I would love to know what you all think of this situation that happened in a restaurant recently.
I phoned and made a booking at a casual restaurant for a family group of 16 for Sunday lunch. It was to be a celebration after my 1 year old daughter’s dedication at church.
I told the waitress that one of the group would be bringing a special cake and she told me the per person charge for serving it. All fine.
We arrived at the restaurant and my mother-in-law gave the cake in a box to the waitress and she took it to the kitchen. We then ordered our meals and ate them over the next hour. When it came time for dessert we asked the waitress to bring out the cake. Shortly afterwards, it arrived. We all looked up expecting to see the delicious cake that she had ordered from a cake shop, beautifully decorated. Instead what we saw was about TWENTY PIECES of CUT cake spread on a plate next to the icing placard (with my daughter’s name and a message to her) lying next to them. ARGGHHH. My mother-in-law just looked at it, stunned and eventually asked her “WHY did you cut it up?” The waitress just said “Oh, I thought you wanted it ready to serve to everyone! I thought I was being helpful !”. My mother-in-law said “But nobody had seen it !” The waitress mumbled “I’m sorry”. So that was it. We tried to imagine what it would have looked like when it was whole and then ate it. Tasted very nice, but hardly the special experience we were anticipating and a huge blow at the time to my mother-in-law who had probably paid a lot for it and certainly put a lot of effort into planning the design, hoping everyone would be able to admire it. The manager did agree to waive the cake surcharge (though it took some time for him to offer this).
Later I rang the cake shop and asked if they had a photo of the design but it was custom-made for us so there is no photo available.
Yes, it’s not a huge deal as a cake gets cut up pretty quickly after people see it anyway. My mother-in-law will get over it (I hope).
Perhaps this situation wouldn’t arise often because most cakes brought to a restaurant are probably for birthdays and it would therefore be expected that candles would be blown out before the cake is cut. However if you do take a cake for another occasion (anniversary, graduation etc.) and you are expecting your guests to see it whole, I would suggest mentioning this to the staff or you may find yourself in our situation.
Priceless moment.