It's obvious from the reviews that this place lacks consistency. You can't have these five stars then two and three star ratings at almost an even rate and claim that this place is consistent. Okay, it's consistently being inconsistent.
But forget that commentary, at the heart of this post is our experience. Medium - probably won't be back as this restaurant is just like Grace's. Medium food, medium to bad service. Why bother there are better places to eat. Price was not an issue - I spent $21 for my lunch.
The point of this review - medium rating on food, service, and about the staff/restaurant operations - they're not taking care of the customer. They spend more time with their internal dynamics and then get around to the customer.
Salad ordered - Caprese - actually the improvement over Grace's is they put more cheese on it. The dressing was good - sweet and sour balsamic based dressing. It was a little heavy, but would rather have that than not enough dressing. But one thing I've learned - instead of tossing salad might have been nicer to have just drizzled dressing on and left the greens a little more fluffy.
My pizza - the BBQ Pork - figured it would be like California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken - it was - but stingy with the cheese, hardly any onions, and yes, I actually asked for more cilantro because there was maybe a half a teaspoon of cilantro irregularly sprinkled on it - i.e. on one side not the other. I could also tell, the pulled pork was at least a day old or more - kind of that stale taste meat gets.
My daughter's pizza - Green Goddess - she liked it, but it was okay - not anything where she was going - OMG! This is great!
We started watching things though - maybe watched too many restaurant reality shows, but interesting stuff - So first item we immediately noticed - kitchen staff in center island acting like they were almost all new to the job. It was kind of like "How are we supposed to make the pizza crusts?", "You put what toppings on this one?". Then a lot of milling around by them - one guy would be working and the other two watching him - often.
I filmed a little bit of video about what was going on and put it on YouTube - http://youtu.be/hlpOqchmayQ - Interesting what we saw when we started watching the actual restaurant operation closer.
Prior to the video scenes posted staff members were dancing with each other, sucking down drinks at the counter, milling about, and what looked like the owners or the corporate types - they're having a big lunch, one of them worked on the oven and some other stuff in the food island - seriously, wearing his parka - He looked like he was one of the customers coming in and going behind the counter if you didn't know better. Very unprofessional. Then some gal joined him for a little while there in the pizza station - she too had a parka on. Uh, why are the managers or whomever these people are conducting themselves this way? They're treating the place like it is their home and the customers are incidental to the operation.
In addition, while the inner circle types are hanging out with each other, and oblivious to what's going on in the restaurant with both the cooking staff and wait staff, they're chatting it up with the pretty blonde waitress - who also when we first got there also spent an inordinate amount of time with two other males, ignoring people who had been waiting for her to take their order. But forget that, while she's chatting up the managers-types, why aren't they concerned with her spending time with the customers as opposed to them? Parka-man was right there with them and no one seemed to care how things were going in the restaurant.
The pizza prep island was clearly overstaffed by a solid one person and more likely two - even during the restaurant's busy time. And why is this guy with the beard being allowed to make food dishes with no beard cover, not to mention, two of the other prep guys were making pizzas with their bare hands. One other prep guy did have gloves on. Ick!
Seriously, this place is headed I think in the direction of Grace's - they obviously think that changing the menu will do the trick, but the problems are clearly residing with the management. The staff who were flailing around trying to figure out their jobs in the pizza prep area, the flirty waitress, the borderline food - that is the owners' and managers' fault. They're failing to manage, lead.
I'm spending money at a restaurant so that I can have a nice experience, not to be an after thought in the process - "Oh, we have customers, hang on customers, we're more interested in ourselves - we'll be with you eventually with our likewise after thought food." read more