Brian F.
Yelp
So this isn't going to be a review so much about the food, but our experience. As you read you are probably going to be like "yeah so why 4 stars??" Well here goes...
I booked a reservation for 5:15pm as we had an appt at the theatre but we were running a little late due to weather and arrived around 5:35. I did call ahead to let the restaurant know and they were fine.
We arrived and were promptly seated. The restaurant was quite busy. Our server greeted us and was lovely. We put our drink order in and then apps and food a bit later. We expressly told the server that our show was at 7:30 and her response was "good to know!".
Then things went sideways. The drinks were very late to the table but the server apologized. They were rather tasty though and she convinced me to try a new Roku gin which I did! Good choice!
The mozzarella app came promptly, it was tasty though pretty common.
Then...we waited...and waited..and waited.
20min- 30min- 1 hour. We had been told that their new menu premiered today, and the server was also running around like a chicken with her head cut off. We later were told that they had cut a server earlier because they had not anticipated being as busy. Ooooops!! No bueno!
The other issue was that our server, had tables all over the restaurant. Not in a specific area but like all over.
Being that our show was at 7:30, at around 6:50 after speaking with the manager the food arrived.
Here is the good part- The manager was AMAZING. She knew that the restaurant was in the wrong, she knew they were unprepared and she took action. She along with our server got the food to us with copious apologies and she made it right.
I will leave that there- SHE MADE IT RIGHT. My brother was in the restaurant business for many years and explained where the failures happened - a new menu and lack of staff and why the mixture was not a good combination when unprepared. I asked if the owner happened to be in the restaurant at the same time and I was told yes, but that they were in a meeting discussing sauces. Lord have mercy!
That bothered me, considering that there were problems in the dining room and the owner was nowhere to be found, but at the end of the day, the manager and our server really rose to the occasion, took care of the issue, apologized profusely, and we left feeling as though we were taken care of even though we had to shove our food down our faces in order to get to the theatre. Will we go back? Yes, of course - we will give them another chance but more over the owner needs to recognize that there was a problem that likely there will continue to be a problem unless they learn from the mistakes with his or her management team so that these things do not continue to happen. One thing our server did say to us is "we really enjoy and appreciate the feedback that we get so that we can pass that along in the hopes that management and ownership will listen to us, and these things won't happen again; she was embarrassed. We told her not to be. We tipped her highly because we felt that this was not her fault at all; that this was the fault of ownership and management not properly juggling all of the balls in the air to make a smooth evening for everyone. As we left we noticed that the restaurant was even more jam packed than when we arrived- I do hope that things got a bit smoother!