Here is my account of Saturday evening, November 15, 2008.
My Girlfriend’s birthday was last Thursday, the 13th. The plan was to get together with her family and a couple close friends on Saturday evening for dinner. The Basque Hotel on ‘F’ Street & Fresno, downtown; was decided on, as she really liked the food and her family had been there many times in the past.
She and I arrived, completely disregarded by the staff and had to find our way through several rooms to a table way in the back corner. The decrepit elderly woman waiting on us was immediately annoyed with our party’s presence and barely even paid attention when we placed our orders. This restaurant serves family style in several courses. First bread and soup was brought out, before any of us could even get half way through the soup it was forcibly removed from us. This pattern repeated for the next 3 courses brought out to us. We were graciously allowed about 2-3 minutes to shovel down each course before the food was removed without our permission.
Finally the main course came out. I ordered a medium rare rib eye steak, which when served was not only very well done, but also not a rib eye, it was a $1.99 skirt steak that you can get for breakfast at any local Mexican restaurant. The thing was so tough that my steak knife could barely penetrate it. I just couldn’t stomach the though of spending $20 on something of that poor quality, so I politely showed the waitress that the steak was not how I ordered it and she irritably took it back to the kitchen. A couple minutes later she returned with a new steak. This steak was entirely raw. We all agreed that it was cooked that way with the spiteful intentions of “he wants it cooked less; we’ll show him how little we can cook it”.
I absolutely love rare meat, but this was disgusting. I’ve had seared steak and this is not what it looks like. The bloody cold center was black with congealed, old blood. I informed the waitress that the steak was inedible and to just cancel that order, and that I’d pay for what I’d eaten to that point, and nothing more. That offer was refused. At that point it became an arguing match between our whole table and two angry waitresses insisting “oh, you’re GOING to pay for that steak”. Finally they agreed that I didn’t have to pay for it, but the whole table was told that we could NEVER return to the restaurant (as if we ever would).
Immediately after that, the original grouchy waitress came and removed everyone else’s steak while they were still eating it. Most people had more than 3/4 of their steak left on their plates when they were taken. I should also mention that NOBODY was happy with their overcooked, pan fried, unseasoned, grade-D meat.
So here’s the best part. As we all sat there in disbelief at what had just happened, out of the corner of my eye, I see a man (Fermin Urroz, the Owner), swaggering towards us with a mean look in his eye. As he approaches our table he angrily shouts “Which one of you pieces of sh** are sending my steak back”, among many other profane personal verbal attacks which I will omit from this account. I announced that it was me at which point he was standing over me spewing insults from his toothless flap of a mouth in his broken English. At which point I stood up, being about 18″ taller than him, he kind of quieted down, at which point my girlfriend started yelling at him too. She was very upset because it was her birthday and he was ruining it. Next, he proceeds to grab her face with both of his hands in a violent, aggressive manner. We were forced to physically restrain this psychopath as he was lunging toward her in furious blind anger.
Needless to say, we immediately called 911 and the police had to deal with it from there.
Oh yeah, and one last thing, there were roaches, and all the dishes, silverware and glasses had had old encrusted food framing greasy fat finger smudges all over them. It was disgusting.
And in case anybody doesn’t believe this, I have an Event Number from Fresno PD corroborating the story
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Originally posted on FresnoFamous.com written by KGB
We cannot let local businesses get away with this kind of service. One would think that with the economy the way it is businesses would have to start reaching new levels of great customer satisfaction for repeat business. Who the hell does this owner think he is?
