As we have been fans of the drive through and the new "to go" services many restaurants are now offering we have found that the service is often lower than if we sat down in the restaurant. After brushing of the poor service and quality of food we received in the past at two restaurants, this last time I decided to fire off a quick email to the company expressing my displeasure.

My first email was to a local sit down establishment who had been shorting me on fries with each order, but avoiding them was out of the question as they provide one of my wife's favorite salads. Rather than live with the shortage I email a quick, concise and slightly humorous email to the restaurant's corporate offices, who responded with a $10 gift certificate.

More recently when I stopped at a local Subway to pick up a quick dinner my gift card was refused and then after they decided they could take it, the machine wouldn't process the gift card nor would it take any credit card I had. Since I didn't have enough cash to cover the transaction the employees pitched my food and I had to go up the road to another store in order to get dinner. Again, I wrote a level headed and short email to Subway and a week later I received an apology as well as an explanation of the problem. The manager even sent along a $10 gift card to make up for the problem, which seems to be the token we screwed up amount.

I'm not advocating you to go complaining about every little mix up you encounter, often times these issues can be fixed by the manager on duty. In the event that they can't fix it right then, there's no reason to go spouting off to the Consumerist every time someone making minimum wage at Arby's gives you a made out of roast beef confetti rather than sliced meat. Spend those three minutes writing the company via their corporate website, and almost every time you'll get a great return on your time.When it comes to customer service from corporations the fast food industry is usually quick to make amends as soon as you go above the store level.

I was eating out yesterday when a big fat tomato slice arrived on my plate. My husband and I both looked at it like it was rotten. In my head I know that kitchen managers are professionals and food safety experts. Surely they must have chosen the right ones since the FDA warned everyone off raw red Roma, red plum or red round tomatoes (despite the confusing nature of the report).

We gingerly put the offending tomato off to the side, now wary of anything it touched. Unless a restaurant makes specific mention of what they're doing about the tomato situation, I don't want to see one in my meal. And if it is there, I want to be able to pick it off without contaminating any other food. Seems like a waste for restaurateurs, who are being stretched thin, to bother paying the current high tomato prices if the food goes to waste because they don't explain what they've bought.

Back when the FDA made its announcement 145 people had gotten sick. Now the total is 228. Certainly some tomato buyers are not absorbing the information.

One of Cape Cod's best known diners, the old Tinman -- a 1941 Sterling Steamliner -- was burnt down by a waitress's estranged husband in November, 2000. The diner's owner, Barbara Lind, had no insurance.

The Tinman had been a landmark of sorts, set back from Rte 28, one of the two highways that brings thousands of people onto Cape Cod. Its "Wizard of Oz" collection, which was everywhere the eye could see, made it a great place to bring children. With a diner comfort food menu that included classics like meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, liver and onions, Lind's diner was also a gathering place for military personnel.

The Tinman sat charred and desolate for awhile before it disappeared. Then, three years ago, a second diner, Wendell's Corner Snack Shop just two miles away, also shut down. You can guess the rest of the story: The 1927 Tierney diner reopens this weekend, renovated and repainted in pastels, as the new Tinman. How it happened is what makes the story.

Restaurants are dealing with increased food prices in a variety of ways. But it's a simple fact that they can only raise their prices so much before customers complain and refuse to come back. So it's more important than ever to come up with creative ways to make the most of menu items, reduce the amount of waste, and still provide value to customers.

Zac Bissonnette wisely pointed out that reducing portion sizes probably isn't a bad idea for many of us. Less obvious changes might include cutting out side dishes and sauces or substituting cheaper ingredients in favorite dishes. This video details one restaurant owner's struggle:

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Eating at restaurants has to be one of the biggest wastes of money ever invented. It's not that I don't like the food. I love having someone else make a meal of my choice for me. It's just that the cost makes it such a bad deal, especially when I do the math on some of the fabulous meals I've made at home.

If the cost of eating out isn't enough to make you stay home, maybe the thought of dirty restaurants will? In 2007, 37% of the restaurants in Milwaukee had a critical health code violation. What's "critical" you ask? Oh, just little things like cockroaches, mold, and generally unsanitary conditions.

The delicious activities in the restaurants included: kitchen workers using utensils more than once to taste food, coughing and sneezing over food, dirty equipment and cookware, mouse droppings on dishes, lack of soap and water for washing hands, and food kept at dangerous temperatures.

During tough economic times, consumers can (and should) cut back on eating out. Simple math shows that the cost of eating out is probably anywhere from 3 to 10 times the cost of eating the same food prepared at home. But eating out is still a nice treat from time to time, so you probably don't have to cut it out of your budget completely.

Restaurants are feeling some economic pain too, largely in response to increased food costs. Menu prices increased almost 4% in 2007 to reflect increasing costs, so plan on spending more than you used to when eating at a restaurant.

Here are a few tips from SmartMoney.com on saving money when you eat out... One easy (and obvious) tip is clipping coupons for dinners out. With the restaurant industry feeling the pinch, more and more are offering bargains with coupons, so choose wisely and look for discounted dining or "buy one, get one free" meal offers.

Keep an eye out for specials too. It's often much cheaper to dine out for lunch than dinner. And restaurants often run specials for mid-week dining in an effort to get more customers through the door. Forgo dining out on the weekend, and take advantage of midweek specials at your favorite restaurants.

Tired of the same old Applebee's and Cracker Barrel fare? Well, fortunately, you're living in the 21st century, where choice reigns. We've pulled together some suggestions for places that offer novel dining experiences.

Concept restaurants come in all flavors, some of which leave me shaking my head. Among those include the DS Music Restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, where hospital is the motif.

The décor is straight out of ER -- crutches, x-rays, wheelchairs, tables resembling hospital beds, all those items that apparently, serve to whet the Chinese appetite. The wait staff is garbed in medical gear, too, as nurses (sporting rabbit ears, a bit of a break in the theme,) and doctors.

The menu is not so much hospital-inspired, though, I didn't see any Jello side dish offered with the "Pretty good XO sauce stir-fry prawn ball." Vodka punch is served in an IV bottle. Groups can be seated in the separate Intensive Care Unit.

Somehow, when I hear the word hospital, I don't think of good food, attentive service or reasonable prices. Things must be different in Taipei.

December has been a big month for restaurants generating tons of PR from feel-good stories at their stores. A Los Angeles restaurant made headlines after a waiter received a $10 thousand tip from Donald Trump -- but then it turned out that the whole thing was a publicity stunt cooked up by an ambitious restauranteur. The Donald wasn't an uber-tipper after all.

So I can't being a bit skeptical with this latest report. George and Leslie Brock went to Lakeworth, Florida's Dave's Last Resort & Raw Bar on Friday and found a pearl in their clams. It hasn't yet been appraised but according to the Associated Press, "At least one expert said the find could be worth thousands."

The Associated Press also reported that "Brock's $10 plate of clams came from Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle, said restaurant manager Tom Gerry."

I'll reserve judgment until more information comes forth, but it's hard to argue with the publicity value of a story like this. This Florida Raw Bar will probably see a sizable boost in traffic -- national stories about valuable pearls in the food have a way of doing that.