The New Road

Hard Rock

I just sent this to the Hard Rock Cafe CEO:

To the CEO of Hard Rock Café,

My wife, daughter and myself ate at your restaurant in Lahaina Maui on November 7th, 2003. We chose your restaurant because we have eaten at other restaurants in the Hard Rock chain before (Melbourne Australia, Orlando, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans), and have had reasonably good experiences. We also appreciate that the restaurant always stocks veggie friendly menu items, like the Gardenburger.

That being said, our experience in Maui was miserable. The food was well below par. I ordered the Veggie Fajitas. The tortillas were old, dry and stiff, and the vegetables were tasteless and undercooked. My wife’s experience was similarly distressing. Her Gardenburger was burnt on the bottom and the soggy bun had some kind of dressing on it that was either off or a poor attempt at some strange flavor alteration that ended up going in a really bad direction. Having experienced food poisoning on vacation once before she wisely chose not to go past the first bite. My daughter liked her one slice of a mini cheese pizza, but her one year old taste buds are not particularly discriminating.

Because we are vegetarians it has been a long time since we ate at McDonald’s, but I can tell you that from memory, the food at this Hard Rock was far below the quality of anything I have ever eaten at McDonald’s. It was that bad.
We didn’t raise the issue at the restaurant. We are polite people and this is the first letter of complaint I’ve written in about five years. The last time was about an errant issue on my credit report. This experience was so bad that my wife and I decided to write the company.

I know that a coupon is the standard response to this sort of thing. Believe me, neither my wife or I are interested in that. I don’t want to eat there again and nor would you. What should happen is that someone should go there and reboot the kitchen. Or, if this is the level at which your restaurants now operate, please let us know so that in the future we can avoid them.