telophase | (no subject)

I'm a bit late with talking about Thanksgiving, but I just haven't gotten round to it until now. We hosted, buying most of the components from a local restaurant that we quite like, with various family members bringing other dishes. So far, so good.

We showed up at the restaurant at the agreed-upon time on Wednesday to pick the food up and it wasn't ready. We waited forty-five minutes.

When we got home with the food, I discovered, as we were putting it up, that we got one quart of gravy instead of two, one quart of dressing instead of two, and two quarts of cranberry sauce instead of one. Looking at the order sheet, I could see why: instead of a nice, orderly list of dishes and numbers it was in one paragraph, formatted something like: "Turkey--1;Ham--1;Giblet gravy--2;Cranberry sauce--1;Dressing--2;" such that it was easy to make the mistake of thinking the number belonged to the item immediately after it.

On Thanksgiving day I put the ham and turkey into the oven to warm up. I thought the turkey skin was a little underdone, and after the hour had elapsed it still was't quite up to snuff, so we basted it with melted butter and tossed it under the broiler for a few minutes to give it some browning.

You can probably see where this is going. When Toby started carving it...it was RAW. The order form I gave them distinctly said ROASTED TURKEY. Argh. Luckily we had the ham. Toby carved off the bits of breast meat that had gotten partially cooked after an hour in the oven plus time under the broiler, and I nuked them 30 seconds at a time until they got to a done state without overcooking, and we served that for those who really wanted turkey.

Why didn't I notice the skin was raw before we put it in the oven to warm? It had a spice rub on it that darkened the skin considerably. :)

On Monday, after double-checking the order form said ROASTED, I sent a complaint in via the web form and their email, detailing everything but the wait (because we hadn't actually timed it, until 15 minutes before the end), and asking for the cost of the turkey, the quart of dressing, and the quart of gravy, minus the 10% discount for buying the package, which I thought was fair. I explicitly said I was not going to identify the server packing the food up because the ultimate fault there was in the form, which was designed badly and easy to misread, especially given how tiny the type was on it.

The email bounced and the web form got no response, so I submitted it via their Facebook page. (Why not call? I haaaaaate phones. Haaaaate. Especially when I am likely to get very angry and start crying because I do that when I get very angry.) That got a response, apologizing and asking for a phone call so they could give us a refund and apologize again. Luckily for me, Toby had paid with his card so I gave them his number to call.

We ended up with $30 more than I asked for refunded to the card and a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant. Given that my in-laws had thrown us some money for part of the meal as their contribution to the dinner, overall we ended up breaking even on the deal. XD And now we have a story to tell through the generations, and I tossed the rest of the carcass into a stockpot and we've got a hell of a lot of turkey stock sitting in the freezer right now, waiting for ramen and other dishes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Who goes to a restaurant for a raw turkey, how can that even be thought of as an option?

Glad you had the ham! Ham saves the day!

Several restaurants I looked at had turkey "ready for the oven!" which is why I went with this one--they promised a cooked turkey! Otherwise I could just buy the damn turkey myself!

I liked the ham better, anyway. XD

A friend of mine has been doing smoked turkey breasts for a couple of years and likes them a lot. She mail-orders them, she was getting them from a place in Texas but they were small for the price. I think she gets them from Dakin Farm now. No more fussing around with the giant turkey, and everyone loves the smoked breasts.

Mom and I are dark-meat kinda people. XD When Toby and I were looking at options, there was a local place that does a lot of grab-and-go foods that offered cooked turkey breasts and turkey legs, which we may be doing the next time we host.

A towering arrangement of Just Legs would be pretty fabulous!

Oh my God. What a disaster. I have to say the phone thing especially struck sympathetic horror into my heart.

We were saved on the dressing front because my sister-in-law's mother brought dressing which I'd totally forgotten she was going to do, so I was prepping to make dressing on Thursday morning when Toby re-read the text where she said she was going to do that and stopped me in time. I stretched the gravy with a jar of store-bought stuff, turning what was very good gravy into not quite as nice but still decent gravy. And nobody in the immediate family is the sort to hold grudges over these sorts of disasters, so at least I don't have to worry about that!

Plus, my sister-in-law celebrated her new gas range by MAKING ALL THE THINGS so we had a great deal of side dishes! (Mushrooms in a balsamic sauce, roasted carrots, green bean casserole.) She's hosting Christmas so she gets to MAKE EVEN MORE THINGS, which reminds me that I'll need to ask what I can bring.

But damn, I was looking forward to really good giblet gravy. Phooey.

Yikes. I'm glad you managed a decent meal out of all that disaster.

Thanks! It helped that we had far, far too much of all the rest of the food, because my sister-in-law and her mother are generous and bring lots. XD