Another new restaurant

I discovered a new restaurant in Chandigarh which left me with just one question - How can a restaurant serve such tasty food and yet have such poor service?

There's a restaurant called "Noodle Bar" that I'd heard of but never got to visit. On a lark one day I decided to check it out. I made a few calls but only one of my friends seemed interested in going. So I took him and went to the restaurant. The place specializes in Chinese/Thai food along with some Italian dishes. The food is reasonably priced and was quite tasty. ("The food was not undelicious.") It also seemed to be a very "happening" place in the sense that there were a lot of young people at the place. Maybe to visit the bar/lounge/club that was in the back. Nevertheless, that was when I decided to visit the place again. The big negative though was the service which really sucked. The main dishes took forever coming and we were quite pissed off. We left a very small tip to convey our displeasure and left.

The next weekend I was craving the food again and I went by myself this time. When I walked into the restaurant it was relatively empty (only three tables were occupied out of a total of about 30. Still, they gave me a corner table for two, which I didn't mind in the slightest. The food arrived which was quite tasty as usual. But as I was eating, the place slowly filled up. A family of about nine people showed up after the restaurant was almost full. There was only one vacant table which could seat six and it was right next to my table. As I was eating I noticed out of the corner of my eye, the family indicating that they wanted to sit at that table and the waiter explaining to them that as soon as I got up, they'd join the two tables and the entire family could be seated there. Now, to their credit, neither the family nor the restaurant staff said a single word to me about leaving early or even make a gesture (an impatient sigh, an awkward glance etc) to make me feel uncomfortable. Having said that, when six of the family members were seated by the staff at that table, and the remaining members are just walking around the restaurant making it plainly clear that they were waiting for me to leave, it really made finishing my meal very difficult. Ideally the patrons would be asked to wait outside the restaurant while the restaurant got their table ready. But by seating part of the group there and asking the others to walk around, they really ruined my dining experience.

Maybe I expected too much from the restaurant. But anyway you slice it, it showed once again that single people in this country have a horrible life. They are not allowed to live with any sort of dignity. I say "people" because while only single guys face these awkward and humiliating situations, girls have it worse because it would be unthinkable for a girl to, say, go out to eat by herself or try to rent a room by herself etc. I will go back to that restaurant again though, but this time with a group of friends.