Yes, I have sent food back if it doesn't taste right. I would not be sending it back about the gravy but I would be disappointed if it was delivered to me wrong. Sometimes it takes a long time to get your food back to you. They just don't scrape it off and replace it, Throw it all out. So for gravy I would accept it but let them know someone messed up. I had a baked potato that was not cooked through and they took it back. In the meantime I continued to eat the rest of my meal, Finally the potato was delivered to me but we were done with our dinner. They took some dollars off the bill but by that time who cared. It wasn't the waitress's fault but the kitchen staff. She was so apologetic. I figured she felt it would reflect her tip. My husband also had a piece of plalstic in his meal one time. He not only complained to the waitress but also the manager. He had his meal taken off the bill. Not what he wanted he just wanted to let them know,they had a problem with their kitchen staff.
Mary

I wouldn't send it back for that, but I have complained a few times.

Once, I'm sure the salt shaker must have fallen into the bean soup that was a specialty at one restaurant. I didn't need to complain; the waiter noted that I'd eaten none of the soup and asked why. (They threw out the whole pot.)

I remember complaining about meat too tough to chew or overcooked; vegetables almost raw or cooked to mush; salad over-dressed, not served with dressing on the side, as ordered; a hot meal served cold; a dirty glass; receiving the wrong entree, etc. It has to be a real meal spoiler for me to complain.

We're not 'foodies' or 'complainers'. As newlyweds, we sometimes went out to dinner with a couple who were neighbors in our apartment building. He was a professional complainer. We could never get through a whole meal without him sending back at least one course, disrupting *everybody's* dinner. It was strange; other than that, he was a lovely, friendly person!

Oh, while in Hot Springs a couple of weeks ago, Chris mashed potatoes were AWFUL! Just AWFUL. She send them back. Got a whole new dish of just yummy mashed potatoes, that she shared with us.

Sometimes, you just have to. :)

Moni

Yeah, if it's something REAL and bad, I'd send it back. The gravy was no big deal, but what got me was the cook told her it WAS the different gravy, and he lied. Other than that, the meal was good.

I used to occasionally lunch with a coworker who invariably would eat about half of her order and then complain about it (for various reasons) to the waiter/waitress. She then would receive a whole new order, essentially receiving a "two-fer." Embarrassing.

Jean, your waitress should have caught the gravy problem before bringing your meal to the table.

I'm one who never hesitates to send a meal back, but it doesn't happen very often. I tend to be pretty tolerant when eating out ; if I wanted perfection, I'd have stayed home, right? :-)

The last time was just a couple of weeks ago, at a nice restaurant where we had both enjoyed our meal very much. We decided to split a brownie and homemade ice cream for dessert and it was gorgeous when it came to the table.

But it was like heavy, dense clay in the mouth.....! Chocolate muck. It was a flourless (gluten free) brownie, something our waiter didn't mention when he suggested it. No problem....he whisked it away!

Yes, if my order isn't what I requested.

Sometimes I do. I usually just eat whatever it is because I don't want to wait for the 2nd preparation. Often, I have gone home and written online to a chain restaurant to complain about whatever, but it has to be a repeated problem or a bigger problem.

I will only send it back if something is really grossly wrong. I am a vegetarian, and I do not do any cream sauces and no salad dressing. That I would send back~~once they left the chicken in the dish after telling me they would not add it~~I just picked it out ;( Last week we ate at a chain Mexican restaurant that we go to often. We have 2 in town we went to not our usual one BLAH! The service and the food was horrible~~~we ate it, to send it back, would not change the food. I will Yelp them!

I will if they do the order incorrectly. I don't think I've ever sent anything back due to taste. If I don't like it, I just know not to order it again. I don't think it's the restaurant's fault if I don't like their dish unless there was something wrong with it.

Some things I will send back: I don't eat meat, and sometimes I am served meat, like a regular burger instead of a veggie burger. Obviously that gets sent back, and usually comped though I don't ask for it.

The two non-meat things I won't eat are raw tomatoes and bell peppers. I always ask if meals include these, and ask them to hold them if they do. Sometimes I get the meal still with them. If the tomatoes are big enough (like cherry tomatoes in a salad) then I just take them off, but if it's diced I will send it back as otherwise I would have to pick through the entire dish to remove them.

If I forget to ask, or tell them not to include it, then I pick through it as it's my fault.

