HOW DARE YOU…….!

Very recently we ventured into the newest addition to the Woodstock, Ga (culinary black hole of the universe) gastro scene.

At the beginning things seemed ok, the meet, greet and seat went fine. Now we were all understanding that this was a “bar and restaurant” so our expectations were not too high.
The server was fairly new and was pleasant enough.
The appetizers came out and were average at best….so now the fun begins!

When the main courses came out the presenting waitress (PW) was not familiar with who got what, fine, they need to work on that. The PW then went on to get further confused as to what was rare-to medium rare (the only way I can eat meat) and the burnt, butterflied and burnt again style my wife demands (I know…why eat beef). After a few meat cooling minutes I (not the PW) determined who got what (even though my side dish was not on the plate) and was correct. Before leaving the PW quickly assured me that SHE assigned dishes according to the Kitchen Managers assignment..

Shortly after taking care of the tableside confusion we swapped a few tastings around, my friends pork chop was so dry and overcooked he had to spit it out. His wifes “Cajun” pasta was so hot from too much cayenne (I am thinking…cause I wouldn’t try it) that it was almost inedible and the seafood pasta and sauce was a dark pink.

A side note here….Cajun does NOT MEAN KILL YOUR TASTEBUDS HOT! It simply means lots of flavor with nice mouth warmth...a rich blend of numerous seasonings to compliment the dish!

I digress, my dish was fine, cooked fine and eventually receiving my side dish albeit it luke warm (it was only baked beans) my wife’s skewered meat was 1/3 rare, 1/3 medium and 1/3 correct. Upon notifying the waitress she went back to the kitchen, allegedly informed the kitchen manager and promptly returned with a small white plate that my wife was instructed to place her uneaten but cut into pieces on and the kitchen would re-cook the pieces and bring them back to her….YES, this really happened.
I of course refused that debacle and insisted that they REPLACE the pieces with freshly, properly cooked pieces….which of course never happened.

Now the waitress had been informed of our other dish issues and said “OK” and brought us our check. We were charged in full for everything. No manager took any time to stop by our table.

HOW DARE YOU...remind the customer it was the kitchen’s fault the dish assignment got confused. Take ownership and move on….we don’t care who’s fault it was! PLEASE don’t let the customer know this has been happening “fairly frequently tonight”…we don’t care nor do we want to know about anyone else’s concerns.

HOW DARE YOU…bring a little plate back and announce that the kitchen manager will RE-COOK your cold improperly cooked meat! NO YOU WON’T, firstly I do believe it is against the health code, secondly, REPLACE the meat, humbly apologize and move on.

HOW DARE YOU….get presented with all of the above issues and NO MEMBER of management comes to the table. Service 101….Let MANAGEMENT take the heat and solve the issues…servers are not usually trained for such things nor should they be….BE A MANAGER and get out there and SOLVE THE PROBLEM!

HOW DARE YOU….not assign some compensation for the numerous issues above. There were some serious issues that the customer should not have paid full price for!

This is a new restaurant and yes, they had been open only a few weeks but the above concerns were so numerous and egregious that the restaurant needs to know.

It all starts with communication or lack there of! If the kitchen staff is not communicating and doing things properly then the wait staff gets frustrated and angry and then shuts down there communication with management, who then cannot communicate properly with the customer who then communicates quite clearly by NEVER COMING BACK.

I will inform the above establishment of the issues as I hope they can correct and possibly bring a fairly decent restaurant to our troubled city.