There's a new restaurant in town. It's a little pricey, but we had a "Screamin Daily Deal" for it. Screamin Daily Deals are similar to Groupon. We bought $40 worth of food for $20. This is what I wrote in an email to the restaurant and on Yelp.com which posts reviews and recommendations of businesses. This is the first time I've ever posted on Yelp or written to a business.
We had a Saturday night 7:15 reservation, made one week in advance. We were brought outside to the patio, on a cold February night, to sit at the furthest table, next to open-air panels. It was freezing. We asked the hostess if we could have another table. She said that all the indoor tables were booked, but she would check on another table on the patio, which was not next to the open air. She never returned so we took ourselves to another outside table and brought our menus with us. We asked about the live music, which was listed on the restaurant's website as starting at 8 pm. We thought that a 7:15 reservation would place us in the restaurant during the live music, which we wanted to hear. The hostess said the music doesn't start until 9 pm.
We were disappointed that there was no kind of salad on the limited menu. Our first "starter" came fine and it tasted good. It took so long for our second "starter" to come, that we ordered more wine to have with our next dish. Finally, after about 1/2 hour, our second starter came, but the wine didn't arrive until we were almost done with the starter. We had to stop a server and call her/him over each time we wanted water (which was always warm).
Because we had already been at the restaurant for 1 and 1/2 hours and had only been served 2 starters, we decided to order dessert. After waiting for dessert for 25 minutes, we asked to cancel the order and asked for our check. The waiter said he'd call over the manager. After 15 more minutes, the manager never came, the dessert never came and the check never came. So we were at the restaurant for 2 and 1/2 hours. By now it was 9:30 and the live music, which was listed on the website as starting at 8 pm, still hadn't begun.
I believe that the owners or managers (especially of a new restaurant) should greet the customers, "work the room" by coming to their tables to see how things are going, and be readily available if a problem exists. When we finally spoke to the owner when we left, she said that she had been aware of our problem. Therefore, she should have approached us while we were still at our table instead of waiting for us to track her down when we left.
The entire experience was unpleasant. We were nice and accomodating while we were in the restaurant until we were leaving. At that point, I plopped the Daily Deal that I had printed up, in the owner's hand and told her, "this should cover it."
