Roda S.
Yelp
Brief:
Great wine and cheese plate. Service is incredibly weak and lacks competency.
Detail:
We were fortunate enough to be given a table for a wine tasting because there was a no-show, but that's where the good service ended. Once seated, the pleasantry of the evening solely relied on each others' company and alcohol consumption. That said, our table of 2 out of 3 seats, have personally worked as servers in high-end restaurants as well as easy going pubs. Each stage of our service at Sparkman from our server had an unacceptable delay. Her section only had 3 tables seated, including us. We gave an order of 3 rainbow wine tastings and a single cheese charcuterie platter. Our wine took 15 minutes to come out. Our server said she would be back to walk through the wines in front of us. Twenty minutes passed with the wine sitting in front of us. We waited for her to explain our sampler while we watched her actually prioritize a table that got seated and order after us. We also watched her explain their wine. I finally called her over and asked if we were supposed to wait for her walk-through, then she animatedly leapt into the explanation with no acknowledgement of the wait. When finished, looked at the center of the table that had empty stacked plates and said "the food will right out!" Our cheese platter came out another 25 min later, which was 45 minutes after our original. I suspect that the order wasn't even entered into the system initially. There is no reason an order like that should take 45 minutes.
We finally wished to cash out and called her over. She pulled up the receipt on her tablet and never actually even showed us the itemized charges. She turned the tablet around for me to enter in our tip percentage, and while I went ahead and entered in a number, a fraction of a second after I entered in my tip, it occurred to me the math didn't make sense. I then asked her what the total was of our receipt because the math didn't pan out. She checked again and immediately said it was the wrong check and proceeded to charge me the correct amount. Again, she didn't show us our itemized total and simply wanted me to enter in the tip. We asked for the refund receipt as well as our actual receipt. She assured us that we would get it. We each went to the restroom one at a time, sat and chatted, and another 20 minutes went by. We saw our server walk back and forth avoiding eye contact with us. We feel as though was hoping we would lose patience and just leave. We asked again, and only then did she approach the people at the hostess desk. She returned finally and told us neither receipt can be provided--neither in print nor in email. Puzzling. The woman at the hostess stand came over. I guess she may have been management. She wanted it to be clear that the refund was made, to go ahead and check our bank account the following day and call if there were any issues.
I just feel like this could have been avoided if the server hadn't tried to hide the itemized receipt from the table BOTH times and only flipped the tablet over for us to enter in the tip. That alone, is truly questionable ethics.
I have checked my bank account, and I can only roughly estimate that it is the correct amount charged, since I never found out my original total. At least there aren't two charges from Sparkman, but this is unimpressive service for such a beautiful, high-end venue. Service does not match their price point. People pay this much for an amazing experience. Otherwise, we would just get 2 bottles from total wine or the grocery store.
Would I go back? The entire region is filled with wine tasting venues. I am more inclined to try other places at this stage. It's a shame, because we are the type of people to show intense loyalty to venues with great service. We are also notoriously good tippers. I still gave her a 25% tip despite the terrible service, but when things are excellent, I have given up to 50%. I was being generous. I shouldn't have even given that.
I will not be recommending Sparkman to others.