Ok, I admit it. I’m a complainer. Especially when it comes to having dinner out.

My wife is a great cook and I’m not too shabby in the kitchen either, so when we splash out and go out for a meal we expect something pretty good.

Even if it’s a budget restaurant, cafe or takeaway place, you should expect basically good service and enjoyable meals and if you don’t get one - or both - I think it’s quite reasonable to tell them you aren’t satisfied with something. While I’m on the takeaway thing - serving staff that wear plastic gloves and then leave them on all bloody day are politely told ‘No thanks, I draw the line at you handling my chicken sandwich with the same gloves you use to get my change from the till!’

However, I get a swift kick under the table if it looks like I might be about to say something to a waitress in a restaurant as my wife always says when we go in, ‘DON’T say anything if there’s anything wrong or else they’ll spit in the food … or worse.’

That usually pulls me up short and I end up either not saying anything or trying really hard to tell them without being confrontational. Now, if they have an anonymous ‘Tell Us What You Think’ cards, I’ll tell em for sure!

When I saw a story from the news.com.au site today it reminded me to check out the NSW government website register of penalty notices page that had been mentioned on the telly a while back : ‘A Sydney restaurant with a dead rodent in its storage area and a fish market that stored crabs in a toilet cubicle are new additions to the NSW Government’s name-and-shame list.’ Read the rest of the story here.

Here’s the link to the web page mentioned in the story : NSW Food Authority Penalty Notices. You can search for restaurants, food shops etc by trading name, suburb, post code etc.

I’ll sure be checking out any new restaurant we plan on trying first after reading some of the horror stories!