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| - **1/5/12 UPDATE ADDED AT END**
After waiting a few weeks for the restaurant to find some internal rhythm, the wife and I went at 4pm on a Saturday to see if this would become a local site to be worked into our rotation.
The place was very busy, but we did get seated right away. The first time we tried, we were told there would be a 60 min wait, and coming in the late weekend afternoon seemed like the best time to get in.
The table they chose for us, though, was in some weird little section right adjacent to the kitchen; combined with the hard surfaces and odd angles of the area under the stairs, the noise was just horrible. We finally got moved to a table under the balcony, which was much better.
The wife is on a gluten-free diet, so seeing that they offered a gluten-free pizza, there was much rejoicing in the land. Unfortunately, the pizza they served us wasn't a cause for celebration. It was what they termed a "Hawaiian" (red sauce, mozzarella, ham, pineapple), but aside from a lot of sauce, there were hardly any toppings on the pizza, most especially a lack of cheese.The pizza was for someone on a gluten-free diet, not someone who is lactose intolerant. It was a really, really weak offering. It also arrived to the table warm (certainly not hot), which suggested it had been lounging in the kitchen awaiting our server to bring it to us.
Ultimately, a medium pizza, a small salad, a local beer and a diet Coke came to $36 with tip. On the one hand, not an outrageous sum, but on the other, far too much to pay for mediocrity, which is what we were presented today. For $20 we can get a frozen Bella Monica gluten-free pizza at Earth Faire which is superior in every way to what was served "fresh" today
I don't know if we will ever return--I suppose we will, assuming the tenor of the reviews here improves over what has been posted to date--but this was a massive disappointment on every conceivable level. Management would be well-served to shut the place down for a week and review staffing, training and procedures before claiming to be a professional restaurant.
***1/5/12 SPECIAL BONUS UPDATE to include the oh-so-helpful comments from "Hot potcket T." (no, that's not a typo)
"Sir you're an idiot for even taking that much time out of your day for that one particular comment. I see your pizza wasn't cut thoroughly but I would assume you know what a knife is!? Or maybe "the wife" could help you. I'm sure they would love your business and for you to come back but they would also love patience. They did open 2 weeks ago! And you obviously know NOTHING about the restaurant biz bc you can't just shut down a restaurant that's already open to train people, again! Please think before you speak."
It is always impressive when someone, brave with equal parts righteousness and anonymity, rushes to call another person "an idiot" in a preamble to an error-filled message.
1) I wrote nothing about how our pizza was cut. That was *another person's review*.
2) I acknowledged in the opening paragraph that the restaurant recently opened. I would never pan a restaurant based upon an opening weekend. On the other hand, this is a formula restaurant and part of a local chain, so it isn't as if everything is unique to this Ballantyne location, and we didn't go in at a peak time, either. I've done my tour of duty in a pizza joint, too, and when the kitchen is run well, it is relatively easy to keep the customers happy and get the pies delivered without excessive wait times.
3) The comment about shutting down for a week was such obvious hyperbole that it only makes sense that "Hot potcket T." was lost at sea. I think most everyone realizes that it isn't cost-effective to shut down a restaurant for a week to retrain unless Gordon Ramsay is doing the retraining and the TV show he's filming is covering the lost operating revenue. I was merely stated that the restaurant appeared so rough around the edges that it would benefit from a week offline just to get its house in order.
4) Finally, the comment that Mellow Mushroom would appreciate "patience from me" is just bizarre; I didn't dictate when the restaurant was obligated to begin operations, so if it needed more time, then an internal decision was made to open regardless of readiness. Furthermore, nobody offered to cut me a deal on the pricing of our food if the restaurant felt it wasn't ready for prime time. If I'm paying full fare, I think as a customer I have a right to that restaurant's full level of service. Why am I supposed to cut it some slack if it's going to charge me the full price for what it acknowledges isn't it's best effort?
If the Ballantyne Mellow Mushroom is truly run by professionals--that is to say, not by whiny twits like "Hot potcket T."--they they will take some of the comments from the *paying customers* here to heart and work to improve the restaurant.
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