It truly pains me to write this review because I've had a bunch of good experiences at Tutoni's before. However, the service my group received last night was literally the worst service I have ever experienced in my life and I simply can't remain silent after how we were treated.
We arrived at 6:45 and were greeted by Toni and told there would be a 45 minute wait. We were fine with the wait and Toni told us we could go downstairs to King George (speak easy) and she would text us when our table was ready. King George was beautifully decorated with a great atmosphere and we enjoyed our time there. We noticed that two groups who came in after us had gotten up and left to go back upstairs around 7:45. One of our group members went upstairs to see what was going on with the wait time and interacted with Toni again. Toni admitted that she had sat two groups before us and didn't know that we were downstairs in King George. Keep in mind that Toni was the one who directed us down there in the first place and had our phone number. We don't receive an apology. Toni says, "I'll have a table for you in three minutes. and I'm going to take care of your appetizers." Great! We wait around and five minutes later (7:55), Toni comes back to tell us that it will be an additional five minutes. This time, she says, "How about you go upstairs and check out the bar up there? I'll take care of all of your drinks. I'll personally go up there and let them know." We head upstairs and get our drinks (which were delicious).
As we were sipping on our drinks, we watched other customers be seated and Toni walked right by us (8:15 - 20 minutes after being promised that it would be 5 minutes) without saying a word. She finally comes over to our group and says to one of us, "I saw you giving me that look. You thought I forgot about you. I didn't." Toni walks away from the group and just stares at us while we waited there, unsure of what she was getting at. Turns out, she was trying to seat us but you never would have guessed that from her tone, body language, or actions. We were really tempted just to leave at this point but begrudgingly decided to stay.
Our waitress was friendly and helpful with the menu since most of the group hadn't been there before. We ordered two appetizers and the server recommended a third so we went with it. I had to mention to the server that Toni had promised she would comp our appetizers as well which is an awkward conversation that no customer should ever have to initiate. Every time I've been at Tutoni's before, they always provided some bread and oils for the table but we never received those. I'm not sure if that's a recent change across the board or if it was just another part of our bad service experience for the evening. The appetizers came out in a reasonable amount of time and were absolutely delicious!
We each ordered our entree and received them in a reasonable amount of time as well. Keep in mind that we were completely starving by this point as it was around 9:10. All our entrees were delicious. However, my girlfriend ordered the salmon and while it was cooked on the ends, it was raw in the middle. Our waitress didn't come back to check on us until about 15 minutes after we were served. When she asked how things were, I began telling her that the salmon was raw in the middle and she literally walked away right in the middle of when I was talking directly to her. All of us looked at each other, horrified and in disbelief at what just happened. Our server never returned until much later. We had to flag down the other server in the room who told us, "That's actually normal. We cook it that way here. I always tell my tables about that." Nowhere on the menu does it state that and our server never mentioned it either. If you're going to serve fish that is raw in the middle (pure pink), you need to communicate that to your customers up front. I've never been anywhere else and encountered such a practice. Again, no apology or anything from anyone. We were just talked down to like we were the ones in the wrong for not appreciating their style. It was straight up insulting that we had to argue with a server (who wasn't even our own) about raw fish.
At this point, we were all beyond frustrated and just wanted to get out of there. We waited for about 10 minutes after we talked with the other server and our server never returned to our table to apologize or even check on us. At this point, I went downstairs to seek out Toni. I found her eating downstairs at a table and informed her of our experience. She apologized and said she'd be right up to take care of things with our table. While I was talking to Toni, our server finally returned to ask whether we wanted desert. Toni came up to talk to us and kept reiterating, "You were clearly the one table that got away from us tonight. We didn't take care of you at all. I'll look into what happened with server and the kitchen" See Facebook for the rest of the review! read more