I have never forgotten the evening I playfully bet two German customers they would not be able to eat the amount of pizza they had ordered. What started out as a fun, teasing challenge became something quite ugly, and I certainly never repeated the mistake!
We offered 9-inch, 13-inch and 15-inch pizzas at Mac’s. The 9-inch pizza, which today is commonly referred to as a “personal” pizza, was the perfect size for one hungry person or two light eaters. The 13-inch pizza, cut into 8 slices, easily fed 3-4 people depending on their appetites. The 15-incher was divided into 10 slices, enough for 5 or more people. We didn’t stint on cheese or the toppings, our pizzas were filling as well as satisfying, but the sizes often confused European customers.
American visitors were familiar with the word “inches”, it’s how pizzas were sold in the United States. Canada had adopted the metric system in 1970, but most Canadians still thought in feet and inches and had no problem with the pizza sizes. However, Europeans were accustomed to ordering their pizzas by the centimetre, and often made the mistake of ordering too much food. My staff was therefore trained to explain the sizes to such customers, showing them the actual pizza pans if they remained confused.
One evening two large German men arrived without a reservation, and were seated at what we called the “staff” table. This table was situated beside the swinging doors leading into the kitchen and was barely large enough for two bulky men, let alone the food they would order! We rarely used the tiny table and for good reason; those swinging doors opened and closed non-stop when the restaurant was busy, and people collecting take-out pizzas often clustered beside it while paying for their orders.
The German men immediately asked their waitress for a bottle of red wine, and after a quick glance at the menu they ordered two 15-inch pizzas heavily loaded with toppings. Eldica tried to explain that they were ordering too much food, but the men’s English wasn’t very good and she could see they didn’t understand. She did the right thing, and before ordering the pizzas returned to the table to show them the three different pans. The men just laughed; “You know our appetite? Ve are hongry!”
Eldica ordered the fully-loaded pizzas as requested, and when she told me they were for two hungry men I asked if she had shown them the pans. Once assured that the customers HAD been fore-warned I went ahead and rolled the pizzas, knowing that a lot of people purposely ordered too much so they could eat leftovers the next day. When the large pizzas were ready Eldica was busy taking an order and, as the small table was close to the kitchen, I delivered the pizzas myself. There was no room for plates at that table, it was so small that the customers would have to eat directly from the pan. Laughing, I placed the pizzas in front of the two men and said what turned out to be dangerous words:
“There’s no way you can eat all this pizza!”
The men insisted they were hungry, but with all the toppings they had ordered I knew for SURE they would not be able to finish their meals, and that’s when I made my mistake;
“If you eat every scrap of these pizzas I’ll give you a free bottle of wine!”
The two Germans quickly accepted the challenge, and began to eat with gusto while I went back to rolling pizzas. Half an hour later they clamoured for their bottle of wine, claiming they had won the bet! I went to the dining room in disbelief, and was astonished to see two empty pizza pans on the table. The men must have been half-starved, not even a piece of crust was left, and that meant I did indeed owe them a bottle of wine. I returned to the kitchen, and as I reached for the wine Eldica whispered to me that the men had cheated;
“Dey ain’t eat both pizzas, dey only eat one”.
Aware of the challenge, Eldica had observed one of the men slipping out of the restaurant carrying a whole pizza, and had watched as he slid it onto the seat of a boat pulled up on the beach.
I had challenged the two men in fun, and such blatant cheating rubbed me the wrong way. Returning to the table, I told them they would NOT be getting the wine because they had NOT eaten all the pizza. They didn’t take kindly to this, and started making a lot of noise about the bottle of wine I owed them. The entire dining room fell silent as the argument grew in volume, and I decided to settle the matter by retrieving the pizza from the dinghy. The men followed quickly as I marched down the steps, expecting of course to see the pizza sitting inside their boat.
There was no pizza on the dinghy seat, but a tell-tale smear of red sauce and melted cheese was all the proof I needed. While the men and I had argued about the bottle of wine, someone had helped himself to the pizza left on the seat in such a tempting fashion. I was flushed with anger and so were the German men, but the rest of my customers found the situation highly amusing, Bequia entertainment at its best!
That was a bet I never made again; once bitten, twice shy!