I've had better service at Denny's.... no, I am for real.
Went in on Saturday 6/19 with my wife to celebrate an early father's day dinner. Being new to the NWA area I was excited about this dinner and the restaurant billing itself as the premiere upscale dining location in NWA.
We were sat without issue around the same time as our reservation, but from there everything was horrible. When I say that I don't just mean for us, but we could overhear other tables stating the same and witnessed their looks of frustration which matched ours.
To start we sat for nearly 15 minutes before we were greeted by anyone. That happened to be a girl who stuck her head around our booth to simply state "I'll be by in a minute." Good enough, at least she acknowledged us. However, that minute quickly became another five in which we sat without drinks, not even water. When she did return the greeting was an abrupt "what would you like to drink?"... no introduction, not "have you been here before?", nothing... I asked her name (Sara) and then we gave her our drink order for 2 mixed drinks. Without hesitation she asked "do you know what you want to order?" This flabbergasted my wife and I.... granted we had been sitting there now for over 20 minutes, but we knew nothing about the place, the menu, etc as this was our first time there.
I stopped and explained that it was our first time and could she tell us more about the menu. At this point she seemed like we were a hassle but went on to tell us they didn't have lettuce, that the filet was $64 market price and gave some generic recommendations. We opted for the calamari as an appetizer and she went on her way.
5 min later a younger guy in all black fills our waters and then returns to tell us he will be our waiter. Clearly confused we tell him Sara just took our drink and app order, to which he seemed confused about as well and then scurried off. My wife and I joked that we were in the twilight zone and then proceeded to wait another 10 minutes for our drinks to arrive (and in turn decided the next drink would be a bottle of wine so we didn't need to wait on the horrible service).
Turns out Landon, I believe that was his name, had taken over for our table. While he tried to be as friendly as possible it was a little too late. He quickly apologized he had to "track down" Sara for our appetizer order (we told him when he first came our drinks and app we gave to Sara so whatever)... Finally about 50 minutes into being there we received our calamari appetizer, which was equally as underwhelming as the service. Keep in mind that meant it was 30 minutes from the time we ordered it until it arrived.
To his credit Landon was really trying to make up for the start, but jokes like "don't tell my manager" kind of fall flat when the service is so bad you almost fell you need to.
We order a sweet potato salad (very good), the filet (overpriced at $64) and the ribeye along with mac and cheese. Each steak was kicked correctly, though the first steak order we had to tell Landon the temp because he jumped right to the next order without asking. He also brought out bottle of wine and he looked very uncomfortable opening it... from the odd cut to putting the corkscrew in the side of the cork. Again, he was trying with friendliness but there were things going wrong that just compounded the whole experience.The ribeye was very tough, even for a ribeye. The sides were decent. We never once had our wine refilled for us and waters went unfilled as well. Despite the service we ordered desert and the creme brulee was decent, but nothing to write home about.
All in this dinner lasted about 2.5 hours. Not because we took our time and wanted a nice, slow dinner, but because service was so slow and poor. Imagine our surprise when we stood up to leave and realized it was only us, 2 other tables and 2 bar patrons in the restaurant. At this point I was flabbergasted to understand why everything was so mediocre. It wasn't even busy. Never once saw a manager, never was asked how our evening was, but I can assure that even if asked they wouldn't have wanted to know.
First time at Theo's, assuredly will be our last time at Theo's as well. Avoid at all costs. read more