Kate L.
Yelp
Really, really wanted to enjoy this place.
Started off just fine, bartender took our order no big deal. Great. As the bar started to get busier- I mean he had maybe two or three different groups of customers to serve... The bartender started to get progressively more and more stressed. Every time someone walked in he would say "f-ck me" and start acting aggressively behind the bar. It should be noted that none of the customers that came in were doing anything but waiting patiently as they chatted and joked amongst themselves, nobody was displaying an attitude or any sense of urgency, except the bartender. He was spilling drinks all over the place, slamming things, muttering curse words. He rinsed a glass and whipped it through the air- splashed water in my face. Unnecessary. Slammed a martini shaker down in front of a group- spilled it all over the bar. Spilled a beer in front of another patron. Unnecessary aggression. Everyone at the bar shrinking and just staring at this guy act like a psycho. His negative energy polluting the environment.
But hands-down, the most bizarre moment was when the woman sitting next to me, who had been talking to her friend about how the pretzel she ordered and paid for was just kind of sitting off to the side getting cold... The thing was just sitting there for at least a good 15 minutes because the guy was on such a tear ofmuttering, cursing and not making eye contact with anyone that it was impossible to ask him anything. He just kept servicing new people as they walked in so finally when he went to take the order of two women that had just walked in and were standing behind this woman. She simply said "excuse me I'm sorry. Would you mind passing me my pretzel it's been sitting there for a while."
He said "ma'am, you'll have to wait. I'll be with you in a moment."
And she said again, "but my food is just sitting there. All I need you to do is pass it to me."
He said " the pretzel will take five minutes in the oven"
And she kind of just stared at him and said, "but I ordered it 20 minutes ago and it's been sitting there. The girl took it out of the oven. It's right there. "
He said "ma'am, I'll be with you in a moment, you'll have to wait your turn."
He makes her wait another five minutes, then walks over to the counter where the pretzel is blatantly obvious for everyone to see, pretends to open the oven and take it out, and thenwalk the cold pretzel over to her.
He literally pretended to take it out of the oven, like opened the oven, then closed it, then made some hand motions over the pretzel at the counter to pretend he was putting in the basket and walked it over.
When he simply could've said to this lady, "oh yeah, so sorry! let me grab that for you!"
Just bizarre, offputting and uncool behavior. If you don't believe me, walk in there on a Wednesday afternoon and just observe the guy with the long hair.
I've bartended before and I understand getting stressed out when you have a big crowd, but that's part of the job. If you can't handle it, do different work. Or hire some more people if you can't handle a bar all by yourself. This guy was not efficient, he was rude and sloppy. Not a single person in that bar was acting inconvenienced because they had to wait but it was definitely obvious that he was making people feel uncomfortable and awkward. You should never ever have to feel afraid to order a drink from a bartender really disgusting behavior.
We went to the Castelo plan afterwards and the service was night and day. After stopping in there, we went over to the Rusty nail and they were also amazing.
The guy working at hinterland is a terrible representation of the hospitality of that neighborhood. In fact, it's the one place we would not go to again, and it is a stand out only because of the fact of how intensely bizarre the entire experience was.
I'm OK with eccentricity in a bartender.
This was not that. This was annoying, juvenile, and unhinged behavior- dude get out of the service industry.