My friend and I came here with our two sons for a quick stop to eat before our visit at the Biltmore. We were seated at 10:30 AM and did not receive all of our food until 11:55AM. They were busy, yes, but our server never came back to check on us the whole time. We stopped her as she passed by us to see how long our food was going to be because we had to leave for the Biltmore in 5 minutes. She said they were very busy, but she would check on it for us.
At this point, if our food wasn't cooked yet, we wanted to leave so we weren't late for our ticket to get into the Biltmore, but when she came back she said our food was second in line to go out in the kitchen and just walked off. So, we didn't even have a chance to let her know we wanted to leave and to forget our order! At that point, we should have left, but we stuck around hoping the food would be delivered soon. It wasn't. It took 15 more minutes for us to get our food after that. By the time all three meals were delivered to our table, our server looked at me and noticed I didn't have my meal. She then said "Did I miss your order?" and when I told her I ordered the Florentine Eggs Benedict, she just left without a word. I assumed she just left my plate at the kitchen window, but no, it took another 10 mins for my plate to be delivered in the most sloppy presentation possible. Clearly, SHE FORGOT MY ORDER! So, now everyone else had finished their plates quickly and I had one minute to eat mine before we left. I cut open my eggs Benedict and my egg was the furthest thing ever from poached. The yolk was overcooked and the whole plate was drenched in hollandaise sauce. The potatoes were burnt and everything lacked seasoning. You could easily tell our server had forgotten my order, went back to the kitchen, told them to make it on the fly and whoever made it, just did a very quick and careless job. I took two bites and left it as it was. She came back to the table and didn't ask how our food was, just dropped off our checks. I expected mine to be comped because of her incompetence, but no, it wasn't. This was unacceptable but I did not have time to speak to a manager or her anymore and just paid my bill. We were clearly late to our appointment at the Biltmore now.
Look, I understand if you forget to put in an order. I've been there. I am a seasoned server myself of over 15 years. It happens! My thing is... This whole awful experience could have been avoided. She knew we were in a hurry & she didn't care about that. What she should've done was give us a clear time of when to expect our meal. What she should've done was wait to hear our response to when our meal was expected to be delivered. What she should've done was listened to us instead of her rushing our order in the kitchen, so we could kindly leave. What she should've done was taken responsibility for forgetting to put in my order & apologized. What she should have done was comp my meal because of she forgot to put it in, knew it inconvenient for me at the time and also because of the fact that it was an awful plate of food. Had she done any of those things, our whole experience here would have been vastly different. This is a classic example of why good service matters in every dining establishment. Train your servers to do the right thing, so no matter what mistake comes their way, your customers are still left with a forgiving experience and may come back again. read more