Do you know the muffin man...

...who lives on Drury Lane? Cause if you do, you might want to tell him that having four security guards escort my two Lawyer friends off the Tamarai premises is not best way to get them to pay the discretionary 12.5% service charge he added to the bill! Here comes Lesson 4 - Tamarai sucks!

Confused, trust me so was I when I heard the story and to be honest I still am... here’s a breakdown of the events.

1. A friend of mine goes to a chic Asian fusion restaurant called Tamarai (on Drury) with another of her friends
2. The bill (no more than £180) arrives and due to crappy service they decide not to pay the full 12.5% discretionary service charge - they want to pay less
3. The PIlsbury Dough boy in the cheap suit then says that they must pay and if they don’t then he won't accept payment for the meal
4. He then says “If you can't afford to eat in places like this, you shouldn't come out - this is fine dining, not Mcdonalds"
5. After much wrangling he calls for four security guards to escort the two off the premises
6. She has now received a claim for £1,000 because apparently my friend “abused other diners, intimidated staff and vandalised property”

Right so when I finally heard the whole story I thought it would be best for me to write a list of rules for the muffin man management of Tamarai, I’m calling it ‘Restauranting 101’.

Rule #1 - A Discretionary Service charge is just that

Since when did discretionary’s definition in the dictionary change to compulsory and a discretionary payment compulsory to the point of it’s absence causing an entire bill to be forfeit. I’m pretty sure that the definition of 'Discretionary' is having the ability to decide or act using your judgement - SO A DISCRETIONARY SERVICE CHARGE DOESN”T HAVE TO BE PAID IT IS AT THE PATRONS DISCRETION!!!!

Rule #2 - Not accepting payment is kind of stupid

As a restaurant, surely it’s better for you to be paid for the food rather than allowing your muffin man staff to refuse payment because they are not going to receive 12.5%. Would you not prefer to take full payment and allow the discretionary charge to be paid - oh no not if your Tamrai, you simply treat your restaurant like it's William Hill and hope for the best.

Rule #3 - Four security guards + two girls = overkill

Even if you want to remove a couple of ladies from your premises, using four burly security guards is kind of going too far - neither of my friends aren’t in the WWF, they are normal, mild mannered legal professionals and don’t really need Grant and Phil Mitchell clones to get them to leave.  Telling them it’s not Mcdonalds and that it is a fine dining establishment does the trick!

Rule #4 - £180 does not equal £1,000

Now I know that being in the restaurant business means that food is your speciality, not numbers but a basic grasp of mathematics would probably serve you well. Not allowing two diners to pay a £180 does not give you cause to try and claim £1,000 at a later date (honestly a lobotomised goat with an 'F' in GCSE Food Technology could tell you that. Now you've got to prove that they broke the law (which they didn’t) and then spend more than £1,000 going through small claims (and probably lose).

Rule #5 - Don’t employ offensive staff

The whole reason I’m writing this post is because of the offensive nature the entire event played out. I know I don’t know all the details, but I do know that my friends were told that they basically should go to Mcdonalds because they weren’t good enough to dine in Tamarai due to questioning the service. Well if you hadn’t employed freakin’ idiots maybe they’d get their service charge and everyone would be happy.

Lesson learned -Tamarai sucks

But I guess I’m less confused now than I was at the start of this blog... the one clear thought crawling through the thicket of ‘What the heck’ is simply don’t go and eat at Tamarai - you’ll get shoddy service, be expected to pay for it, get insulted, be ejected by the Mitchell Brothers plus clones and then get a £1,000 bill a week later! Don't go and tell all your friends not to as well - the muffin man might make great cakes, but he makes shitty restaurants!