Red Lemon - We Left With A Sour Taste

The meal that never was. That was our red lemon experience. Red Lemon is a cafe on Swan Street in Richmond. We had arranged to meet at Richmond before going to the Hawthorn versus North Melbourne footy final. I had commented to Justin that it was all going to go bad, as with our usual dinner before a big sporting event experiences. How right I was going to be.

Initially, we met at the Swan Hotel to eat. It was totally packed so we decided to go someplace else, sighting all these other restaurants on Swan Road. We walked down the street back towards the station and the MCG. Upon passing a lot of place, enquires within showed that most were full. Finally, we passed Red Lemon and they had a table so decided to go in. The huge blackboard with all these different simple quick meals also meant we could eat quickly and get to the match. How wrong we were to be.

When we got seated, we got given menus, which had all of 5, yes 5 items on it. When we wanted to order the dishes on the blackboard, we were told those were for lunch only and we couldn't order that. Ok. So out of the huge choices, most of us opted for the Porterhouse Steak, which was only a measly 200g instead of the usual 350g and would cost $19. What the heck, we needed to eat and beggers can't be choosers. We had a footy match to go to.

As we sat and waited, and waited, and waited, all the while looking at our watches and saying "Now we have .... minutes to eat", we finally had enough. Hence we discussed leaving and just grabbing some fast food on the way. When the waiter/owner heard us, he rushed over and very arrogantly put his hand on Justin and said, "It's only 5 more minutes". Justin then replied that we really had to go, to which the owner started to get aggresive and said "It's only 5 more minutes". Then Ha said that we had already been waiting 45 minutes, in which his reply was "You came in a big group (there was only six of us) and it was really busy when you got here". That still doesn't change that we waited 45 minutes and really had to leave now. I mean, how hard is it to cook a few steaks, especially when most of us wanted it medium rare too. There are only 5 items on the menu, most of which would already be half prepared already.

So we got up and left to catch our footy match. The owner walked out behind us and said "I don't want to see you come back ever again". We won't be thanks. So that was the meal that we never had. Not that I was particularly looking forward to it. It looked quite expensive and there wasn't exactly a lot of choice.

Has anyone else ever walked out of a restaurant? I've done it one other time when the food was really taking forever and we had a movie to catch. It wasn't as confrontational that time as we just said that we had a movie to catch and had to leave. The waitress said that was ok and cancelled our orders. This time, our meals hadn't begun being cooked yet either, so I don't know why the owner was getting so upset for.