A recent post by Carpetblogger reminded me of one of my early restaurant experiences in Kyiv. About a month or so after I moved here, two Peace Corps/Moldova friends came for a long weekend. I still didn’t know my way around the city well, and certainly didn’t know the restaurant/café scene at all. Eating out with the girls had quickly proved to be a nightmare in and of itself. Neither of these so-called world travelers, who had been living and working in Moldova for over a year, understood any Russian or Ukrainian at all, and for some reason they decided all their hard-earned adaptation and survival skills could be checked at the border, leaving me to hold their hands and take care of absolutely everything.
After a long day comprised almost entirely of them trying to see every pair of boots available in all of Kyiv, we ended up near Kontraktova plosha, hungry, tired, and desperately in need of someplace easy to go to (at least, easy for me). We saw a café called Double Coffee, with an English name and a sign written in Latin letters. Personally, I find this to be one of the more obnoxious and annoying trends in Kyiv, when a place tries to be so “cosmopolitan” by using an alphabet the majority of the population probably doesn’t read. But at that particular point in the day, an English-friendly place was just what I needed.
Earlier in the day, we had stopped at a food court in a shopping mall for some lunch. After describing the experience to a friend a few days later, she said “Man, it sounds like taking a group of retarded kids on a field trip.” If only it had been that easy. I foolishly thought it would be easy for all of us to eat there, since most of the food kiosks had the food on display in glass cases. No such luck. Both girls, I learned, had the annoying habit of not paying attention at the same time. For some reason, they didn’t quite grasp that they could both hear the descriptions of the food choices at the same time; instead, I would finish going through all the options with one, and then the other would ask me to start from the beginning. By the time I finished the second time, the first girl had forgotten her choices and wanted me to tell them to her again. Then they wanted detailed explanations of the ingredients. I’m a vegetarian, so I’ve never really bothered to learn all the meat words. But I managed to get most dishes explained. Same routine started again – by the time I explained all the choices and all their ingredients, one girl would want me to start over from the beginning. Then the other girl asked me if such-and-such was good or not. I had to remind her each and every time that I don’t eat meat and thus have no idea if the beef in tomato sauce is good or not. The first girl finally managed to make a selection and ordered, while the saga of the food inquiry continued with the second girl. The first girl got her food and went to get a table, then came back to tell me she needed mayonnaise. By this time, I was in the middle of difficult negotiations with the cashier to order food for the second girl, who wanted a million exceptions and needed everything explained again for the hundredth time before being sure of what she was ordering (you’d think it was the last meal of her life!). I asked the cashier for a packet of mayo, but she was too engaged with the process of the ordering to immediately offer it up. Girl 1 stood behind me for the next 5 minutes, repeating every 30 seconds or so, “Ann, I need some mayonnaise.”
So, by the time we hit Coffee House, I was at my wit’s end and had high hopes that the girls could manage some ordering on their own. The first hint of the impending disaster was the ambivalence that greeted us at the door. “No tables,” shrugged the bored-looking waitress. “What about that one over there?” we asked, pointing to an empty table on the far side of the room. She shrugged again and walked away. We made our way to the table, and I sighed with relief when we were handed menus not only with pictures but also with English names and descriptions. But my dear friends were prepared to make even this experience difficult. Both girls came up with a bunch of questions not addressed by the menu, and both wanted substitutions and changes to their selected dishes. We quickly learned that the English language friendliness of the place did not extend to the wait staff, and thus I was stuck again negotiating all their intricate food needs.
Girl 1 ordered a Caramel Ice Cream Sundae, and even pointed to the picture of it in the menu. Several minutes later, Waitress brings her a chocolate sundae. Girl 1 looks at it, looks at Waitress, looks at me. “This isn’t what I ordered,” she says. Waitress stares at us with a blank look. “That’s not what she ordered,” I repeat in Russian. Blank stare continues. “I wanted the caramel sundae,” Girl 1 says, pointing on the menu to exactly the item she had pointed to when ordering. “We don’t have that,” Waitress says. “But I don’t want a chocolate sundae,” Girl 1 says. Waitress shrugs her shoulders and starts to walk away. I started to think our waitress wasn’t sharpest knife in the drawer.
I had ordered a latte. A few minutes later, Waitress brings me a cup of tea. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I think you brought us someone else’s order.” “No,” she said, “it’s your tea.” “I’m sorry,” I repeat (why am I apologizing?!), “I didn’t order tea. I wanted a latte.” “No, you said ‘mint tea’,” she stated, and walked away.
At that point, I thought we had just encountered the World’s Stupidest Waitress. Later, I realized we had met a graduate of the Ukrainian School of Customer Service.
When Waitress returned, my friend resumed the debate with her about the sundae. Waitress seemed to have no intention of remedying the situation, so Girl 1 finally said “Well, I’m not paying for this. It’s not what I ordered and it’s not what I want.” Suddenly, Waitress understands English really well, and she takes away the offending chocolate sundae. My friend is left to reflect on her bad behavior.
In the meantime, I still have my mint tea but no latte. Waitress has disappeared. I wait a few minutes for her to come back, to bring me my latte. No sign of her. I finally take the tea to the coffee bar myself, and order a latte. The woman at the coffee bar looks surprised, but I calmly explain that this is not my tea and I would like a latte. A minute later I have it, and I rejoin my friends at the table. Suddenly Waitress reappears and scowls at me – “What did you do? Why did you go to the coffee bar yourself?” she growls. “I wanted a latte, and it didn’t seem like you were going to do anything about it,” I growled back. Waitress stomped away, leaving us again to reflect on our bad behavior.
