Sean G.
Yelp
I'll start this review by saying Sullivans was highly anticipated and somewhere I had been excited to try since it opened, and I finally got the chance to go... here's the experience:
Last night myself and a group of friends (6 in total) finally went. When we got there we tried to valet the car and were met with valet telling us that we could only valet if we were staying at the hotel. Ok, that's fine, street parking I went. In the meantime, my friends went in to secure our table, 6:30pm reservation. I finally found street parking about 10/15 minute later, only to walk in and see my friends waiting at the front to be seated. After about another 5 minutes we finally got seated, 15 minutes after our reservation (note- the dining room was 1/4 full so not sure what the wait was for?).
Our server comes over and is explaining menu and drinks, asks us if we want still or sparkling, we order bottles of water and they bring one, said the other bottle would be coming. In the meantime, the waiter comes back over to take our appetizer and drink orders, we all order drinks, two of the drinks were Aperol Spritz's- he has no idea what this is, that's fine, he said the bartender would know. 20/30 minutes goes by and our apps come out... still no drinks... still no water. We ordered shrimp, egg rolls, Wellington bites, and oysters. Apps were decent aside from the shrimp, which was dry and tasted like it had sat out for quite awhile. About this time our water comes out and the gentleman apologizes and said he had to search in the basement for more bottles of water... lol, what??
Another 5/10 minutes go by and we ask for drinks, which our server says they are coming. After another 5 minutes our drinks arrive, everyone's correct aside from the aperol spritz, these were just two straight shots of aperol (lol) no champagne or soda. We ask them to remake them, which in turn takes another 10/15 minutes. This time the manager comes over with our drinks and I expressed our concerns thus far. Joey (the manager) apologized and assured us that he would make sure the rest of our time was great.
We ordered our entrees with no issues except our server was a little confused. When I ordered my steak he kept asking me what side I wanted with the steak. He was under the impression that a side came with my entree, which is untrue and all sides are separate. In which, I had to correct him. Our entree came out fine, nothing special by any means... but ok. At this point we asked to order another drink and our server responded to us with a questionable "y'all want to order more drinks?" Before telling us he would have to come back to take drink orders again. It almost felt as if our server had not only never worked in the restaurant business before, but had never been out to dinner before.
Joey (the manager) came up to us towards the end of our dinner and told us he would bring someone over to clear off our table, which the finished dishes sat on for probably 20 minutes and that he was going to bring us out a dessert spread as an apology for the unacceptable dinner. 4 desserts were brought out, all were just 'ok', nothing spectacular but we appreciated the gesture.
When the bill arrived It was approximately $1,300 for 6 of us. My friend generously went to pay the bill but looked at the bill before paying. She noticed that the desserts that were supposed to be "comped" were charged on the bill, and 5 desserts were charged, we only got 4 to our table lol. We called the waiter over and he was going to go get Joey because he was never told to comp anything. We waited about 10 minutes and another manager came over because Joey was "in the back cooking" and he said he would take care of it. About 5/10 minutes later the waiter brings the bill back to us, still wrong. We tell him there was still charges in there that Joey said were comped and he proceeds to argue with us that the bill is correct. We ask to go get the manager again and the manager comes over apologizing and said he would fix the bill, which he does end up doing.
All in all, this was the worst dining experience I've ever had, not just in Detroit, anywhere. What a complete letdown! Safe to say I would never go back.