Based now on two recent personal experiences (as well as a third experience of a friend), reservations mean absolutely nothing here. After probably ten experiences since the restaurant opened three years ago ranging from excellent to just ok, things appear to have changed for the worse. My wife booked a birthday dinner reservation for a booth (you can specify table, booth, or patio on RESY). We arrived and they immediately tried to seat us outside (where no one else was seated at the time) in 95 degree weather and, when I told them that we booked a booth, the hostess responded that "the system just changes things all the time. It just happens." No apology, just a sneer and directions to go "stand over by the door." While we were waiting, there was an clean unoccupied booth to our right, as well as two other booths on the other side of the dining room that were being cleared as we stood. When the hostess returned to her station, I asked if we could have the empty booth or wait a short time for either of the other two booths being cleared. She rudely told us that we couldn't and they were for people with "higher-priority reservations." I asked what gave the other reservations higher-priority (is there some secret system outside of RESY??), and she said she didn't know, but "maybe they booked before you or something." She then proceeded to lead us to the wind tunnel-noise level bar and put us at a garbage tiny table in the corner. I made my final comment to her that AGAIN, we had made a birthday dinner reservation at a BOOTH and not one in the bar, and she told me she could "put you (us) where I want to" and stomped off. I then looked on RESY, found another nearby restaurant (where we had a wonderful dinner later that evening), and left.
This experience came on the heels of our last experience here a couple of months ago where we also had a booth reservation, showed up on time, and watched a booth beside us sit unoccupied for over 30 minutes (all while we were just standing randomly by the door without even an offer of a drink as we waited) while we were told it "belonged to a later reservation." How a later reservation takes priority over people with an earlier reservation (both for parties of 4) who are ALREADY THERE is beyond me, but perhaps I don't understand the unique customer-alienating reservation system used by Pulito. Perhaps they save tables for "special" customers while still allowing all tables to be booked. Who knows?
On both instances, the hostess (different girl each time) was rude, arrogant, unprofessional, and didn't offer the slightest apology. It must be the way they are trained, if they are in fact trained at all.
Jackson is a town with VERY few decent restaurants, so the few we have (including this one) get more hype than they generally deserve, but you can have a well-trained and courteous staff at a Chili's or Outback. You don't have to be serving high-end cuisine to have a decent staff, but it's even worse when you are and still don't. It's not hard to seat people on time, or at least pretend like you give a damn if an issue does arise.
Pulito has failed multiple times to execute the basic concept of offering even base-level front-of-house service. Good luck to them, because my very short list of available local restaurants sadly just got shorter. read more