I've been to Cafe Landwer a few times over the years, and it was usually decent. After today,…read morethough, I don't have any interest in returning.
My friend and I made a reservation for outdoor dining for brunch. We arrive right around our reservation time to find nobody at the podium. After a few minutes, a woman comes up and asks, "For two?" before immediately turning around and walking the other way, to which point we stop her and say that we actually had a reservation which we gave her all the details for. She stopped for about half a second, grabbed menus, then turned around again and brought the menus to an indoor table, then just walked away without making eye contact. She did not even tell us to follow her nor say a single word to us once we were seated.
No worries, right? Wrong. We perused the menus and waited for about ten minutes, with no staff members coming by to help us. We started looking around to try to flag someone down, but each staff member was either not looking in our direction and/or wearing a different outfit from the next staff member, with some outfits almost having a nightclub aesthetic than wait staff.
Eventually, another individual comes by our table and, again, without greeting us or making any eye contact, aloofly says, "Just order off the QR code," which we didn't see because the menus were covering it. Now, my friend who I was with works in the mall, and I know the restaurant offers a discount for mall employees, so as the employee was walking away, I called out and asked if we would still get the discount if ordering off the QR code, and he said yes. Note that in all the times my friend and I have eaten here in the past, it was always traditional table service.
Then, we go to place our order, and after adding everything to the basket, it tries to charge my credit card. At this point, almost 20 minutes had gone by since we arrived, with still no single greeting or water or silverware set or anything. I get up to speak to another waiter who was helping nearby tables, to which I am again told to just order off the QR code but was reassured that the mall discount would be applied once the tab was settled.
So we oblige and place our order through the portal. Several minutes later, the same waiter who I had most recently spoken with had come to our table (mind you, this is the first time someone came to our table in the entire time we were seated) and said that the restaurant was out of some of the items on our menu. And it was at this point that we FINALLY got waters.
At this point, we had to look through the menu again, but it was getting to the point where we were going to miss our movie, so we had to just abandon ship and eat at the mall food court. Upon leaving, the only acknowledgement we got was from the first woman who "brought" us to our table, which was a petty smile and wave.
Allow me to make myself clear. I hold no animosity against any establishment for being short-staffed, for requiring QR code ordering, or for being out of ingredients. This stuff just happens. What I do have an issue with is the astounding lack of any grace or hospitality, without even a simple "Whenever you're ready go ahead and use the QR codes on the table" or even a welcome. It just felt as though every person was just trying to get by with doing the bare minimum, and every employee had attitude. Even the couple next to us, who had been seated before we arrived, never got acknowledged.
It's honestly a shame, because many of the items here are great, and the offerings are unique, but if this is how Cafe Landwer chooses to operate and treat its customers, I won't be back.
