Warning – this article may contain gross exaggeration, painful puns and slight traces of humour. Do not read if you’re feeling overly full of food as it may cause vomiting or worse.
It was a special birthday dinner for a beloved family member, so we all went to a fancy restaurant to celebrate.
The eatery was called “FancyFull Food”, which I took to mean it had fancy food. By “fancy” I expected more than just three Siberian snow peas sitting on an iceberg lettuce leaf with a dressing of 2 drops of single origin extra virgin olive oil and one drop of Venezuelan vinegar. By “full” I hoped we finish the evening feeling, well …. full from having eaten a hearty meal containing deliciously unhealthy levels of fat, salt, sugar, spice and all things nice. After all it was a special occasion.
The food hit the spot. We started with entrees of prawn cocktails served in cocktail glasses with little paper umbrellas sticking up out of the seafood sauce and a garnish of fresh seaweed from the restaurant aquarium.
Then we moved on to the main courses. These included Chicken a la King Charles with pasta. This was served in special bowls decorated with a picture of a King Charles spaniel inside the bowls. According to the waiter this dish is so named because the owner’s King Charles spaniel loves licking out the leftovers from these bowls. Desserts included Pie Surprise. The waiter explained that it was freshly made each day from the mashed up leftover desserts of the previous day, baked in pastry and served up with lashings of ice cream. The serving portions were enormous, leaving us “full” as the restaurant name implied.
But the real surprise came at the end of the evening when we were settling the bill. We were, to say the least, puzzled by a huge list of extra charges. These surcharges ended up nearly doubling the bill. When pressed, the waiter provided a menu card of extra fees in microscopic print. Here are the details:
Corkage. We expected this one, even though our bottles of mineral water had screw tops and are impossible to open with a corkscrew.
Cakeage. We did bring a birthday cake for our esteemed family member but didn’t expect to be charged $20 a head for the staff to cut it up and put it onto our plates.
Portage. This was a fee for waiters carrying the food to the table rather than the diners picking it up themselves from the kitchen downstairs, or in some cases, the fried chicken shop next door.
Sortage. This is charge for the extra time involved in sorting out a bill for a table of 27 people, some of whom couldn’t remember what they had eaten or why they were there.
Yachtage. This is to help pay for the restaurant owner’s mooring fees which, the waiter explained, have skyrocketed recently. Such is the cost of living crisis.
Porkage. An extra fee for the trouble of finding a local pig and persuading it to be wrapped in banana leaves and baked in an outdoor pit with an apple in its mouth.
Rortage. A random charge the proprietor thinks he can get away with in the maze of other fees.
Jerkage. The waiters add this surcharge if they think the customer is an A-grade jerk.
Voteage. This was a surprise. Voteage is a bonus refund for giving a “like” to the restaurant on the TripAdvisor restaurant review website. Needless to say, we missed out on that one, and so did they.
++++
© Geoff Milton 2024
Image: based on Copilot AI output