I have sent food back if it was not what I ordered. For example bringing me wheat toast when I asked for "white" toast.

I did get the manager the other night at a restaurant where we eat very often to complain about one of the waitresses to let him know that she just isn't too swift. I had asked for 1/2 cup of coffee, a teapot of hot water and a glass of just ice. She brings me a "glass" of hot water. No ice. Told her to take the glass of hot water back and bring me a teapot. She did. Still no glass of ice. Third time she came by and again I asked for ice. Got none. The employees there are all excellent, but she sure isn't and that is a bad reflection on such a good business.

I have never needed to send anything back. It would have to be really bad for me to do that. My mom and her sister used to send things back all the time and I finally stopped going out to eat with them. They were so rude to servers. Once they knew I wouldn't go out with them, they stopped being rude and sending things back for minor reasons.

I have, but I don't wait for a replacement. We were out with another couple in an upscale steak house. Similar to Chisue, my steak was so salty, it was inedible, A friend said he thought that it was a way to disguise meat that wasn't fresh.
I ate the veggies, my husband gave me some of his entree and we called it a day. They said it would be taken off the bill, but it wasn't, so we had to straighten that out.,

Yesterday at Cheesecake Factory, I asked for my dressing on the side. It came on it. I told the waiter, but I didn't exchange it.

Sometimes, it is just too inconvenient to wait for a replacement, especially if you are dining out with other people.

To mention that what was brought wasn't what I requested - always.

Sending something back to the kitchen because I found it disappointing - almost never.

Most chain restaurants (and fast food places) seem to have too many kitchen and table service staff with limited capabilities, and provide food and service that too often is just barely over the line of acceptable to me. And too often it's not acceptable. There are a few I make an occasional exception for (like In-N-Out) , the others I avoid for that reason.

It sort of depends on the situation. If I am with family or friends and receive an incorrect order, I would ask for it to be corrected. If I were with clients or work mates, I would probably ignore it.

If the food tastes bad or is poor quality, I don't say anything, I just never return to that restaurant.

Pretty much the only time I send anything back is if it isn't hot enough. I like my food hot (temperature-wise). If I'm having soup I do warn the server when I order that I would like it hot, not tepid. If it isn't hot it goes back. They can zap it for all I care but it must be hot. I send coffee back if it isn't hot.

We seldom go out for meals anymore because the food is so seldom worth it. It just doesn't seem like a treat anymore to go out for lousy food.

I'm suspicious of what goes on in the kitchen to begin with, so I don't even want to think about what they do if I send something back!

I might send food back if it's not hot enough. Once a group of my 6 neighbors went to a Mexican restaurant. The food came out very quickly and was lukewarm. I didn't want to make a fuss so just ate it. Well, we all got sick that night. Clearly the food was prepared in advance and had been sitting around and then not heated enough.

I also might send back meat that arrives rare or has any pink. I always ask for well done and no pink, so I do get upset when it comes out not cooked enough.

I probably would have sent it back if the waitress hadn't told me the cook said it was correct. (which it wasn't, and the cook had to have known this). I was scared it would come back with a little sumthin sumthin added.

I would NEVER go to a restaurant where I doubted the practices and attitudes in the kitchen. If you suspect unsavory things might happen with a send-back, just imagine what could be going on back there on an average day when they are storing, handling and cooking food, cleaning (or not), etc.

Suspicions like those are reasons enough to cross places like that off your list.

No thanks.

we'd never had a problem there before, but we won't be going back.

I don't normally feel a need to send food back. We went to a bar/restaurant last weekend. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. But before ordering I was talking to the waitress/cook about the salad with grilled chicken and I told her I couldn't decide which I wanted. Eventually I picked the sandwich. When the order came, it was the salad with grilled chicken. I just laughed and told her I guess this was her way of saying I needed to get back on my diet. She felt so bad. I just laughed and ate it and it was delicious.

Not for something that trivial.

Only once. My father took my sister, husband, mom and I out for dinner to a steak house. If anyone knows steak, it's an Albertan. Dad and I ordered ours medium rare. My husband ordered his blue rare. When we got our steaks, mine was medium well, as was my fathers, and my husbands was medium. My husband was starving so he choked down his over cooked steak. My dad and I sent ours back. The manager was fine with it, but the head chef was not happy. He had the nerve to tell us that "medium rare means different things in different provinces." Really? It means the middle is RARE. It's not rocket science. We got the three steak dinners removed from the bill by the manager. I haven't been back since, because of the chef's attitude.

