Alex H.
Yelp
After two visits, my wife and I can safely say that we like the food a great deal, but the service is extremely poor. It is largely a correctable organizational problem, although I'm not entirely sure they are up to it from the looks of things.
The good part is that once an order is placed, the dishes come out efficiently and courteously. The big problem was getting anyone to take our order or approach us in any respect at all across both visits to the restaurant.
Both times it was almost exactly the same - waitresses walked by us stonefaced, completely ignoring us. One visit we sat inside, once outside, and the result was the same. In neither case was the restaurant very busy.
Last night I had to go back inside and ask one of the hostesses to send a waitress out to take our order. We had been sitting there for at least 10 minutes in a sparsely filled patio, unable to get even a hello from one of the multiple waitresses that walked by.
On both visits, the same problem arose again when it was time either to order dessert or get a check. Plenty of waitresses in our area of the patio, but a failure to make eye contact, let alone ask if we needed any help. On the first visit, we eventually gave up on dessert.
Last night, we were eventually able to flag down our waitress about dessert. Ironically, she proceeded to essentially recite the entire dessert menu, including every drink.
All this is unfortunate in that the food is at least as good as some of the better tapas places in the area. Not every dish hits it out of the park, but overall it's a very solid, commendable menu.
There's no question that this restaurant could be a lot busier, livelier, and more successful with measurably better service, but I think it would take either a consultant or a manager with a lot of experience. I'm not sure exactly what is going on here, but the situation is indicative of an owner/manager who cares about food and wants to do right by her guests, but is not a rigorous or systematic manager.
One other thing that is probably symbolic of this broader issue is that almost all of the waitresses were inappropriately attired. The level of skimpiness was to a level of excess that most professional managers would require to be dialed back a bit. This is perhaps especially the case given that the crowd, at least on the nights we were there, seem to be a mostly older, Brookline neighborhood crowd. But even at a hipster restaurant, it would have been over the top by a few tics.