Laura P.
Yelp
Short version: total debacle! When told the wait is 20-30 minutes for a table, how do people wait well over an hour and end up walking out? Answer: horribly inept management.
Long version: We came in at 5:30 Saturday night and were told it would be a 20-30 minute wait to be seated for a table of three. There were three or four parties ahead of us and the restaurant was filled to capacity. After over an hour of waiting my husband asked the hostess where we were on the list because no one had updated us and now the entire waiting area and bar area were filled with people waiting for tables and we noticed that people were being seated ahead of us when they had arrived to the restaurant long after we had arrived. She told him they were so backed up they had to take reservations before we would be seated and didn't know where that would put us on the list! So instead of moving UP THE LIST over an hour, we actually MOVED DOWN THE LIST the longer we waited!! I went to the hostess stand and asked to speak to the manager. As I waited for the "manager" to show up, another woman, who had a 6:15 reservation and had been waiting over half an hour, asked where they were on the list. The hostess told her they were next. The VERY KIND woman told me that we could take her table (we had chatted earlier while waiting and she knew we had a child with us and that we had been waiting well over an hour at that point). I told her I appreciated the offer (!), but I didn't want her party to be penalized, so I declined. Basically I just wanted to talk to the "manager" to see why we were being bumped (HORRIBLE POLICY!!) and to find out how much longer we would have to wait if we chose to stick around (we were SO HUNGRY!). About five minutes later a tall guy, presumably the "manager" Tim, came over to where I and quite a few others were waiting by the hostess stand, and he started pointing at me in a menacing way, yelling, "You need to stop yelling at my hostess! She's in the bathroom crying! Some people don't like to wait but that's just the way it is!" And I said, "What??? I just asked to talk to you! Can I talk to you?" And he literally turned his back on me and stormed away like a child, leaving all of us bewildered because most of the people around the hostess stand witnessed everything that was said between me, the hostess and the kind woman. I asked some women who had been standing there if I had been mean or out of line in any way to the hostess (I have worked in restaurants, I know the hostess is not the one responsible for horrible management!) and they said that I was fine, calm with my request to speak to the manager and was not out of line, but because the wait was so long and there had been NO UPDATES on the status of the list, people had been constantly (and sometimes angrily) asking the hostess about their tables over the last 45 minutes (how long those women had been standing there) so I must have been the final straw. Needless to say, I feel bad that the hostess had to be the one to manage an awful situation because of totally incompetent management. Inexcusable that walk-ins were being told the wait would be 20-30 minutes (there were literally three parties ahead of us when we got on the list!) when the entire restaurant was 100% filled at 5:30 pm.
Someone screwed up royally (not the hostess, of that I'm sure!) and, instead of taking responsibility for it and dealing with the customers in a competent and adult way, Tim the "manager" acted like a total jerk and ruined many people's night. Obviously, we will not go back and risk another ruined evening!