| rev:text
| - Came here for lunch today with a group of 5 and was looking forward to trying the JW/Jonathan Waxman dishes. I wanted to like this place. Really.
The decor is nice and typically Finance District-feel: Spacious, modern and open kitchen, high ceilings shared by a dual-leveled dining area, with large hung prints of the Ghostbusters cast and a retro-cute figure of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man that greets you at the door (I high-fived it on the way in, because I'm just *that* classy).
The food, which I believe should be at the forefront of any dining establishment, was OK. Had the 3-course prix fixe lunch for $25, where I chose a French onion soup, a grilled squid on salad, and a chocolate budino. I found the onion soup to taste like a beef consomme, and one of my dining companions found it overly salted. The squid looked like chicken, and lacked the bouncy "spring" that one might expect. The chocolate budino, served in an espresso cup, was pretty good.
Based on the details above, I would've probably rated it at about an OK 2 or 3 stars.
Here's where it all went downhill for me: the awful, awful service.
The waiter, whom another of my dining companions had immediately described as "apathetic" (very apropros, by the way) was visibly annoyed that we didn't order wine or drinks. I could've looked past this; but it was the service that followed which really cheesed me off. Er, rather, the service which *didn't* follow.
We were served the first course after about 10 minutes, which is fine. Our entrees? We waited 50 minutes for our entrees while the 2-person table next to us was served at least 20 minutes before us. When our waiter noticed our entire table looking to wave him down to inquire about the status of our dishes, he went to the kitchen to ask them about it, without ever coming over to our table to give us an update. Another 10 minutes later, we waved down another wait staff to ask about it. She followed up with him, and I suppose upon realizing we would ask eventually, he came to our table with a very nonchalant, "Your dishes will be ready shortly." No apologies, and no mention that something had clearly gone awry.
He never once asked us if we'd like a refill of water (after an hour long wait? Yeah, water would've been nice). Never asked us how the appetizers were, nor even glanced at us to recognize we were hungry as heck since we'd been sitting there long enough to dry up like The Cryptkeeper. At the end of our two hour endeavour, there was zero mention of the fact that we waited, zero compensation for the super long wait (uh, even Starbucks gives you a free drink coupon after waiting ~10 minutes), no question of whether we enjoyed the food, and worst of all, two of our companions had to leave to go back to work where one of them paid for a dessert but never had the chance to eat it (but was still charged for it nonetheless).
It's a known faux-pas to name competitor names in reviews, but this experience left such a sour taste that I'm straight-up calling them out (oh snaps, can't take the Malvern out of the girl). Montecito is a dime-a-dozen, and I highly recommend that you avoid Montecito and go other restaurants in the area: Gusto 101, Buca, Tutti Matti, Byblos...any of these places would be better than this. Some of these places are also a bit on the pricier side, but at least at those places you're not paying to be ignored!
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