Friday, January 13, 2012

Our "Un-fine" dining experience

Before I write my restaurant review from tonight's dining experience I have to preface it by saying that Chuys is still my favorite restaurant, and their food is wonderful! I met my husband at Chuys, we both worked at Chuys, and their food is always fresh and amazing...but tonight was the worst service I have had in a long time, maybe ever at any restaurant, so I had to write about it.

We all 4 walk into Chuys and are seated at our table. I walk to the bathroom to wash my hands, and as I walk in a waitress is combing her hair with her fingers (kind of like Marsha Brady,"999, 1000.") If you've seen the movie that's the number Marsha counts to as she's brushing her hair. This girl is "combing" her hair before I wash my hands, as I am washing my hands, and still as I leave the restroom.
As I return to our table and we are waiting for our server for what seems like 5-10 minutes. I assume we were accidentally sat in a closed section until "Marsha" from the bathroom comes to take our order. Lucky us...hopefully she washed those hands. We give her our drink and food order at the same time (and she writes down our order-or at least she's moving her pen on the pad).
She returns in about 8-10 minutes with our drinks. She sits the kid's drinks down and I ask her which one is the water and which one is the milk...neither...oops they were both lemonades. This keeps getting better.
Once our food arrives, none of our 3 orders were correct. He ordered a Comida Deluxe (Which is a combination platter with a little bit of everything) and got enchiladas. I ordered a #3 with Deluxe Tomatillo sauce (and it came with the wrong sauce, not a big deal), the kids ordered chicken tenders with fries and mac n' cheese and didn't get their mac n cheese, no extra plate to share either. However, she didn't run our food, so she didn't know that our order was incorrect, nor did she ever ask, "how is everything, or "everything look ok," or "do you need anything else." Luckily we have a friend who works there and he helped us out and corrected our orders. I even thought maybe they ran the wrong food, so when I saw her I asked, "what did you order for my husband", and she replied "cheese enchiladas." So that theory was out the window.
I think by this time she was completely embarrassed because she never came back for refills or pre-bussing of any kind.
This experience sucks for a few reasons.
#1, She wasn't new-one would have hoped she was at this rate
#2, Jorge and I have both waited tables for many years, and we were bad ass servers, so we expect good service when we go out
#3, We hardly ever go out to eat, maybe 2 times a month, so when we do it's really disappointing to have a bad "date night."

I'm not one to complain to a manager, but I hope we never get sat in her section again.