I really wanted to love the Flying Pig, and honestly, there is a lot here to love. Unfortunately,…read morewe had one experience that was impossible to ignore.
My wife and I went on a Wednesday night and the place was packed. First impression: this is a great building. Big, lively, comfortable, and exactly what you want from a neighborhood bar and restaurant. The food was also very good. The ribs were excellent, and the burger was cooked well, loaded with cheese and onions, with au jus on the side. No complaints whatsoever about the kitchen.
The problem started before we ever got our food.
We were seated in the last booth in a long row. I could see the waiter working his way down the section, stopping at the tables before ours. When he got near us, he looked directly at me, and the expression on his face immediately made me feel unwelcome.
Then he simply never came over.
We sat there for about 20 minutes. He continued working the area and helping other customers, but never once approached our table. Eventually, a waitress who wasn't even working our section noticed us sitting there with nobody taking care of us. She came over, apologized and took our order herself.
I want to make something very clear: she was wonderful. She saw a problem that wasn't hers and fixed it. I greatly appreciated that.
What bothered me was that our original waiter continued serving other tables around us throughout the evening and still never acknowledged us. Not a hello. Not an apology. Nothing.
I can't tell you what was going through his mind, and I'm not going to claim I can prove his motivation. But I can say how it felt. As a big, muscular white guy, I've had people make assumptions about me based solely on how I look before, and the combination of his initial expression and the way we were treated left me seriously wondering whether race played a role.
Later in the evening things got even stranger.
They were running a music trivia game, which we joined and actually had a lot of fun playing, despite being absolutely terrible at it. About an hour into dinner, a woman at the bar suddenly threw her drink at two men, smashed her glass against the bar, and then ran out of the restaurant and down the street.
I have absolutely no idea what started the confrontation, so I'm not going to speculate about that. It was just one of those bizarre things you don't expect to see while eating dinner.
What really stuck with me, though, was watching the same waiter who had ignored us appear amused by what was happening. Whatever the reason, by that point the whole experience had left a bad taste in my mouth -- and surprisingly, it wasn't from the food.
That's what makes this review difficult.
The food was really good. The building is awesome. The waitress who stepped up and took care of us deserves nothing but praise. Under normal circumstances, this easily could have been a four- or five-star experience.
But you can't have customers sitting in your section for 20 minutes while their assigned server works the tables around them and refuses to even acknowledge them.
I'm giving the Flying Pig 3 stars because there is too much good here to call it a bad restaurant. The kitchen certainly did its job, and one waitress went out of her way to do somebody else's.
Unfortunately, one employee also made two paying customers feel like they weren't welcome.
And no matter how good the ribs are, that's something a restaurant needs to address.
