My Place Bar & Grill Owner Calls Joe After His Burger Review
My Place Bar & Grill Owner Calls Joe After His Burger Review
For the first time on my Gold Medal Burger quest, a restaurant owner picked up the phone and called me almost immediately after a review went live. The restaurant was My Place Bar & Grill in Fonthill, and I shared what happened in a video from my home office.
The phone call
I was driving to St. Catharines to show some houses, chatting on the phone with an old friend, when an unknown number called twice in a row. I figured it must be important and took the call. It was the owner of My Place Bar & Grill.
He said he didn't care about the score. What upset him was that I had talked about my previous experiences at My Place, when I had bad burgers there before the quest. He felt that had nothing to do with the review and asked me to take the video down.
I apologized four or five times that he didn't like the review, but I told him I would not be taking it down. He also called it a bad review and said everyone who saw it felt the same way. So in the video I scrolled through the restaurant's Facebook page, looking for all the people supposedly talking about it.
How it ended
I do appreciate getting a personal call and hearing the feedback, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Constructive criticism is how anyone gets better. But the call ended with the owner telling me he didn't like me, telling me off, and hanging up. Not classy, not professional, and a little saddening to see someone in our community act that way.
My side
I had been hesitant to go back to My Place at all. I had been there twice for burgers before the quest, and on one of those visits I had about three bites and left the rest without complaining. I didn't want to give them bad press. But while we were filming in Fonthill, Robyn and I walked over and hoped for the best.
To my surprise, the burger was much better than before. I thought I gave a pretty good review that showed a big improvement, even if there are still better burgers out there. Robyn even came up with a fun new name for the style of burger we got.
The call left a sour taste in my mouth, and I'm not sure if I'll be back.
