I made a reservation to have dinner with my mother for a special occasion on 9/9. It's a Friday, so I get that our local restaurants can get busy. When we arrived for our reservation, there were a couple of large parties (6-8 tops) and a few smaller 2-top tables. When we walked in, there were a couple ahead of us picking up a to-go order. While the gal up front was busy taking care of them, another server passed by us several times with no greeting, no acknowledgement. We waited approx. 15 minutes, and during that time, the lady up front was obviously being inundated with phone to-go orders. So we waited. And waited. There were no available tables to be sat at, so we offered to sit at the bar table facing Griffin Ave. We were fine with that, because it's nice to people-watch and enjoy the sun setting.
We had menus in hand for a good long time before our waitress came over for drink orders. I ordered a glass of red. Water and wine came promptly. We ordered an appetizer of clams, and also placed our entree orders at the same time. I ordered the NY strip, and my mother ordered the chicken breast with cream and mushrooms.
Fast-forward 30 minutes. Our appetizers hadn't arrived. No one had checked in with us, but they were very attentive to the larger groups seated in the back of the restaurant.
When our clams arrived, they were sitting in a lovely pool of clam jus (with the jus all over the lip of the bowl, it looked unsightly), and no bread to soak up the broth. There were 4 un-opened clams which were inedible. We were given one small gratin dish with a dried-out lemon wedge for our shells. When the waitress brought out the clams, we were given apologies for the wait. I'm pretty easy-going, I have worked back-of-house for 2 decades and I get that things happen.
What I *don't* get -
We were never checked in on. We waited an additional 30 minutes for our entrees. We didn't get water refills. Our silverware for our dishes was forgotten. The owner (Amy) herself ran our food out to us. I could see her in the kitchen busting her a$$ and there was no reason she should have had to do that. After Amy had brought our entrees out, suddenly we seemed to matter. We were literally ready to just pay for the clams and glass of wine and leave to another location as it was 8 PM. Waitstaff offered to bring steak knives (for... the steak... because I didn't have one), and I asked for another glass of wine. Steak knives were eventually brought out, but another 15 minutes rolled around and I didn't receive the wine. FOH staff were eager to remove our half-finished entrees while we were still obviously enjoying the food and chatting. During this attempt to remove our plates, I asked about the glass of wine I had ordered. Got a side-eye and the glass of wine on the house, so thank you for that. I wouldn't mind paying, but things were getting pretty ridiculous at this point.
My review is STRICTLY for the front-of-house staff. I don't know what we did to feel ostracized from your attention-span (I have a lot of tattoos? I don't know), but it really put a damper on what was to be a nice occasion with my mom. I know that this restaurant was put under a lot of fire for the vax-card days, and I think that Amy is an incredible chef and has amazing food, and is so passionate about her business. I want to support that.
I *get* that restaurants are severely short-staffed these days. However, from my observations, there were no reasons why any of the above should have happened. I will give this place another chance, maybe mid-week. The food was delicious, but the lack of service really left a bad taste in my mouth. read more