Grandpa Eddie's Alabama Ribs & BBQ owner Carey Friedman was recently quoted in an article on Richmond.com about sending food back at a restaurant. The article is below and can be found on Richmond.com.

As I've frequently established in my various restaurant columns, I spent a lot of time working in restaurants. I've been a waitress, a bartender, a fast food cashier and, for one brief afternoon, a line-cook. Now, as I have been for the last five years, I'm a food writer.

All of that is to say that I know a thing or two about dining out and I know about it from both sides of the table, so to speak. In fact, I've always thought that my experience in restaurants makes me a better food writer.

I know the language, I have some good contacts but, most importantly, I know a few insider secrets, like this one: If you don't like your food, restaurants want you to send it back. They really, really do.

Now let me qualify that. Restaurants want you to send back your dish if the food is wrong (cooked wrong, tastes wrong or just comes out differently than described on the menu). Even your server wants you to send food back if that's the case.

I'll give you an example.

One week when I was waiting the chef cooked up a dinner special. The special was meatloaf and it was awful. It wasn't the meat-is-rotted or stale ingredients bad; it was just an unfortunate combination of flavors that made the dish almost inedible. The chef hated it, the servers hated it, even the restaurant manager hated it. We all wanted to trash it and call it day.

But food costs money and the folks in charge weren't ready to throw away hundreds of dollars without trying to reap a profit.

So we did when any self-respecting servers would do. We actively tried to dissuade our customers from ordering it and, if they did, we hovered over them until they finally sent it back.

And most people did send it back. One bite in, they'd set their fork down, look around for their server and apologetically ask for something else. What was surprising, however, was the number of people who actually suffered through this dish.

I want to emphasis this again, the meatloaf was awful. It wasn't a matter of preference, unless the diner had a preference for dog food. That's about what it tasted like. But still, more than a few diners ordered the meatloaf and plowed through the entire dish with a look of concentrated disgust on their faces.

We servers were in a tough position. Our boss wouldn't take the meatloaf off the menu, we couldn't refuse to serve diners a dish they ordered, and we couldn't insist on taking away a meal they were actively eating, especially when the customer kept assuring us, "everything is fine."

Of all the diners who actually ordered and ate the meatloaf, only one complained. As I took away his completely empty plate and offered one last, "I hope everything was OK," he finally complained.

"It wasn't OK," he said. "It was awful. You shouldn't be serving that and I certainly don't expect to pay for it."

Agreed. We shouldn't have served it and, in the end, we removed the meatloaf from his bill, but what I never understood was, why did he eat it? He ate every bite of an awful tasting dish. Why would a customer go into a restaurant, accept unacceptable food and then eat it when all they have to do is send it back and the restaurant will provide them with something better.

I ask that rhetorically because I know the answer. Fear. A lot of diners are afraid that the chef or their server will be unhappy with them; they're afraid that the servers or chef will spit in their food in retribution; they're afraid that the restaurant will charge them for both meals; and they're afraid of confrontation.

All of that is perfectly understandable, but I am here to assure Richmond diners in my capacity as quasi-restaurant expert, that it is OK to send your food back. And I've got some of the best in the business to back me up.

I spoke with the folks at Bistro R, Capital Ale House, Cous Cous, Eurasia, Gibson's Grill, Grandpa Eddie's Bbq, Pescados, Morton's, The Steakhouse, Sensi Italian Chop House, Six Burner, Stronghill Dining Company and Tobacco Company. I spoke to restaurant owners, chef and managers all the all say the same thing.

"When and how is it OK to send food back in a restaurant? I would say whenever you are not satisfied with what you ordered. Maybe it was prepared incorrectly, not cooked to your liking, over or under seasoned, or just not what was described on the menu; are all justifiable reasons to send something back at a restaurant," from the folks at Shockoe Slip's Morton's.

"I encourage all diners who are not satisfied with their meal to immediately let the staff know. This gives the restaurant the opportunity to correct their dining experience on the spot, and may even salvage the diner's night out. The only thing I think Richmond diners should realize is if you are paying $7 for a dining experience, your expectations should not be very high, and visa versa. I know as a chef and a restaurant owner, I want to satisfy and go beyond expectations for myself and for my guests. If they are dissatisfied and do not tell us, I never get the opportunity to do this," Pescados chef-owner Todd Manley.

Every restaurant I talked to said the same thing, if the food is bad, send it back. Of course, there are a few cautions that every, single person I spoke with gave. The earlier you bring it up, the better. There are actually a surprising number of people out there who, like my meatloaf guy, complain when the dish is done. If you've eaten the whole meal, you don't give the restaurant a lot of room to fix it.

As Paolo Randazzo, owner of Sensi, says, "timing is everything in sending back a dish."

Also, as Jessica Fulbright, general manager for Gibson's Grill says, "we spend a lot of time writing thorough descriptions of our food on our menu ÉYou'd be surprised by the number of customers that don't know an ingredient that is listed and still order it, only later to find out they don't like it (for example - pancetta is an ingredient, they don't know what it is, and don't ask. Then they receive the pasta and say 'I don't eat pork, take it back')."

Secondly, be nice. "If a customer doesn't like something, if they are nice and respectful in dealing with their server, they will be better received than someone who is rude about it. If you don't like the dish, you just don't like it. Sometimes that happens. As long as the customer is polite about it and not nasty, I'm sure the server will be WAY more apt to remedy the problem," Jeffrey Young, co-general manager for Stronghill.

Finally, Carey Friedman with Grandpa Eddie's Alabama Ribs & BBQ summed it up nicely:

"I think industry estimates are somewhere in the 70 to 80 percent range for customers who are uncomfortable sending back food. Most chose not to complain to the server or manager, but rather just don't come back and then tell everyone they know. We call them 'one and done.' Customers don't understand how much this can hurt a business. If people don't tell me something is bad, how am I going to be able to fix a problem?"