Food 4
Service 0
Cleanliness 2
First time in St Louis, so I was in a REALLY good mood! The place is really cute and has a great street presence. My boyfriend has been going here since he was a child, has lots of good memories so I was excited to go.
CLEANLINESS - I used the facilities upon arrival, so we could look at the collection of memorabilia. The bathroom was horribly sticky everywhere and really run down. All the memorabilia is behind glass cases, which are really overrun with dust. All the frames on the walls with pictures are extremely dusty as well. The booths are sticky to the touch, we opted to sit at a table which was clean.
FOOD - Overall the food was above average, but only slightly. They offer a really good selection of cheese for the burgers and a ton of mushrooms, which was very pleasing. Save it for TWO female servers who were VERY nice... the rest of the staff was rude to dismissive at best.
SERVICE - While we waited for quite a while 30 min at least, I don't particularly mind, as being from San Francisco a wait for a good meal or a trendy place isn't abnormal. I asked an employee walking by (I found out later he was the manager on duty) if they had any Jefferson Airplane memorabilia in the place. He shook his head, walked off and mumbled I don't know. Our server was also not friendly AT ALL. During our meal, he did not ONCE check on how our meal was or if we needed more drinks.
*** So up until this point I probably would have given a 3 star review (I tend to be gracious with stars and wordy in my reviews) ***
Here's where things go really poorly. My boyfriend went to the facilities at the end of our meal and our server came back to drop off the check. He stated he would take care of the payment at the table. I knew my boyfriend wanted to purchase a couple t-shirts as well, so I told the server, and also told him my bf wanted to pay using some kind of phone pay (I couldn't remember what it was called, but in researching before making this review this Yelp page CLEARLY states they take google pay) I do not know what happened when the server and my boyfriend spoke as I was still at the table. It was taking quite a while so I grabbed my purse and walked down towards the front desk, which we sat in one of the back rooms so I was meandering slowly still looking at the memorabilia as I tried looking for my boyfriend and our server. I hit the door by the kitchen and the manager and the server BLOCKED my path and began talking quickly and loudly about getting the bill paid. Very confused I asked for clarification at what was going on, the server asked me to hand him a credit card as my boyfriend just skipped out on the tab, saying he was sick. (Not the restaurants issue.. but so you know where I'm coming from at this point. My boyfriend had in the last week had several acute headaches we almost went to the ER for. I had to drive back to the hotel he was so sick.) But I digress, So I'm in the middle of the restaurant, my path being blocked from speaking to my boyfriend to find out what was going on. I asked them to move so I could speak to him. They did move and allow me to get to the bar area. The server GRABBED MY ARM and told me YOU are not allowed to leave the establishment to go talk to him you need to pay me now. I told him I was visiting from California and had lost my credit card literally two days before. I even OPENED my wallet to show him my CA ID and NO credit card as I was traveling, even showed him my airline ticket to show I was being sincere etc... I told him I could make an Apple pay, or something electronic but as far as a physical card. I told him he needed to let go of my arm at this time. He did, however he told me he was going to call the police. I explained he was more than welcome to call the police as I wasn't trying to do anything but find out what was going on. At this point I told the three men blocking my path to discuss what was going on with my boyfriend that the only way they were getting any money was to let me talk with him as I had NO MONEY on me. Again he said he was not going to let me talk to him. I reached in my purse, pulled out my Ralph Lauren sunglasses handed them to him and told him he could hold them as collateral while I went out to talk to my boyfriend, who by this time was bent over in pain right out front of the restaurant. I will admit I was getting a bit snippy and concerned for my safety at this point (NEVER in ALL my 20+ years of being an adult have I EVER had someone put their hands on me!!!) He said to me, "you can't just hand me some glasses and leave." I cut him off and stated "these are easily 10 times the cost of that bill, and probably more than you'll make tonight, so you can just back off."
I did end up getting to my boyfriend and paying in cash, which had the staff just let me talk to him at the beginning all this could have been avoid. read more