Disclaimer: If only...if only. Sadly I don't own.
AN: I've been watching a lot of clips of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and was inspired.
Hay Lin raised an eyebrow when at the end of a busy Sunday lunch hour, she spotted Cornelia and her family walk in through the doors of the Silver Dragon. Cornelia was supposed to be at the new high end restaurant at the other end of town. A meal out with her cousins from New York who didn't like Chinese food for some reason. Grabbing a menu, she skipped towards her friend. But before she could even say anything, Cornelia let out an exasperated sigh.
"Hay Lin, do you have a table free?" Cornelia's mother asked and Hay Lin nodded.
"Yes. We've just finished cleaning up after the lunch rush actually," she looked curiously at her friend. "I thought you were going to the new place, The Glass Inn?"
"The food was...inadequate," Elizabeth Hale said and Cornelia sniffed.
"Inadequate doesn't even come close to describing how bad it is," Cornelia said rolling her eyes. "We had to wait an hour and a half just to get our food."
Hay Lin winced. Even when the Silver Dragon was packed, it never took more than ten minutes for people to receive their food. And even then, that was a one off. (The new waitress had actually forgotten about them!)
"The black eyed peas were more like bullets," Lillian whined, rubbing her jaw.
"The crabcakes were cold in the centre. Just a ball of mushy crap," Cornelia added and Hay Lin winced again. Her parents would have been embarassed to serve food like that.
"Then we had rubbery beef brisquit served to our cousin Jerome. It was so embarassing," Cornelia added. "And the cornbread he had as his starter tasted like sand."
"It was still better than the fish of the day," Lillian protested. "Mine was swimming in grease. I bet Cornelia's chicken was better."
"I wish," Cornelia said with a sigh. "It was so dry I thought it was a desert. It was terrible."
"And wasn't there something wrong with Rose's salad?" Lillian asked and Cornelia sighed.
"Yeah. There was actual mould on the salad Rose ordered," Cornelia said with a look of disgust. "Actual mould. Actual freaking mould."
"Mould?" Hay Lin asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow.
"Yes, actual mould," Cornelia said, rolling her eyes. "You would think that a place that advertises itself as a fine dining experience would actually avoid breaking health and safety regulations like that."
"They did refund us for that dear," Elizabeth Hale pointed out half-heartedly.
"Only after arguing about it though," Harold said with a look of distaste. "It was like drawing blood from a stone."
"And when we complained, the owner actually came out and said we were fired as customers!" Cornelia said. "So our cousins went back to their hotel and we came here to get something better."
"Much better. And edible," Harold said and Elizabeth blushed.
"I'm sorry. I thought that the people running the restuarant would have done better," she said.
"Well you can put that as a learning experience," Hay Lin said brightly. "We have a table right here!"