Vegan Jamaican Sounds Like A Great Song But A Terrible Meal

(A new restaurant has opened in our local mall offering Jamaican food and drinks. They have a Facebook account and announce a raffle: whoever would like to win a voucher for any vegan burger to try it with their family must post a turtle emoji and the usual stuff. I participate and get contacted later via Messenger that I was one of the winners.)

Restaurant: “Please tell us the time and how many people we should make a reservation for.“

Me: “It’s four people at 2:00 pm, if that’s okay? My husband and me with the kids.”

Restaurant: “Great! Just please note that drinks and extras are not included in the prize.”

Me: “Sure, thanks! We can’t wait!”

(This is cool for us, as we are non-vegans and have been curious about the vegan options, but never dared to give it a try for fear of not liking it and thus wasting the scarce family eat-out money for it. We arrive at the place two days later; it’s 2:00 pm and rather empty. They tell us to sit where we like as barely any tables are taken. We pick a seat outside as it’s a warm day. The waiter comes and I tell him about the food we won. He takes the drink order and then we get to the food.)

Waiter: “Okay, so that’s one vegan burger. Anything else?”

Me: “Could you get us ketchup and mayo for the fries for the kids, as well? It does not have to be vegan.”

Waiter: “Well, if you want fries you must order some extra.”

Me: “But I thought the burgers come with fries? Like they are shown in the picture on Facebook? But if not, okay, no problem; please give each of us fries with our burger.”

Waiter: “Well, you won one free burger to try. If you want to share it, it’s your deal, but if your kids are hungry you should really try our kid’s menu.”

Me: *flustered now* “Oh, okay, so only one vegan burger is free? Well, then, we have to look at the menu, please.”

(We end up ordering a kids’ meal for each kid, drinks, and a full burger meal for my husband plus extra fries to go with my vegan burger. Maybe it’s the disappointment of that, but we then wait like what feels far too long and people who ordered after us get their food before our food arrives. The regular food is fine. The burger my husband ordered has onions on it, even though he asked to leave them off, but he just takes them off. The vegan burger misses the melted vegan cheese and sweet onion chutney they said it had in the description. Instead, it has a halved charlotte and one single piece of red bell pepper on it. Combined with the bun, rucola, tomato, and very minty salsa-verde is the sweetcorn patty that is nice and crisp, but consists of 50% big onion chunks, as well. It tastes like toothpaste with onions in a bun. Everybody gives it a bite but we agree that it’s really nothing we could ever like. The portions of fries are tiny for the price, and I end up snacking on my kids’ leftovers, looking forward to eating something for real later. So does my husband, as his burger and fries did not fill him up at all. We ask for the bill and what was supposed to be costing us drinks ended up as a full-priced eat-out that we would have cherished at one of our usual places, but now we feel kind of ripped off. I ask the waiter why my burger was missing so many ingredients from the description and picture and tell them that it tasted really bad that way.)

Waiter: “Yeah, that’s true, it’s not very good that way. We raffled off forty vouchers and ran out of the stuff the burger comes with yesterday. But you can come back any time and get it with all the stuff; it’s much better!”

(No. No, we surely won’t.)