A simple sorry would have sufficed

Someone should perhaps remind Sydney celebrity chef Neil Perry, of Rockpool, Rockpool Bar and Grill and Spice Temple fame, of the old adage about happy customers telling two people about their experience, unhappy customers telling 10.

The chef got an nasty surprise earlier this month when he opened his email inbox to find that an angry email exchange he’d had with an unhappy customer had gone viral, dropping into potentially thousands of inboxes under the heading "Neil Perry ... what a tosser".

After customer Fleur Clapham emailed Perry to complain about an incident-riddled evening she and her partner had experienced at Perry’s Rockpool Bar and Grill, he fired off a series of defensive and, according to Clapham, "unnecessarily sarcastic and incredibly rude" emails.

There are, as Perry points out in today’s  SMH story about the incident, two sides to every story, so I’ll let you make up your own mind as to who's in the right but from my point of view, these few misguided missives may have severely put a dent in the public good will earned for Rockpool Bar and Grill by being named best new restaurant in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards last month.

Read Clapham and Perry’s email exchange here.