Terrible Service.
Our waiter, Sean (or Shawn?) had several gaffes. First, he spilled my wife's drink with some of it splashing onto her. Sean made no apology at all, virtually laughed about it, stating "if I took a sip that wouldn't have happened", and just left the spill on the table and menu. Not much acknowledgement, NO sense of responsibility, NO corrective action until it was requested.
My wife had to ask for club soda and a cloth napkin to try to clean off what spilled onto her. Sean brought both - but again never seriously mentioned the spill - never cleaned the mess on the table. My wife did so with the cloth napkin.
That's the worst of it, but not the only issue. I asked if a fish on the menu was local and Sean said he wasn't sure but didn't think it was because he didn't recall seeing it on the menu much. Any decent waiter would have asked "would you like me to check on it?". My wife noticed that the menu actually noted it was a local fish.
Sean gave us water, without us asking for any, which was good - but he never came to refill. It was a day we'll into to 90's.
My wife ordered a pasta dinner. She had to ask Sean for cheese. Most people like cheese with pasta! Sean should have offered it, we should not have had to ask.
As we were eating our dinner Sean quickly asked "how's it tasting", but did that while he briskly walked by us. I'm not sure he actually heard our reply. He didn't 'stop' to REALLY ask in any interested way. Sean was busy but certainly not swamped. Again, seemed like he could care less.
He brought us bread covered with a cloth napkin that room temperature (wasn't warm), so no real need to insulate it with a napkin. Maybe not Sean's fault, but worth mentioning.
This was an fairly upscale restaurant. As soon as we sat down I thought it was odd that the napkins were black paper and not cloth. That's not Sean's fault but, again, worth mentioning.
I also thought it was odd that the table had no salt or pepper. I don't think I've ever been anywhere that didn't. I had to ask for pepper for my clam chowder. Sean brought a pepper mill and kind of thrust it at me and said something to the affect of "this is a pepper mill, it's the same as a shaker". It's actually better, but again, Sean was pretty odd about it.
I will say that other than the mediocre soup my meal was great. But it didn't overcome the desire to just walk out because of Sean's poor service.
I ALWAYS tip 20% or more. But given Sean's terrible service it really made the experience one that I would have preferred to never have had, and I left him about 10%, maybe less.
At bare minimum he should have taken some - any - recognition AND regret for spilling the drink on out table and on my wife. read more