Soooo, a group of 10 of my friends came here with a reservation for Noon made several days prior. When we arrived on time, a moderately friendly server we'll call "Kelly" said "We will have to get it ready for you"....?? So we waited for 10-15 minutes, while multiple people without reservations were seated before us. This is important because of what happened later. So then, like the patient customers we were, we waited and accepted the crappiest table in the establishment, in the middle of the floor, behind a wall, where none of us could see the windows or the water.
Some of us were a little miffed that we had a reservation, which they didn't honor, and then also gave us crappy seats. So we decided to ask if we could be moved to the windows with a view of the water if a spot opened up. We had to wait 20 minutes to ask though because "Kelly" ignored us for that long, not even coming to get our drink order! When she finally came, "Kelly" rushed us, was snippy with any questions we asked and was completely impatient. We ordered, then we asked her if we could move, should a spot open by the windows, and her response was "I don't think anything will open up."
BUT! Low and behold, a large party by the windows left! Keep in mind we had not ordered food yet and the "Kelly" was still paying our party of 10 NO attention whatsoever (she paid plenty of attention to the other patrons though!). Someone else, we'll call her "Becky", came over to us after we were waiting forever, and we flagged her down. W asked "Becky" quite politely if we could be moved to seats by the windows. We had been there for the better part of an hour by now with only drinks. "Becky" gave us this incredulous look and then said, "I'll have to ask the owner," and marched away. By this time some of our party were over it. We were already discussing going somewhere else and looking on yelp for nearby places because of the horrible service from "Kelly" and "Becky". This a party of 10 business professionals --attorneys, medical professionals, social workers, tech professionals, and we simply came there to have a nice women's brunch. With a reservation!
So "Becky" eventually comes back and says passive-aggressively that she cannot seat us by the windows because there is a reservation for a large party expected soon. Now, to be fair, "Becky" was not our original server, so she may have not known we also had a reservation for an hour prior that was not honored. But we told her, "Um, we ALSO had a reservation but no one honored it." And "Becky" was like, "Sorry" (#notsorry). She asked if we were ready to order, and we were like, "No Becky, let's get our checks, we're leaving." She acted all shocked and flustered and walked away. Meanwhile Kelly comes back for only the third time, and once we asked for the checks, she looked super relieved and was like "Absolutely!" as she bounced away.
While Kelly was gone getting the checks, Becky came back and shared with us that a miracle had happened! The owner now would allow us to move to the windows [because she told him instead of accepting the crappiest seats, we were leaving! He didn't expect things to escalate so quickly even though they were giving us the worst service ever]! We just calmly said, "No can do, Becky. We're headed out."
A few minutes later, Kelly returned with our checks. We left. On our drive over to Redmond, we made a last-minute reservation at a wonderful little Puerto Rican restaurant where they sat us in a private room, and treated us like the queens we are. Needless to say, we were a group of Black professional women. The service we received was atrocious. We watched non-black patrons all around us getting much better service. Let's recap:
1) Upon seeing us, the restaurant refused to honor our reservation made many DAYS prior. We had to wait to be seated after people who had no reservations at all.
2) The server ignored us for the better part of an hour, only coming by in intervals of 15 minutes, even though we had no food!
3) When a more favorable spot opened up in the restaurant, they refused to seat is there when we asked, using the excuse that they needed to honor the reservation of someone else who wasn't even there, after they did not honor our reservation at all.
4) They only considered giving us anything we asked for when they realized we were not going to be spending our money there.
I can't comment on the food because I only had a mimosa, but the reviews at this point are only 2.5 stars so take that as you will. But I'm from the south originally, and I've seen this behavior before. Just didn't expect it in a city as supposedly progressive as Seattle claims to be. Definitely will not be back and will not recommend this establishment to anyone else. read more