My wife and I recently moved to South Orange, so last Friday, we were excited to try Felina Steak…read morefor the first time. We arrived at 6:35 p.m. and chose to sit on the Terrazza so we could enjoy the live band.
Unfortunately, the service was incredibly slow from the start. It took about 15 minutes before our waitress came to take our drink order, and another 15 minutes before our drinks arrived. We were enjoying the music, so we didn't mind waiting at first. We understood that restaurants get busy and were happy to be patient.
Our order wasn't anything complicated. We ordered a salad and a sandwich, which made the wait even more surprising.
We had tickets to an 8:15 movie, so around 7:30 we started getting concerned that our food still hadn't arrived. Even then, we didn't complain. At 8:00 p.m., we simply flagged down our waitress, explained that we had to leave, and politely asked her to cancel the remainder of our order. She apologized, took my credit card, and said she would take care of it. While we were waiting, we saw at least two other tables cancel their orders and ask for their checks after experiencing similar delays.
About an hour and a half after we had been seated, our food finally arrived, even though we had already canceled it. We told the servers we no longer wanted it. By then, another 15 minutes had passed since we had given the waitress our credit card, yet we still hadn't received our check. We finally walked over to the bar to ask what was going on.
That's when we learned our waitress had been holding onto our check so she could add the food to it. We explained, again, that we had canceled the order before it was ever served and would not be paying for meals we never received. Instead of understanding why we were frustrated after waiting over 90 minutes, she responded with attitude, which was honestly the most disappointing part of the evening.
The manager overheard the conversation, apologized for the delay, but that was the extent of it. No offer to comp our drinks or appetizer, no attempt to make up for the experience, and no acknowledgment that we had spent over an hour and a half at the restaurant and left without the meal we came for. During that entire time, we received one round of drinks and an appetizer. No one offered another round of drinks, or provided any meaningful updates about our food.
I understand that restaurants have difficult nights, and if the only issue had been a long wait, I probably wouldn't be writing this review. What made this experience so disappointing was how it was handled. We were patient from the moment we sat down, and simply asked to cancel our order because we had another commitment. After all of that, being met with attitude for refusing to pay for food that arrived only after we had canceled it, and seeing no real effort from the restaurant to make things right left us feeling like our experience simply didn't matter.
We were genuinely excited to find a new local restaurant after moving to South Orange. Instead, our first visit was so disappointing that it will also be our last.
