So, last night the BF and I went to a new (open for a few weeks) Caribbean restaurant that had just opened up in our town--or, that was the intention. We arrived to find the restaurant open (it was about 7:45pm) but not a SOUL inside.

We peeked in the windows and saw that there were no customers. Which is not a great sign, but considering it was a new place, and it was Monday--perhaps not totally surprising. We peeked our head in, thinking perhaps we'd see what kind of response we got. Unfortunately I noticed two things immediately. 1) there was no one there to greet us-- we could hear laughing and talking in the back and 2) despite curry being front and centre on the menu and there being an open kitchen--no discernible smells of food were evident. In my experience with hole in the wall places, this meant either we were about to wait FOREVER for food, or something frozen was about to be thrown in a pan and reheated.

We looked at one another--shook our heads and eased quietly out the door. We were in the the car before I noticed a head popping round the corner from the kitchen.

My question is--what do you Eaters do in this type of situation? where you walk into a restaurant with good intentions and something, either vibe or ambiance or whatever puts you off.

I've no problem walking into an establishment and (if not posted outside) asking to see a menu before being seated and changing my mind. But I wasn't really sure what to do in that situation. I felt badly, clearly the restaurant is struggling, but on the other hand--I do not want to be eating food from a place with such low turnover.