My husband and I had been looking much forward to our farewell dinner at the Kentucky Saloon in Pratteln. We had reserved a table for 19:00 and our party of 16 adults and a baby arrived on time. But you may already sense that this is not going to be a good review
When making our e-mail reservation we had mentioned there would be a baby with us and were told this would not be a problem. But when we were shown to our long table, placed in the middle of the restaurant, there was no high chair. We asked about this and were told that they only have one and it was already in use. So our friends had to sit with their baby on their lap all evening, when he was not put in his stroller.
OK, we didn't want to let this put a damper on our evening. We were among friends and this would be a great night with good food, drinks and a nice experience of the Kentucky Saloon. Boy, we were wrong. From here it really went downhill.
After everyone being seated it took 20 minutes before we were served our first drinks, and getting more drinks was just a nightmare. For some reason it seemed that all waiters who had to pass around our long table in the middle of the restaurant managed to overlook that we were there. No service at all, even though several people from our party tried catching waiters on their way to ask for ordering more drinks. Some of us even started going directly to the bar to get drinks. They did get some drinks but especially one of them were treated very unfriendly when asking for some drinks.
OK, that was enough ranting about the drinks. Let's get to the food.
We have pre-ordered one of the set menus when we made the reservation more than two weeks in advance. We added three adults since the reservation was made. But it should come as no surprise when and what we wanted to eat. Our starter (a small salat) took half an hour to find our table, which seemed a little strange but was equally bad as the service with drinks. This would have been acceptable, had it not been that the hunt for our main course took almost 1.5 hours!! After finishing our starter we started noticing that guests around us, both smaller parties arriving later than us and an equally big party seated next to us, had finished their starters and main course without us being served.
It may be that we are used to the very high service standards in Switzerland. But to wait 2 hours in total from arriving to being served the main course is just plain unacceptable and really bad business. After having waited for around 45 minutes after the starter we started making the staff aware of our situation, asking when to expect the main course, asking to at least get some more drinks while waiting, and in general making them aware that this situation was really putting a damper on our experience.
Not once did the staff pro-actively come to our table and explain the situation from their end (they could have been short-staffed, missed the order in the kitchen or something else that would explain this). Instead we were just left there, not being able to do anything. We even started discussing at the table if we should order pizza from somewhere else or give them a hand in the kitchen.
When finally being served our main course (which was an OK quality, serving a variation of different meats and vegetables) and getting some drinks that was actually brought to the table, we started enjoying the evening again. It seemed that our table finally got some attention from the staff and the service was fine for the rest of the evening. But this poor experience put a very big black cloud over our night, no matter how hard everyone tried to stay positive and talk about something else.
Now, how would you handle such a situation if you were the restaurant? How would you try to regain some favour from your customers who had expressed that this was really not OK? At least we expected some kind of apology and a compensation that would show that the restaurant cared about its guests and giving them an optimal experience. But all we got was We are sorry that you had to wait for your food and to make up for this we like to offer you all a free coffee. What!? A free coffee only, this is so not right. We were shocked that we were expected to pay full price after such an evening, that had run no where near smoothly. Full price, even though we waited for several hours for our food. Full price, even though we got really bad service almost all night. There was of course nothing else we could do about it but at the price for the set menu and drinks in total this just was no where near a fair compensation.
It doesn't really matter in the end why we came to this place. In no situation would our experience have been good. But as mentioned in the beginning of this review this was our farewell dinner with good friends, as we are now moving out of Switzerland. We just wanted to enjoy some good food at a fun place with a good atmosphere. Sadly, our last dinner was no where near to this. It read more