I was at a place that specialized in breakfast. That's ALL they served.

I ordered biscuits in gravy. It was beef boullion gravy and canned biscuits. YUCK! I didn't eat it, figured it was a good day to start a diet. Then the waitress asked if everything was alright....I said "there is NO way I'm eating THAT!"

She asked if I'd like to order something else...I declined.

I'll send a steak back if it's not cooked the way I wanted it. (well done)

I had a friend that would complain and send food back all the time! It was embarasing to say the least.

I will end back steak not done right.

When I order a medium, and the server says "That's with a pink center" and I say "yep".... I expect a pink center!

For a steak or even a burger, I usually order medium rare, but will accept anything this side of medium. if it is past medium, IMO, its going back. With that said, I rarely order steaks anymore since it seems too difficult for them to actually cook them correctly on the first try. One restaurant that people I worked with went to for lunch frequently, would consistently over cook the burgers even when I warned the waiter while ordering that if it was overcooked I was going to send it back. What it the point of asking how you'd like it done, if they have no intention of trying to cook it that way?

My other complaint is places that now state that they only will cook burgers to well-done, which seems to me to be the same as them saying "We can't be bothered to use a supplier that can guarantee that there is no feces in the ground beef and feces can contain dangerous bacteria, so instead we require the burgers to be well-done, so that although the burgers will still contain feces, at least the dangerous bacteria will all be killed when we over-cook the burger." Mmmmm yummy.

yuck Bob! I may never eat a burger again! LoL

My SO likes his steaks/burgers VERY rare. Yeah he gets them rare...oh wait, I should have said RARELY. He doesn't send them back.

My experience ordering steak has shown me that if I've ordered medium well, and it comes to me with a lot more pink than that, if you want them to cook it a bit more, it will come out well done and with a hard crust. It just never ends well.

Twice, at the same chain restaurant, I ordered a barbecue chicken salad -- a salad mix topped with the chicken. It comes with a spicy kind of ranch dressing. I always have asked for the dressing on the side. What's come out? A plain, cooked chicken breast on the salad, and usually no dressing. It makes me crazy that the kitchen doesn't know the difference between "barbecue sauce" and "salad dressing," and the second time it happened, I asked for the manager. He came out, sat at my table, and I asked him, "Clearly, I'm not ordering this in a way the kitchen understands (like "salad dressing on the side, pls," is complicated?), so tell me how to ensure that this comes out the way I order it?" He was nice about it, said he'd oversee the replacement dish, but I don't order that particular item anymore.
(Because I know that replacement was cooked way too fast, and likely not all the way through, because I was sick all night.)

So that's another possible repercussion of sending something back to be "fixed."

IHOP can be a hit-or-miss for me -- like getting waffles instead of French toast or pancakes, whichever I'd ordered. The up-side: That kitchen works fast, so the additional wait isn't too long.

The only time I am reluctant to send something back is if I've waited too long to eat and am starting to get a headache. Then I just settle (unless there are tomatoes on it!).

Yep. Big bucks for yesterday's brunch and the boy didn't like the food at all. I just politely said, it's nothing you've done, but he doesn't care for it. Can he please have a plate of brunch potatoes instead? He seems to really like those, as he keeps snitching them off my plate! He smiled, took the food off the bill (he had only eaten one bite of it), and wasn't upset at all we'd asked.

My husband sent his steak back and when they brought it back half was missing. I hear so many horror stories that I don't send anything back. I just don't eat it. We had a chinese restaurant that changed hands. Before the food was delicious, but after the new owners took over, the food was horrible. Never went back to that one.

I just don't eat in chain restaurants. Used to, but they all seem to have deteriorated in quality and don't have trained coking staff.
The only time i have returned food, is when it was not what I ordered and the substitute was something I didn't like to eat.

Like monica I avoid chain restaurants if I have any say in the matter. There are enough locally owned restaurants around here that actually have good food and which keep the money I spend local, that I see no reason to go to some chain that rubber-stamps out restaurants across the country which then rubber-stamp out food that is little better then school-cafeteria food. And if a given location makes money, that money is siphoned off for the corporate office and investors, and if it doesn't they close it down.

