SaiGon Café Vietnamese Taste Drink & Food — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Tl;dr: Clothes got soaked in fish sauce (and other food matter) due to a waitress’s careless mistake. Tried to have a quiet, private word with the owner; ended up getting yelled at instead by the entire restaurant staff. Very poor customer service!

My friend and I were eating our meals here a few days ago—2 starters and 2 noodle soups. Despite our meals being rather bland and pricey compared to equivalent items at other eateries, we were still enjoying our lunch, happily supporting this fairly new, local Vietnamese restaurant. Our pleasant experience came to a halt, however, when the waitress dropped a pile of plates and bowls right next to my seat, shattering them, and spilling fish sauce and uneaten waste all over my sweater and coat in the process. I was lucky that the plates had just barely missed my head.

Now, while having one’s clothes soaked in fish sauce is certainly an unpleasant experience, I was completely ready to overlook this genuine mistake. Having worked in many restaurants myself, I know that mistakes like this happen, and as the customer, all I care about is how the staff addresses the mistake afterwards. A sincere apology and quick assistance with clean-up is ALL they had to provide. I would have been 100% satisfied had the staff followed up this little snafu with the appropriate actions.

But what did the Saigon Café staff do?

First, none of the staff helped me right away as they should have. They were too busy trying to clean the floor, and I had to clean everything myself at the nearby washroom. It was only after the floor had been taken care of did the waitress direct her attention to me, smugly offering to “take the jacket to the washers,” as if that was the appropriate response to the situation. Seriously? Not only did she overlook what should have been the first course of action (i.e., first asking if I am okay and to apologize for the mistake), her offer to take away my clothes for cleaning was ridiculous from a logistical standpoint. This was happening in February! How was I supposed to even leave the restaurant and face the (beautiful but ruthless) cold of the Finnish winter without my jacket and sweater? So I declined her nonsensical offer and shortly decided to leave, having lost the appetite to finish my meal.

Second, as we were leaving, my friend and I decided to have a private talk with the owner, but were met with outright hostility by the entire staff. Our intention was to give genuine feedback to just the owner, quietly, hoping that she would understand what happened, how it made us feel, and ultimately relay our feedback to the staff and advise them regarding appropriate follow-up actions in situations like the one we faced. Unfortunately, the owner does not speak English, and we were told to explain the situation to the waiter who would then translate our feedback. So my friend was explaining how we had an “unpleasant experience today,” and in no time at all, the waitress jumped in and started yelling at us. I repeat: She was literally yelling, becoming hyper defensive and hostile, with statements like. “I said I am SORRY! I offer to bring her coat to the LAUNDRY! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” We were absolutely stunned at what was happening. The worst part is that the owner—whom apparently does not speak English—also joined in, yelling at us and making a big scene.

This was an ineffably insulting and upsetting experience. It was not as if we were trying to severely reprimand the restaurant staff; we simply wanted to give feedback to the owner in private, in order to help them learn from the experience without embarrassing the staff. But they failed brilliantly at receiving feedback. I later heard from other patrons that the restaurant owner has a reputation for arguing with people and does not take customer feedback well.With this kind of staff mentality, I would never visit again, even if the food were exceptional, which was...

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However, the service felt a bit off, since they moved to this new bigger space. They forgot our order for 30 minutes, I reminded them once, and the waitress said it’d be ready soon. But after seeing other guests who arrived later get their food, we had to ask again - this time, she asked what we had ordered.

I can understand forgetting an order, but not even an apology or explanation?...