I don't want to be too harsh on this newly opened restaurant, due to supposed circumstances they claimed to happen on Christmas Eve. I would have given 1 star, if the staff, when present, wasn't so nice. Here was our experience:
6 PM Christmas Eve Reservation for 7 people. Showed up on time. No Hostess greeting. It took several minutes by the worker, sitting at a table directly in front of us, to realize that we should be greeted/seated. The restaurant was far from packed. There were many empty tables, and maybe 3 groups between 10 and 20 people.
Menu looked decent. Ordered beverages. It took a quite a while for waiter (very nice/friendly) to take food order and a while to be served appetizers/salad. Baked clams were good. The spinach salad was slightly wilted from sitting in the kitchen heat, the onions were clearly not sliced by a chef (big inedible chunks), goat cheese was scarce, and salad barely dressed.
It was 7:30 PM (1.5 hours post arrival) when the main course was served. We were starving! My father's chicken Francaise was cold and lacked sauce, but didn't want to complain. So my brother got warm sauce for him. The rest of us didn't know at this time that all meals were sub-par, luke-warm or almost cold. All of the food appeared to be sitting a while, except for the stuffed fish dish. All meals, except for the stuffed rigatoni Bolognese came with broccoli (no other choice available). The broccoli was too cold for the frozen butter to melt on it. The rigatoni was topped off with a marinara sauce that took away from the Bolognese, and was clearly sitting for some time. My nephew had to use the Francaise sauce on his beef to try to warm it, as the wait staff (very few of them) disappeared.
Refill requests for beverages were not served. Empty water glasses sat for at least 1/2 hour and never was refilled. No one checked to see how our dinner was while we were eating...they knew the response they would get. We would have walked out, but it was Christmas Eve and we wouldn't get in anywhere else. It was either eat what we got, or starve.
When the waiter (possibly one of the owners) finally appeared, He was clearly exhausted from running around. We wanted to be kind, as he was informed the food could have been good if it was served warm. The excuse we got was that a cook cut his hand badly and had to leave, and they were short on wait staff, as many didn't show up. He was cooking and waiting tables. This was not our problem. We tried to be sympathetic.
The waiter disappeared again. When I found him was going to give us a $50 gift card to come back again. This really was not an option because my parents are elderly, I was in town from the West Coast, just for the holiday, and the rest of my family works shift work. It was an act of God that all of us could have dinner together this night. He took $50 off the bill. It should have been more. But, it was a holiday and we felt bad for him. read more