Recently the company the owns the chain The Olive Garden (and a few others) went through a hostile takeover because a "hedge fund" that had invested in it felt they weren't being profitable enough. So they installed their own board of directors, and suggested money saving/money making changes like "stop giving away free bread sticks", "have the wait staff push the alcohol" and "add more salt to everything to make people thirstier, so they'll buy more alcohol."

It seems like it never occurred to them to "make the food better so people would actually want to go there"

The franchise/franchisee relationship seems only to make things worse, with the local franchisee assuming all of the risk of running a restaurant, and the corporate office siphoning off much of the profit, if there is any.

I missed something. Just to clarify, my food was sent back at a highly local restaurant. One of the many farm to table. Was I supposed to answer on chains? If so, I don't send that back. If I am there (not my choice, typically), I will settle for whatever is in front of me.

I think I drifted off topic. The thread asked for "do you send it back?" I served up "chain restaurants". Sorry. I think my post should be sent back to the kitchen. :-)

Cool! I thought I was missing something, because I often do. Even with trying hard.

:)

For many years I ate whatever the server put in front of me, even if it was someone else's order, LOL. Growing up, Mom and Dad rarely had "extra" money to take us out to eat, so it was quite a treat. Then I married a man who often sent things back. At first it embarrassed me, but he finally made me understand that it wasn't any different than taking something back to a store that was defective/broken. I should get exactly what I paid for. I still don't send back every dish that isn't wonderful, but I will absolutely send back a steak that isn't cooked to near perfection. I like mine extremely rare. When I've sent back a yucky overdone steak, I've had servers tell me that next time I should say I want it blue, cold, hot raw, or a host of other terms. Why can't they just believe I mean extremely rare? For a while I had a picture on my phone of steaks grilled to differing degrees of doneness and I would point to the picture of the one I wanted. Or I would jokingly tell them I'm a vampire and I liked to see blood in my steak. That at least got their attention and more often than not, my steak was prepared correctly.

The last time I should have sent something back is when I got my eggs sunny side up instead of easy over. (in your neck of the woods, it would be "medium".) I once ordered easy over while in Michigan, and I said that it wasn't cooked enough for me, and the waitress said I must be from Canada.

Anyway, I didn't want my sausage and homefries to get cold while waiting for the right eggs, so I did mention it to the waitress and ate them anyway.

Some people have mentioned chain restaurants. I can only think of 2 that we go to........and only because when we go out with our friends, that's where they like to go for lunch. We wouldn't go on our own there. We like the mom and pop, or local family/Italian/Chinese restaurants. Oh, we do like the odd Teen burger at A&W

After my dd's graduation in nyc we went to a steak house she had researched for a nice dinner, which is something we almost never do as a family. Most of the steaks were overcooked--we were stunned. We finally had to say something and the waiter was so very upset and agitated, but brought dd another--the rest of us didn't ask for a do-over. At those prices, it was quite a surprise that the food they were known for was cooked incorrectly. All in all, it wasn't a comfortable dinner.

linda_in_iowa, like you, I have family that has terrible manner dealing with people that works hard for minimum wages. I too, stopped going out with them for awhile until they've learned. Due to my disabiliy, I'm often the last to get out the door. That is actually an advantage because it gave me a chance to apologize to the waiter/waitress for their bad behaviour.

Often, the food that is sent back is thrown out, and in many restaurants, it's deducted from the waiter/waitress paycheck. Knowing this, I often find it unnecessary to cause hardship to others and just enjoy what is in front of me. Mistake happens.

The only time that I sent a meal back was because it had a huge stink bug crawling out from a salad. The salad was used as a garnish for a quiche. I assumed because of that, the salad was often rinsed sparingly to preserve its look. Besides, stink bugs tend to cling on their food and not easily letting it go.

Technically, it was safe to eat the quiche because the bug was not in the quiche. Ugh... but looking at the huge bug looking at me... well, it wasn't pleasant.

I could see the fear in the waiter's face when I showed the bug, poor guy. He quietly went away and the manager quickly came out. He apologized and offered me another choice of meal.

It was during lunch time at a high class restaurant. I didn't want to cause a scene nor causing their business to go down. I politely asked for the same meal and told him it was no big deal. As a token of appreciation, the manager gave us all that free meal. LOL, later on, my brother told me that if he knew the meal was free, he would have ordered more.