Truth in Advertising

Last week we got a special treat. At the last minute, it suddenly worked out that my Mom was going to be in town to attend a workshop. My mom lives in Cairo...yes...the one in Egypt...so this was a pretty big deal. We hadn't seen her since last September, right before she moved to Egypt. She didn't actually stay at our house while she attended the workshop but she took a couple of days off work so that we could visit and hang out. It was a lot of fun. And we did a lot of stuff that my little family doesn't typically do...like eating out. We ate out A LOT!

One of the places we hit on our grand-old-tour of all the local restaurants was IHOP. This was an impromptu brunch after my son had had to fast for an ultrasound. So since the girls had already eaten breakfast, I thought that a bowl of fruit would suffice.

Here's the bowl of fruit as pictured on the menu:



I vaguely recalled a previous waiter mentioning something about it being a small bowl of fruit so I did ask the waiter for clarification about the fruit bowl...but I now realize I asked the wrong question. However I did find out that the kids bowl costs $2.99 and the regular bowl is like $5.49. Can I digress for a minute to point on that those prices are BOTH highway robbery!! How much do you think that fruit really costs them?! But before I wander too far down that tangent, let me show you the bowl of fruit that was delivered.



Are you kidding me?!  That's five pieces of fruit. Admittedly five large - choking-hazardly-large - pieces of fruit but come on, that does NOT look like the same bowl of fruit. I'm not usually one to make a stink about things but this was too much. I pointed out to the waiter that those bowls of fruit look nothing alike. He didn't have much to say so I asked if I could speak to the manager. (But I promise you that I was very polite about it. Truthfully this is probably the first time I've asked for the manager in my entire life.) The manager came over and I pointed out that the bowl of fruit looked nothing like the one in the picture and he said, "The picture is for dramatic purposes."   

Uh...then shouldn't you disclose on the menu that the bowl of fruit pictured is nothing like the bowl of fruit you will receive?

That response riled up some of the members of my party and they were ready to throw down right then and there.  But I tried to maintain the friendly atmosphere by steering it back to what I really wanted anyway.  "Could we possibly upgrade to the regular sized bowl?"

Am I overreacting, people?! You do agree that that bowl of fruit looks very different than the bowl of fruit in the menu, right?!

So anyway they brought me another little bowl of fruit and to IHOP's credit, they didn't charge me another $2.99 for the additional five pieces of fruit in the new bowl.

Having said that, I figured I'd share this with the rest of you possibly-IHOP-visiting-parents, lest you get sucked into the Jr. Fresh Fruit Dish trap.