| rev:text
| - We had early evening reservations for a group of 4 on Tuesday of this week. We were seated at a table in the bar area where it's a bit noisy but convivial, especially the one chick grinding on her boyfriend's lap at the bar. Group orders cocktails, appetizers, salad, 4 entrees, a bottle of wine, dessert. Service and alcohol are wonderful; food mostly bland except for the veal chop parmesian, which was excellent. The service has been paced perfectly: no long waits between courses and no courses overlapping. Group has just finished dessert and has paid the bill -- a mere $600 -- and two of the group are slurping up the last of the wine. Older dude (I'd generally use the more respectful "gentleman" but it doesn't apply in this case) comes over and says, "It's time for you to leave. You've been here long enough." Group looks up and thinks he's being funny. Nope. Crabby dude says, "I'm serious. I'm the manager here and I need this table." Group looks around. There are two empty tables next to us.
Most of us are fairly cosmopolitan and have eaten at swanky places all over the world, but never, repeat, never has anything so uncouth and rude happened to us in a supposedly classy but definitely expensive joint. We could certainly understand if the four of us had been loud and obnoxious or rude or cheap or spent an extra hour dawdling after we'd finished our meals. And even then we would have expected the manager to say something like, "Hey, I'm sorry but we need this table for a large group. What if you head over to the bar and I'll buy you a drink?" The woman who had treated us was not only livid, but embarrassed, and she dashed out of the restaurant. Two of us were slower and a different manager came up to apologize for the old man, saying that had happened a few times that week. What? We then made our way through the throngs of people waiting to be seated -- oh, sorry, there were only about 4 people standing in the lobby.
So, a fun evening with friends was soured for no reason whatsoever. Plus I had to use up time which could be spent on better things writing this because I could never forgive myself if I didn't. For the record, the dishes I classified as bland were the mussels (puny mussels in broth not even interesting enough to dip bread in -- if you're into mussels, try the green mussels from New Zealand served at The Barrymore up the street), the shrimp appetizers, the garbage salad and the Osso Bucco, which was tender but didn't taste much different than mom's pot roast.
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