It’s hard to determine how many opportunities to give a restaurant to be good, especially when it was oh-so-good at one point. There is a line, but the line is different for each restaurant.
The best carne asada I have had in Los Angeles was at Cactus Taqueria, on Vine, just below Hollywood Blvd. I must have eaten there a dozen times and recommended it to a lot of people. At some point I saw new faces in the kitchen, and the carne asada became sub-par. After the integrity of the carne asada had been lost, I still ate there about four times – each time I hoped for the original, but it appeared I was chasing the white dragon.
It’s hard to let go of those restaurants that once made you oh-so-happy, but going back time and time again just allows them to continuously let you down, and encourages their bad behavior. You have to take a stand – but at what point?
Making the decision not to go back is difficult because you have so many good memories of the place, and there’s always the question of whether or not it’ll go back to the way you remember it. What if it does go back to the way you remember it and you’re not there to enjoy it? That’s a scary possibility but that’s the risk you have to take.
There is no set limit on when to let go, but you can put a restaurant on your backburner for a couple of months to limit your disappointments and obvious desperation – and maybe, just maybe, if enough people boycott a restaurant long enough they’ll figure it out and you’ll get lucky when you decide to revisit it.
Now, there’s the question of what to do when there’s a restaurant that you constantly hear good recommendations for. Try it out, and if it’s not that good, and not worth the price then say goodbye for the time being. This one is not quite so difficult to let go of because you haven’t had a good experience. The problem comes from people excusing your bad experience and calling you a quitter for not trying the food again.
I realize people begin to question their tastes when they hear so many good things about a place that didn’t offer a good experience when they tried it. “What do you mean you had the Fettuccini Alfredo? You’re supposed to have the Lasagna.” That’s a good point. Perhaps you should go back and have the Lasagna before you decidedly never go back; unless of course the Fettuccini Alfredo was really that terrible.
How many bad experiences do we have to have at a place before we have the right to a negative opinion about it? Unfortunately, for each friend with an opposing opinion, you’ll always be wrong. My absolute final straw for this is the lucky number three. After three times you can forget what anybody has to say about a restaurant. If it has failed you three times in a row, you are entitled to your decision to never return again.
