Underwhelmed and Highly disappointed:
First, I will start off saying that the atmosphere of the patio seating/view was beautiful! While dining at the establishment I overheard a waitress ask the patrons next to use to please review and comment on the service that they received on a website or method where the restaurant could see the feedback because the restaurant was under new management and had new servers, etc. Unfortunately, our server never offered us that option, or perhaps I would have expressed my concerns there, instead of here.
Now about the food, service and overall experience...Service started out great, seated in a timely manner, but things went downhill from there.
Our food finally arrived after way too long of a wait considering how many partons were in the resturant at the time. It arrived pretty much cold (which I am not a fan of), but we were gave them grace on that and ate our meal and enjoyed the views and tried to make the best of it. The food actually tasted pretty good, but not killer good...but if it were at least warm where I could taste the flavors better, I may have thought differently.
After a while we noticed that our waitress came less and everyone was waiting longer for food after being seated and from the looks on the face of a few around us, the didn't seem thrilled with that either. I understand that it can happen though with new staff or not enough staff, so we decided to not let that affect our servers tip because otherwise Danielle was pretty helpful and hospitable.
We paid using the InKind app and I told her we were using it to pay and she said ok, no problem. We paid fully using the app and then tipped using cash and I told her that. We started to leave the hotel after payment, but my husband decided to use the men's room before leaving, so my daughter and I waited for him before we left (so we waited 3-5 minutes before leaving).
We started our drive to our lodging accommodations in Williamsburg when we get a call from the hotel saying that we didn't pay our bill fully! I informed and assured the person that called (Athena) that we paid and had not dined and dashed; I was completely offended because it felt as though I was not believed at first. I offered to send my email receipt from InKind that showed a breakdown of how everything was paid and that our server had actually been tipped double because we tipped in cash and I didn't notice InKind built in her tip also. This meant our server got a $38.72 tip on our bill of roughly $113.00 from us and we were ok with that. I sent Athena the email and she looked at it and acknowledged that it said paid in full, but said I see what the email says, but on their in for InKind, it looks like there is money still due.
I informed her we were on vacation in the area until Sunday, but we were not coming back that evening especially since we already paid everything and were tired from our drive into the area! She said ok, but when her manager gets in on Saturday (we went Friday night), that he may call with any questions...I was disappointed and frustrated but said ok.
To put it kindly, this dining experience left much to be desired, gave a bad start to my families mini-vacation and left me feeling or wondering was the aggressive accusation of non-payment due to the fact that we were an African-American family. We pay our bills, we know fine dining and we don't have to steal from anyone. Overall, it was a poor experience (but hopefully,
the new management can do better ithe future for patrons), which in all rights should have been a stellar start to a wonderful weekend. Sadly they totally missed the mark during our visit! read more