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| - We decided to eat here for our 4th anniversary dinner. Let's start with the positives. Beautiful decor, love the contemporary feel with the chalk blackboard wall. Great location, the Camelback Inn is very beautiful. The meal began with the chef's gift of warm chicken liver spread with thyme and crusty bread - wonderfu,l followed by the gruyere glazed popover served with a ramekin of european butter and sea salt.-amazing! A little recipe card is included with the popovers-nice touch. I wish I had more positives to say I really wanted to love this restaurant.
So now for the reasons for the 2 star rating.
When we arrived for our reservation, it would have been nice to have heard happy anniversary since we had noted that on our open table reservation.We were seated in a great round booth nice intimate location for our anniversary dinner. When we arrived at our booth she pulled the table out so we could snuggle in the back and on the seat was food. Thankfully she noticed and I thought she would apologize and promptly clean up. What happened next should have been a warning sign of how our night was going to turn out. She said, "Oh" and stood there, so I said "here I'll move so you can clean that off. She then proceeded to enter the booth and swipe the food off the seat onto the floor with her hand. Not what I'd expect of a Laurent Tourondel restaurant. Our server arrived promptly but still no happy anniversary. I don't mean to make a big deal out of the lack of a greeting, it's just a nice touch when celebrating a special occasion, definitely not a reason to give a 2 star rating though , so I'll continue. We ordered our wine and to our surprise our server returned promptly and to our relief wished us Happy Anniversary, which quickly turned awkward as he tried to connect with us and tell us all of his friends are starting to marry and have children and now his girlfriend is looking at him wondering what his problem is that he hasn't asked her to marry him yet and how wow thats a lot of responsibility and he didn't know how people could get married blah blah blah. Thanks, you could've kept your happy anniversary. Awkward and uncomfortable! He then proceeded to tell us that the wine we ordered was not chilled enough and would we mind if he chilled it for 6-10 minutes. Really, how could the wine not be chilled if it's on the menu. Still ok at this point, we aren't high maintenace diners and honestly pretty easy going and very forgiving. We thought at this point he would take our orders, however even though we were only 1 or 3 tables filled in the restaurant he did not return to take our order until our wine was chilled. What he did do was help the table next to ours get that perfect photo for their memory album and blind us with the flash of their camera several times cause they weren't quite happy with their photo. To his credit he did apologize when he returned to take our order.
I ordered the spice rubbed cowboy ribeye, my husband the bone in rib eye, a side of the creamed spinach, jalapeno mash, and hen of the woods mushrooms with a side of chimichuri and green peppercorn sauce. The cowboy ribeye comes to the table with the whole rib attached to the ribeye not expecting that. The spices were so charred the only flavor I got was burnt and the meat itself was so fatty half the steak was totally inedible. My husband kindly shared his steak which was good, but hardly anything I would return for. Great hen of the woods mushrooms really enjoyed these favorite part of the dinner. The rest of the sides ok nothing great though.
We finished and my husband had to refill his own wine glass, because our server was chatting and taking pictures again.
What happened next was truly shocking, something I'd expect if we were at Mcdonalds but not a upscale steakhouse. An electrician showed up and proceeded to change the light bulb that was out at the booth next to ours. Mind you by this time it was 10:30 pm and the restaurant closed at 11pm. Really are you freaking kidding me you can't wait a half hour to change a light bulb.
To BLT'S credit they arrived with a complimentary dessert, however as the wait staff, not our server sets it down in front of us and promptly walks away without explaining what it was we looked down and in fittingly comic horror scribbled on the plate is Happy Birthday! WOW!!
Our server shows to drop off the check and looks at the plate and says" did they write happy birthday? haha that's funny"
Really BLT! We trusted the reputation of Laurent Tourondel to schedule our special occasion and this was very amateur and embarrassing for your restaurant at best. When you go out to dinner and willing fork out over $200 for a meal this is not what is expected.
I guess my husband and I should thank BLT for giving us such a great story to tell all of our friends and family of the night we wasted over $200 on a comical night of amateur proportion.
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