Patxi's definitely had some hits and misses on this holiday weekend, and some of the misses are things that SHOULD HAVE BEEN ironed out in the beginning months of a restaurant opening. The thing is, this restaurant has been open for AT LEAST two years, if not three, so there are NO excuses.
First of all, there was only ONE waitress to work an entire restaurant, and that included inside the restaurant AND the patio service. Seriously? There is NO excuse for that. There should have been TWO waitresses for inside and perhaps a third for outside, but that's being generous. Instead, there was one. Secondly, there should be one busboy to handle cleaning the tables of departing customers. Instead, there were ZERO. The one waitress they had was expected to take ALL table orders, keep everyone's glasses filled, bring food, AND clean tables... for the entire place. So instead, plenty of tables remained uncleaned, so when new patrons walked in, there'd be no place to sit. I sure didn't blame HER. It was the owner's fault for not hiring enough help. HOW CHEAP IS THIS OWNER? Oh yeah... the owner was running around, too, half crazed because they were so busy... and UNDERstaffed. Just ridiculous.
But here's what REALLY got me. All of the above was just me observing what I saw... and I saw a lot. My husband and I had been sitting there a good 15-20 minutes when 5 friendly moms and their 8 active children walked in for service. The moms were all attentive to their children, keeping them in line, but kids will be kids, and what works best in those situations is to get some distractions going on, which the moms provided... and get them some food. FAST.
However, instead of us getting our food first, which we should have because enough time had passed, and because our orders should have gone in early enough because we had already been there awhile, what ended up happening is that our food came out LAST... it came out AFTER the food came out for the 5 moms and their active children. It came out right after another family of 3 who had ordered at the same time as the 5 moms, AND THEN, our food came out... a good 30-40 minutes after we ordered it. And it was lukewarm to cool. Now my husband never cares about that kind of stuff, BUT I DO. At the very least, if you're going to give me my food long after it should have been brought out, at least give it to me piping hot... not cool to lukewarm because it had been sitting out for too long, for G-d knows how long. Don't do THAT to me because that will only anger me. Nothing else bothered me... even understanding why the moms requested that their kids' food come out ASAP. I totally get that... I had kids, too. I have grandchildren now, and I know how this works..... but to the restaurant, don't mess up MY order because someone else tries to get you to move faster. Our order should have come out a lot earlier anyway, perhaps even before they all arrived. Who knows, but they didn't, and I don't know what happened in the kitchen to cause the delays with our food, but what I do know is that I sent my food back. I refused to eat something that should have been given to me HOT. When the waitress tried to explain how a few sprigs of arugula "might've" cooled an entire dish off, I just shook my head back and forth as if to say, "don't go there." She immediately switched gears and asked if I'd like my food heated up, and I told her that would be great !
All of the above are new restaurant kinks, and this isn't a new restaurant. This is a case of a cheap owner who doesn't manage his restaurant too well. And here's the thing... the FOOD WAS REALLY GOOD !! I got a Greek salad that was huge, extremely fresh and tasty. I didn't even have to ask for extra dressing; there was enough on there!! My entree, which was delicious once heated enough, had pizza dough surrounding a mixture of mozzarella cheese, chopped chicken, artichoke dip, and some arugula. It was fabulous. My husband had a meatball sandwich in foccaccia bread, which he loved, along with a Caesar salad that was also very tasty. The only negative on the food was their version of garlic cheese bread. It was pizza dough turned into "knots," and while the texture was wonderful, crunchy on biting into it but soft and pillowy upon further chewing, it just had no appreciable garlic or cheesy aspect to it. There was some parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, but as they baked the knots, the parm cheese got dried out, nothing gooey or traditionally "cheesy" about it, and again, no garlicky aspect whatsoever.
I would easily return to this place again. The garlic bread is a miss, but everything else was really good. They just need to work on how to run a restaurant, but the food is worth coming back for more, to be sure. read more