John-Paul R.
Yelp
Like many others have said, the management here is the reason that we'll never be back. We attempted to eat lunch here before a Georgia Tech football game in September 2024. We arrived at 11:30am, with a reservation, to a mostly empty restaurant. We were seated by the hostess and the waitress came and took our drink orders. About 5 minutes later, a young manager came to our table and informed us that my 5-year-old son (who was sitting quietly coloring) was wearing a Georgia Tech jersey that was in violation of their policy against team athletic attire in the dining room. He indicated that my son would need to change clothes if we wanted to continue eating in the dining room while joking that it wasn't because he hated Georgia Tech. Kids aren't allowed in the bar, so that meant we needed to leave. The issue is that the manager said all of this in front of my 5-year-old, clearly lacking the tact to pull one of the adults (both grandparents and mom are present) aside to have this conversation privately, thus allowing us to manage the narrative on why we're being asked to leave. For the rest of the day, my son continued to ask why "that man" didn't like his jersey and wouldn't let us eat at the restaurant. It's now been 2 weeks, and not a day has gone by where he doesn't mention being asked to leave the restaurant. Before we go eat anywhere, he asks if he's dressed okay so that we won't be asked to leave, and he won't wear a jersey at all anymore.
Bottom line, I respect the fact that this restaurant has a hardline rule about athletic attire, and we were in violation of that rule. While I'm sure my son's jersey wasn't offending the other families with young children eating an early lunch that day, the problem lies with the way this manager enforced their rule in front of my kid, pointing at him and indicating that he was the reason that we couldn't eat there. Most human beings innately understand that if you're going to talk about someone's child, particularly in a negative situation, you don't do it in front of them... If we ever planned to eat at a Houston's or Hillstone Restaurant Group location again (kidding, we tell everyone we can to avoid this place like the plague), I suppose we'd now know to get online and read through the restaurant's rules before we go. We might also make sure that we ask both the hostess and the waitress if our kids are dressed appropriately to avoid an awkward situation where we've interacted with three different employees (all of whom have observed our clothing) and placed a drink order before we're asked to leave.
