Brian C.
Yelp
The skinny: great food, good service, naive, disorganized reception, unsupported, resource-poor management, and horrific bartending. Might want to rain check this one.
The autopsy (warning to those of you with a reading allergy: this is long):
Ok, look - if my only experience of this place involved the food, we'd be talking 4-5 stars easy. The appetizers and mains were flavorful and well-plated (my New York strip with chimichuri was beautiful!). The deserts were kind of phoned-in, prefab stuff, nowhere near the caliber of the rest of the menu, but still ok.
So why two stars?
The rest of the experience was not good.
The person in charge of the reservation desk apparently can't say no, and the place was completely overbooked. Walk-ins we're seated despite customers with reservations waiting for tables. We had a reservation...but we're told we'd have to sit outside on the patio or continue to wait past our reservation time. We opted for the patio, noting the large heating units in place to offset the winter chill.
The heating towers did not have fuel. No one seemed to know what to do about it, and we were seated too far away from the radiant heaters to stay warm.
We decided to tough it out and order warming beverages to assist. Hot toddy's + mulled wine + coffee nudges = winter cheer, right? Wrong. I should have known something was up when they only reluctantly brought us a cocktail menu...
The hot beverages were barely warm. A third of my toddy had spilled in route to the table, and tasted like tepid apple juice. The mulled wine was a horror, entirely cooked-down until no alcohol remained (yet somehow also tepid!), acrid and very bitter. We sent them back. The Mexican coffee was at least warm, (we passed it around to warm our hands) but over-liquored, bitter, and the whipped cream had begun curdling into cottage cheese, probably from the acid in the nasty, burnt coffee they used. No amount of tequila can cover that funk.
Curiously, no offer was made to replace our beverages. It seems likely the serving staff were under instructions to discourage customers from ordering cocktails. We found out why, later.
Presently, I can't recommend ordering ANY beverage THEY have to actually concoct - stick with bottled wine and beer, if you must imbibe. They have to try harder to screw that up.
As the dinner dragged on and on, the apologies began. First a server. Then another. Then someone who called themselves a "floater". Even the busboy. Then the manager, who handed out little bottles of cheap fizzy wine as some sort of compensation (makes sense, actually. Thank goodness she didn't opt to make us drinks!).
They told us various stories; the owners were on vacation, they had seated some large parties they were unprepared for, the bartender was sick, and so on, all very believable, but none of that gets to the crux of why so many customers got the short end of the stick that night, I think.
It blows my mind that despite having friendly servers, good cooks, a fun menu, good equipment, tasteful decor, a decent location...things most restaurants would kill for...this place managed to deliver such a memorably poor experience. The only thing more surprising is that we stayed for the whole performance...
All told, the meal set us back over $200 for a party of four, and took over two hours to complete, on uncomfortable patio chairs in bloody Colorado January, no less. Not recommended, at least not until the owners get back from Mexico or Belize or wherever and hire a real bartender (or two), and maybe train their receptionist on the finer points of the use of the word, "no".
(To the restaurant: please consider cross-training FOH employees to effectively cover the duties of their teammates, like making drinks, firing up patio heaters, even taking reservations. Too many things in your restaurant are "somebody else's problem". Staff knowing and being able to handle each other's responsibilities will help keep the inevitable problems that do arise out of view of your customers.)
