I have heard excellent things about Gino's Italian restaurant, so I was excited to try it out tonight. The ambiance was fantastic, the food was delicious, but the service was horrendous. I seriously can't remember a time I had worse service. Let me elaborate...
We (a party of four) arrived at the restaurant around 7:30pm. It's a weekday, so the restaurant wasn't super crowded. We were seated immediately and were brought a basket of some of the best bread ever. Seriously, throughout the meal, we asked for three more baskets of bread. Good thing we had the bread to tie us over, because it was an hour before our food was brought to our table (not to mention that the people at the next table who got there after us were done eating before we even got our food). Additionally, our waiter hardly even acknowledged our table, and our water glasses sat empty most of the evening.
After we finished eating (which wasn't too long after we got the food seeing as we were famished by this point), we waited about 20 minutes before our waiter even acknowledged us so that we could ask for a check. We all had our coats on and our credit cards pulled out. We were obviously ready to go. Anyway, he left the check on our table and literally didn't come back for another 15-20 minutes. No joke! Not only that, but we were shocked when we saw on the bill that we had been charged $6.00 for the bread and one person had been charged an extra $2.00 for getting alfredo instead of marinara. Now, it's completely understandable that restaurants might charge for these things, but our waiter didn't even mention an extra charge.
When our waiter FINALLY came back to collect our payment, I VERY nicely said that we were happy to pay for the bread, but in the future it might be nice to let customers know up front that there is an extra charge for the bread. The waiter was pretty rude and came back with a comment on how much money it costs the restaurant when people order extra bread. Needless to say, two hours after we entered the restaurant, we finally left... and none of us will be back. The unfortunate thing is that I think the restaurant was actually really nice, but the waiter was so bad that he tainted my entire opinion of the restaurant.
Thanks for letting me rant!
6 months ago
8 comments:
Oh no! I really like that restaurant...did you catch the waiters' name? If so, let me know because then I'll make sure I never get him!
I am going to be bossy and tell you to send a copy of your review to the restaurant owner. They need to know how you were treated. And you might get a free basket of bread out of it.
I'm with Robin on this one... Whenever I get really awful service, I let the manager/owner know, and they always make it right. :)
You should totally tell the manager because they don't want dipsticks for wait-staff. Also, it doesn't cost that much for bread. When I worked at Jakers, we threw out bread every night because there was almost always some left. Wow, that would have been horrible. Sorry it was a bad experience.
I agree - that service stinks! Darn because I live trying new Italian places. They really messed up because behold the power of blogging!
My comment has nothing to do with your restaurant review, but I keep forgetting to ask you for your minestrone soup recipe and this made me think of it. :) That was seriously the best soup ever Kim and I was hoping you could post the recipe on our recipe blog. Thanks friend!
We've had bad luck at several restuarants lately because of bad waiters and shady billing practices. Now we only get Take Out!
I totally drives me crazy when they don't mention that there are extra charges for the sides you order! You should totally let the manager know. One bad server can ruin their reputation!
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