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Little things make a #fail

It can take years to build a reputation, but a little thing can break everything. The wife and me ordered salads from Papa Johns (Koramangala, Bangalore, INDIA). They have two different types of salads – the traditional veg salad and the slightly more fancier island fresh salad (with pineapples and a little bit of paneer cubes). We had ordered 0delivery. The food arrived on time. Excellent packaging. Cheerful delivery person. We dived in. The shocker — the cucumber was bitter. And by bitter, I mean, ultra-bitter, so bitter that the humble bitter-gourd would be put to shame !!

Every other ingredient was perfect. But just the fact that cucumber (the description said luscious de-cored cucumbers) was so bitter put us off sad. Even so, because, it is so easy to have been avoided. A small taste of the cucumber (one small bit) could have eliminated this mishap (Usually if a small bit is bad, the entire cucumber is bad).

What is worse is, it brought back my two bad memories with Papa Johns – one where the store tried conning us (thinking we were the usual gullible Indian customer – this was about 5 years back) that a tomato based pizza was Spinach Alfredo ; and one where the waiter had argued that the watery garlic sauce was the same sauce served all over the word (the manager later apologized for this, and admitted that the sauce in India was different from the creamy yellow sauce in the US).

I had really forgotten the two older incidents, and started enjoying Papa Johns in India. But this small mistake kindled all those memories. Maybe its just me, that makes this such a big deal. But I really think, if you are paying premium, you deserve premium.

Papa Johns – are you reading this??