Auckland Restaurant Month....

Our hobby seems to be dining out.   Well it has been so for some time to be honest.  Today we decided to try one of the Auckland Restaurant Month `deals' via the good offices of Heart of the City.
The Grill by Sean Connolly at Skycity Grand Hotel, 90 Federal Street was offering two courses for forty dollars available for lunch or dinner.   We would partake for lunch we decided and set off through Auckland streets where a blustery wind seemed to be coming directly from the Antarctic.
A lovely room it has to be said, rather empty so luckily we were offered a temptingly intimate half circular booth.  Perfect.  
I knew almost immediately we should have read the offered menu more carefully - no choice.  If you wanted the deal then you had to have the grilled tongue with horseradish sauce followed by braised beef cheek with parsley mash.   Take it or leave it.    I didn't think I would like it terribly much but rather unwisely I took it anyway.  
We were served by a very pleasant young woman who did not look down her nose (some of them do of course) when we insisted upon tap water rather than the more upmarket variety, and furthermore poured our wine with a degree of panache.   Shortly, a huge piece of grilled tongue arrived before me - not what I would have called an entree portion and when cut into proved to be pulsating with beef fat.  The horseradish sauce was very nice though.    I delivered half of it to my companion and waited with some trepidation for the beef cheek to be issued forth.   Three lavish pieces of meat on a large plate - adorned with a dramatic looking sauce and resting on a pale green mash.    I put a very small piece into my mouth and concluded I had been right to be suspicious because it was rather like biting into a fat filled beef flavoured marshmallow.   I apologised to the pleasant young woman as she almost immediately took it away. She urged me to choose something else from the menu and so I ordered a starter of raw fish - not because I was hungry because by then I felt as though I was back at St. Joseph's School battling with Sister Camilla about my uneaten school dinner.    I suppose I ordered it so that it would be easy for them when the time came to pay the bill, to simply substitute it for the mountainous portion of beef cheek.    It did not occur to me that we would be charged for the meal that had been so rapidly returned to the kitchen.
Imagine our surprise when in fact we were charged for everything, exactly as ordered, not a single hint of an offer to take the price of the offending main course from the bill.
And because it was now two thirty and we were the only people left in the restaurant, and because of our astonishment we simply paid up.   I cannot help thinking, however, that it was a slip on the part of the restaurant - not good PR.   Or am I simply just old fashioned?