LOL, I'd have told her that the tip was that you were going to tell everyone you knew not to dine there.

I don't care for confrontation either, but sometimes, parents need to be told in no uncertain terms that their kids are brats and ruining a wonderful experience for others. I just don't necessarily see managers phrasing it in ways said parents might understand.

I stopped in Burlingame, CA after getting back into SFO, and saw an interesting restaurant with a menu I liked posted out front. After being seated and served my water, I saw that the menu I was given had prices about 20% higher than those posted at the entrance. When I brought this up with the server, she became flustered and stammered something about "those prices aren't good anymore." I just shook my head and left when she couldn't come up with any other response.

A couple of times due to non-existent service.

Saw quite a funny one once, my brother and I went to pizza hut for lunch. Some teenage boys came in, sat down near us and ordered. They asked for beer but were refused as no ID. Shortly afterwards they decided to go and sit outside (it was a nice day). Needless to say, by the time their pizza came out they were long gone.

A few weeks ago we were staying in Dubrovnik and visited Nautika - an upmarket resaurant - and looked at the menu on the way into town. We liked it so decided to return for lunch. When we returned the menu we had previously seen had been removed and a different one substituted. It was a strange menu as it had a few fixed menus of the day priced in Euros and the rest of the menu priced in Kuna. The euro menus seemed a bit mean at 18 euros each but was clearly designed to extract euros from the cruise busses and other tourist busses which stopped outside the door to decant tourists into Dubrovnik town. A waiter hovered whilst we read and as we now couldn't be bothered to walk back into town we allowed the waiter to show us to a nice table on the terrace. "Lovely" my wife said. They then gave us a completely different menu to either of the ones we saw previously and had eye-watering prices. I repeat, this menu was a third menu and was not displayed outside, was different from the lunch menu we saw an hour or two previously and the one we had only just seen outside.

I asked for the menu displayed outside and was told that I would have to sit at another table if we wanted that menu.

On the basis that I never reward rudeness or tourist scamming with my hard earned cash we left and went next door to to a lovely place - the waiter even gave us a 10% off voucher to be used for our stay.

That's unbelievable. I have never seen that before. At least have the decency to post a menu outside with no prices on it.

My wife has a theory about uncrowded restaurants not being worthwhile that has pretty much always proven true - I'll turn right around if I get to a place and there's nobody else there.

Us too.

Is it just us .... but there is also something slightly unappetising about the thought of being the "first meal of the day" being produced in the kitchen.

There's usually a reason a restaurant is empty during peak hours.

We have walked out of restaurants at least four or five times, for different reasons. At a very nice place in Rome they gave us a terrible table, and then it turned out they didn't have the wild boar they're famous for, and advertised outside.
Also in Italy, small town near Venice, a restaurant that didn't have a menu outside turned out to be a seafood only place. Not really their fault we didn't want that, so we did apologize and left a nice tip on top of the drinks bill when we left.
On other occasions, in Stockholm and New York, we have walked out because of rude/very slow/no service. Didn't apologize on those occasions.

For future reference and those of us who are not familiar with the unincorporated parts of Fairfax County VA at the intersection of International Drive and Leesburg Pike/Rt 7...ummm, yeah. :-)

That said, I went in there for the first time last week and I got good service. Will probably be back more often since it's an easy walk from my workplace one block southwest of there. Also, it's a good alternate to my two usual places: McDonald's and The Olive Garden (at the same intersection).

i don't normally think of it as "walking out" if i leave a restaurant before i order, because they're out of what i want, discrepancies in the menu, etc. the only time i can recall walking out was from a place in los feliz (LA), where my main dish came out cold, and my friend was still waiting on theirs. we walked, and our server chased us down, complaining that our drinks and (uneaten) food would have to come out of their pocket. i said i did not care. i called the restaurant the next day, and even offered to pay for the drinks, but they seemed inclined to just drop the whole thing.

but in certain cases, it's actually a good thing. on a trip to bali many years ago, i went to a row of restaurants along the beach. some of the restaurants were full of people, but some were completely deserted. talking to the proprietors, i learned that they book tour groups and don't usually get walk-ins. the food was exactly the same, but much cheaper and we had a large stretch of beach to ourselves. plus, we learned the difference between "live lobster" and "life lobster" ("life lobster is very dead" - actual quote which i will never forget).

This is a good point. I've been in many uncrowded restaurants I wish I had walked out of.

My girlfriend and I went to Uno's Pizzeria at Seaport (NY) and it was the one and only time that we have ever walked out of a place. It was not packed -hostess wasn't there so we waited about 10 minutes for her to come back from where ever she had gone. After that we were seated quickly because the place wasn't busy. We were looking over the menu for 10 minutes deciding to what to get and then we just sat there with the menu closed - looking at waiters/waitresses delivering food to other customers. We tried flagging down someone but they were always holding something said they would be right back. After about 30 minutes we just got up and left. Haven't been to an UNOs since then.

While in college studying abroad, I walked out of a Parisian restaurant after being seated and then ignored by the staff.

I should have seen it coming as the host would not converse with me in French, as he claimed his English was better than my French. It wasn't.

We walked out of a small restaurant during a USA holiday. I guess/almost know for sure because of remarks made that we had by accident be assigned to a table for regulars. So the waittress decided to ignore us and solve the problem that way. We left.
Another time was a at a Coffeeshop in Germany (coffee and cake) where they made us wait 25 minutes.