Today is Mother's Day 5/13/2017. Since I live in Melbourne and have experienced most of the restaurants there, I wanted to give my wife, the Mother of our beautiful 6 years old daughter, a new experience at a new restaurant for Mother's Day. Of all days, Mother's Day is an emotional time for me, for I would have lost my wife and daughter during childbirth had it not been for the care by one of the most capable Doctors in this great Country of ours. For this reason, I took time to search for the most star reviewed restaurants in Orlando. Ocean Prime's reviews along with its menu made it easy for me to end my search and chose it as the place I would celebrate Mother's Day with my wife and daughter. I made a reservation, and since it is located near Universal, I reserved a room at a nice hotel in the area making it a weekend stay. We had a wonderful time at every place we visited receiving excellent service until Ocean Prime. May wife and I have owned our Software Development/Engineering company for nearly 10 years; therefore, we understand how important customer service is to a Company. You can produce a great product yet substandard customer service will harm your company's good reputation. The reason I am not posting a picture of the food as other reviews have done is because my negative review is not about the food.
The food was great. My negative review is about our server, NICK. When asked where we would like to be seated, we chose to be seated in the Lounge because my wife wanted to watch one of her two favorite sports (Golf and Basketball) that were being played today. Luckily for her, both were showing and she got to watch them both from where we were seated. Unfortunately, we were seated in Nick's section of the Lounge (maybe the entire lounge was his section). It was obvious at Nick's initial lack of a greeting that he was not at all too enthused about serving us. I passed this off as him being tired, for servers do get tired believe it or not. He asked if we were having wine or beer to drink which I said we were not but would be having non-alcoholic beverages instead. I guess this decision was not an appropriate decision to Nick due to the bewildered look on his face. Although seated in the lounge, we only ordered lemonade because we do not drink alcohol of any kind in front of our daughter (our family policy). After returning with our drinks, Nick asked if we had decided on entrees which I ordered Ahi Tuna.
Nick, with an even more bewildered look on his face asked if I understood that the tuna is raw and uncooked. I said yes, but his bemused expression had become even more noticeable so much so that I felt compelled to ask my wife if indeed Ahi Tuna (Raw) was what I had been ordering from time to time at various restaurants throughout the Country since trying it for the first time 20 years ago. When my wife asked Nick if there was a Chef's Special, he chuckled before giving her this mumble toned unappetizing description of a dish before ending with "In other words, No". My wife felt highly insulted and offended by the condescending way Nick interacted with us. She decided to refrain from communicating with Nick and asked that I only communicate with him instead if need be. I still passed it off as him being tired and probably was having a bad day. While waiting on our entrees, an Asian Mother and Daughter was seated next to us, and it was at this time that my perception changed regarding Nick's behavior and sub-standard customer service. Nicked greeted the mother and daughter with such grace and professionalism. He smiled and asked them if it was their first time at the restaurant which they said it was. He then began to go over the menu with them. It was from this show of quality customer service given to these two ladies that I realized there was something about us that made Nick reluctant to give us this same level of service.
Nick would walk past our table several times without noticing our glasses were empty, or maybe he did. It wasn't until I asked him that we got our first refill. Normally, the server asks the customers if they saved room for dessert; we never got a chance to answer if we wanted dessert or not because Nick never asked us. Ocean Prime was giving Mothers a small complimentary cake. We know this because we saw Nick giving the small cakes to some of the Mothers, and it was confirmed for us by the hostess when we asked her about the cakes upon leaving. My wife was never offered a cake by Nick nor did Nick give himself the opportunity to do what all servers do at restaurants after the customer has been given the bill. The customer is thanked for coming, asked if they enjoyed their time there, and encouraged to come again. Nick did none of this. He gave us our bill and walked away as if we had done something wrong by coming there. Our bill was $181.00, we gave Nick a $35 tip. Why did we do it despite his issues? We did it because it is the righteous thing do. read more