What a disappointment! After hearing all the hype from everyone the last few months, and LOVING Leon's, we decided to give B'urban Kitchen a try last night for my husbands birthday. I honestly don't know what the heck happened but everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I've never had such terrible service in a restaurant here before, and it was probably the most disappointing feeling, after being so excited.
First off, I definitely would suggest some sort of sound proofing happening in that new building--we couldn't hear each other at all sitting at the table. Don't go there if you're planning on having an intimate conversation. Second, my best friends husband just had surgery and is using a knee scooter to get around for a few months, and he could barely make it through the tables. Too many chairs and very tight spaces--could see this being an issue for fire safety. It would have been nice to have been given a table not in the back in consideration not only for us and accessibility issues, but also for all the poor people who had to get up and move chairs to let him by.
We ordered two of the small plates, and ended up only getting one. We asked about the second three times, and it never came. What was strange is the one that never came was the liver pate, which didn't need to be cooked! So logically, should have been the easiest to bring out. We ended up cancelling it, because it still hadn't come by the time we were halfway through the main plates.
We were all given incorrect cocktails (somehow they played musical cocktails with our table, and all three of us who ordered got the wrong one). When we asked our server about it, she made an incredibly rude remark about "us not getting them for free" even though, NONE of us even dared breathe that word to her, and had merely asked if they could remake them so we didn't share germs.
We then got the Brussel sprouts side we ordered--a full five minutes before any of the main plates---so the timing just started getting worse. Only one of us got our main plate, and it was COLD. I was almost afraid to eat it, it was so cold. Everyone finally also go their main plates, which were also cold. Still no remade cocktails. We all start eating, and thank goodness, the redeeming taste of the meals was excellent! I was EVEN MORE disappointed, because the food was delicious, and I'm sure would have been so much better had it come to us hot!
On top of it being cold, I ended up making a very interesting discovery of tiny shrimp in my salad (which weren't listed as part of the menu item). I asked the others that got the same plate, and they didn't have any in their salad. Obviously I'm fine because I'm not allergic to shellfish, but I'd like to point out to the management that had I been allergic and made the order on the assumption that your menu was true with it's ingredients listed, this could have been a grave mistake on your part, and could have killed someone.
We finally got our remade cocktails and the server ended up dumping a good third of mine down my husbands sleeve, and into my lap. Pretty sad for such an expensive drink. No apology from the server.
We all ate so fast to try and get out of there at this point, and turned down the dessert menu and additional cocktails just to get the check, and the server never even bothered to ask if we wanted it split, and instead, brought a single bill, and handed it to the birthday boy. (needless to say nothing was said or done about it being his birthday, but whatever at this point.)
We asked her about splitting the check, and she looked like she would vomit from pure terror of having to figure that out and made some additionally rude comments, so we chose to just try and sort it out between us. We ended up making some crazy configuration to get the bill covered. All of us just wanted out of there as quickly as possible, and didn't want to give any more opportunity for things to happen.
None of us who went enjoyed ourselves, and we ended up with a bad memory for what should have been a good celebration. The only reason why I give it two stars, is the taste of the food was exceptional. Unfortunately the service was some of the worst I've had, which made a top dollar restaurant feel worse than some of the best dive bar pubs I've been in. It definitely felt like none of the servers/bus people knew what the heck was happening. It definitely made us feel as if it was not worth the money, when I can get cheaper cocktails, and better service somewhere else in town. Terribly sad I even had to write this. read more