Bri N.
Yelp
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For context, my friends and I booked a reservation 8PM for Wednesday Bite Club for a table of 4. We were excited since it is trending on social media, so I had made reservations for my birthday right before it sold out. TK is a beautifully decorated establishment, but the music was lively but also extremely loud. Building was packed, and every seat was full! We arrived on time and seated around 10 minutes late -- No biggie. Got told that we had a time limit of 90 minutes, but since we were seated late, they would give us some grace. No worries, since the 3-course meal was free as long as you paid for two drinks. Got seated at 8:10pm and our server got our drink order in by 8:15pm. My girls and I were vibing, the owner TK came out and gave us all free show vouchers.
8:45pm rolls around and we still had not received our food nor drinks. We hadn't been checked on by our server. We were also screaming over the music to even be able to talk to each other even though we were seated next to/across from each other. TK checked on us again since we had nothing on our table, and got on our server for not being on top of the service. After that, we had our first round out: a small plate that was "Roasted Fig Mostarda, Paula's Goat Cheese, Prosciutto (Cracker), and Tarragon Oil." It looked more like a huge dollop of fig jam, cheese, and Tarragon oil with a slice of plain fig. The prosciutto was air-dried and resembled beef jerky, but the ratio of the prosciutto to dippings was a little... interesting since it was a singular piece of prosciutto to giant portions of the other dippings. We figured since this was only round 1, maybe the next round would be more like an entree size.
9:00pm rolls around and we still had not received our drinks yet and no sign of our next round. A couple other tables around us are also receiving the same treatment and are looking around anxiously, hangrily. the table next to us cave and order something off the main menu -- those items come out quickly (within 10 minutes of them ordering), so we're confused. If Bite Club is so popular (they're going into week 2 or 3 of this promotion), why didn't they prepare more dishes ahead of time to prepare? Are they doing this on purpose so we can order something off the main menu and they can make more profit? Why are there not enough servers? Why are they not adequately trained to take care of the tables they are given?
9:15pm -- At this point, we start making plans to dip. We'd been there for nearly an hour, and even if we did get the next two rounds for free and both rounds of drinks, it's not enough time to actually eat and enjoy our food. TK stops by our table again, and we tell him the situation of receiving only one round and no drinks. He says that the round of drinks and the first dish will be comped -- on him as an apology. Explains that they were understaffed and if we come around next week they'll have more staff to service us. We stick around a little longer to see if maybe the drinks will come out. They don't, and neither our server nor TK check up on us, so we ended up just leaving around 9:20. An hour and 10 minutes with a single snack-size plate and no drinks.
At the end of the night, we didn't spend anything, but we missed on an opportunity to have a great experience. At this point, my girls and I don't want a free meal or free drinks -- we just want an explanation. Is this normally how it is, or is it just a bad night? Was our server bad, or is this a strategy to get people to buy the more expensive items off the main menu? What can be done differently to avoid this in the future? Overall, the experience did not meet our expectations, and we were severely disappointed.