Clik here to view.
The London restaurant has long been known for its grouchy staff, but I never found it amusing. Rudeness ruins more than just lunch
Wong Kei in Wardour Street, famously the rudest restaurant in London, is being refurbished. It will reopen on 10 March. The menu is unchanged; the main renovation has been one of attitude. They are no longer intending to shout "Sit down with them!" or "Go upstairs!" at you the minute you arrive, as if you're some idiot stranger who has wandered into their bathroom while they're cleaning their teeth.
I never classed myself a "wonkee", and never bought the rudeness as authentic. People enjoyed it too much. It was too vaudeville. I suspected them of having a staff meeting at the start of each shift, to practise their "fuck-off" faces.
By contrast, a real argument with a waiter is a curious thing – the sense of outrage stays with you for ages. It turns the food to ash. It feels as personal as getting dumped. Almost always, the trigger point is money – did you tip enough, are you complaining about something that's actually fine, to scam them, are you pretending to think the wine is corked because all you wanted to do was have a taste that you didn't pay for? I've heard waiters chasing diners out with the money they'd left as a tip, angrily yelling: "You forgot your change!" (Who's in the right? It depends how much you left. 20p on a £60 bill, you deserve to be chased. 12 percent instead of 12.5, your server has an anger issue or too much chasing-energy).
None of that is pleasant – how often in life does someone call you tight, to your face? But it doesn't leave the same sour taste in the mouth as a false accusation. Say you've found something in your food, a spider or a hair or some gravel; rather than take it away, the very rudest waiters will accuse you of planting it. There is really no diplomatic way out of this. They have called you a thief. Plus they have spiders in their food. You have to storm out; if they call the police, so be it.
The rudest thing that ever happened to me was in Canteen, under the Royal Festival Hall. I'd booked a table, they had some electrical fault and had to turn me away; inside the restaurant were loads of other diners, apparently unaffected; I was just the final straw. It was a hot day and I was eight months pregnant. I had to wait because I was meeting someone. Could I have a glass of water? Unfortunately not, no. Maybe a little sit down? Not at this time. I felt like bloody Mary (Of "Mary and Joseph", not "a bloody mary").
I'm still fuming, six years later. That's the thing with authentic restaurant rudeness. It never leaves you, not after all the renovations in the world.
