Worst. Birthday. Dinner. EVER!
I was so excited to eat at this restaurant. I even chose it for my birthday dinner. Bad choice, and I would not go back.
I went on a Monday night & arrived with a little more than an hour until I needed to leave and go to my Ghost Walking tour downtown, which was a 15 minute drive away. Since it was a Monday, I figured that was more than enough time.
There were two tables seated outside. I was the only table in the downstairs dining room. And there were a lot of staff. I have no idea why service was so slow!
The outside is very cute. There is a huge Grizzly Bear head over the entrance & the inside is gorgeous beams and dark wood. Great ambiance with the potential to be a wonderful place to eat. I sat on the first flood downstairs in a booth at the back. I could see the kitchen from my seat. The staff was friendly and there was a hostess.
My server was Erika. It took a few minutes for her to come over. I saw at least four servers moving around the dining room and not in a panic or rush.
I ordered a drink. It was some kind of tropical something. Took forever to come out & no alcohol. I could taste none. I knew what I wanted to eat in advance what with having to be careful about gluten, so I ordered my food when I placed the drink order.
The waitress was concerned about the pecan coating on the shrimp for my Surf and Turf order. She went to check with the kitchen to see if it was gluten-free and it wasn't (I was hoping it was just pecans). I was relieved to see she was careful about the gluten. So I had to get plain grilled shrimp. A bit disappointing, but no biggie.
I kept waiting & watching the time tick by. Finally, I saw some food come up in the kitchen window. I did see a plate with a steak and thought, "Oh that must be my dinner." I kept waiting for someone to go over and grab it, but looked at my phone when it came up and it sat in the window for NINE minutes with servers walking past. I almost asked the hostess if that was my food.
More food came out bit by bit and the servers started running it up that huge staircase. We're not talking about 20 plates or anything. There may have been a group of 10 -12 max by my estimation.
After 45 minutes & being in the restaurant over an hour, I called my server over and said I had to leave in 6 minutes to catch my tour. After missing my trolley tour by 4 minutes, I was panicked to be at this tour on time. She went over to check and said it would be out in 3 minutes. It was almost 7:40 PM by now, and I was starving. I told her it was ridiculous that grilled shrimp and a medium rare steak wasn't out in 45 minutes in a restaurant that was mostly empty. She tried to make the excuse there was a large party upstairs. I was a server for more than a decade. One party of 10 doesn't put a kitchen behind like that. She even said, "Yes, I thought 45 minutes was a long time." That made me angrier. Well, if you thought there was a problem, why didn't you check on it? Or check on me? She hadn't been back once in all that time. I had ordered another drink from someone else, but it still wasn't there.
The food did come out about 3 minutes later & there were LITERALLY 3 shrimp on the plate. You can see in the picture. The steak was seasoned well but not a great cut of meat. Tough in some places. And they had just started making this. The asparagus wasn't good. No flavour, not done. Three of the potatoes were still raw. I gulped down as much as I could in the few minutes I had. Finally the 2nd drink came out & I told her to give it to someone else. I had no time to drink it & wasn't going to chug it on a still mostly empty stomach & drive. There seemed to be very little common sense in the way things ran at this place.
Know what they did to 'fix' it? Took the drink I had no time to consume off the bill & the first with no alcohol. Not what anyone wants for a birthday dinner. Mediocre food, poor service and panic and stress. I would never go back. read more