed a teleporter to visit friends, but apparently I also need it to facilitate the support of awesome restaurants!
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Yes! They are a local chain with four locations, two in Cambridge and two in Boston proper; they started as a one-off restaurant that did well enough to branch out. They deserve it.
Those are clearly some wonderful people. May they get excellent wages and warm fuzzy reviews for a good long while.
A good blessing for a restaurant!
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Yay, and also I love this line.
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Thank you!
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Are feta fries just normal fries with feta or fries made out of feta? A few years back we had chickpea fries that were surprisingly tasty: chickpea puree (or something) solid enough to be battered and deep fried.
If they are normal fries, leeks are good, and you have the energy to cook, you might make leek-potato soup. That's one of our favorite ways to use surplus fries.
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P.
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So many of these delivery companies are just hopeless!
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Hurrah Saloniki.
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And the guy--both the guys-- at Saloniki is really really wonderful. And it's really great that you called back the next day to let them know just how much it meant to you.
I've heard that some of those third-party ordering places really screw restaurants over, but it sounds like they're equally bad for patrons (or maybe that's what I heard: that they're bad for patrons). Anyway, ordering from Saloniki directly sounds like it will make for some really delicious meals, and it sounds like they're a business well worth supporting.
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