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| - Walked in tonight. We had a Groupon and I had wanted to try this place for a long time anyway. The place wasn't packed at 5pm (yeah we were eating early tonight). Greeted immediately and given the choice to find a bar table or sit in main dining room. The ambience was right on. Minimalist decoration but perfectly adequate. We chose bar seating. Walking in, the bar was a little warm, but I think most places in the valley are overly air-condtioned anyway, so no big deal. I like warm. The guy behind the bar (later found his name was Augustin), was slammed. He had a couple customers sitting at actual bar, but he was waiting 4-5 tables besides us in the bar area himself. He made it over as soon as he was able and brought us food. While the hostess who greeted us had been friendly, she had not offered us menus or followed us to bar with menus. We did wait a few minutes to be recognized, totally understandable as busy as the guy behind the bar was. When we finally placed drink orders, they ended up being out of the BF's beer-no big deal-he chose another. Ordered right before end of happy hour (by about 11 minutes)-including a 1/2-off appetizer (hummus). Later, we would be charged the HH price for hummus but not for drinks (meh...it would have amounted to $2 off anyway). Hummus was pretty damn good. Served with bean chips, bread, cucumber with olives and feta and a couple whole chickpeas on top. 5 stars for the hummus-especially considering the $5 price. Food is local, organic, pricey-as expected. We decided on quinoa bowls. I got the super quinoa, BF got spicy Thai quinoa bowl, and the kiddo got kids create-your-own pizza. Kiddo says his pizza was good. He's a kid! It looked dang good. Also came with choice of sides, he chose strawberrries. The side choices are healthy and awesome. Our bowls were pretty darn good also, although, having visited Pomegranate Cafe in my own 'hood a time or two, I instantly compared the two and decided I would have preferred to pay same high prices at Pomegranate. Augustin worked his butt off, busy the whole time, and never anything but absolutely friendly and professional despite never seeming to have a second to think. About half way through our dinner, we noticed a woman behind the bar who had greeted us on arrival. She was not wearing what seemed to be the traditional employee uniform of black polo shirt. We assumed she was at least the manager if not higher up. She made small talk with a patron at the bar, seemed very friendly, but also seemed to have gave 2 F***s that the only server in the bar was swamped and that we had ourselves waited 15+ minutes just for drinks. That is super poor team work, let alone absolutely horrible managerial skills. I will take some freedoms with making this claims, because I have been a charge nurse in a busy unit and would NEVER think of letting my nurses sink like that. Isn't the purpose of a manager (or owner?) to provide all customers with the best experience they can have? That includes helping a busy server who is literally killing himself managing EVERY table as well as every bar customer! For this reason, as well as our wait because our poor waiter was being murdered with volume, this place gets 3 stars. I may have otherwise given at least 4, if not 5. The lack of support given by this woman was unbelievable. Were I a restaurant owner, and if I witnessed ANY supervisor act with such utter disregard for team work and customer service, I may strongly reconsider that person's employment status. This is how strongly I feel about her chatting up a single customer in front of us while we waited patiently for our poor server to have a second to look our way. I want to be perfectly clear-we were given good service every chance he got to pay attention to us-but the fact that he was not given any assistance by the woman (who also BTW was noted to stand at the counter under the "kitchen" sign for a good deal of time-confirming at least her employment or involvement with the restaurant), literally left me angry. Anyway...food 4.5 stars. Service (when he could give us service-thanks Augustin) 5 stars-even though we waited quite a while to place drink order and receive ALL the drinks. Team work/management-1 star. Will I be back? Meh! Not sure considering I get more attention at Pomegranate Cafe for same amount of $$ and same great quality food. Im not saying this is on my never list, but they need to step up their game.
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