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| - Living Room operates with their heads up their butts. The two stars are for the food. Their snootiness and dishonesty were the reasons for three star strikes. Tl;dr summary is available at the bottom.
I had a Travelzoo voucher for a prix fixe menu for 2 people. I'm not one to shy away from deals and I've found many of my favorite restaurants this way. The menu included a the kale salad to start, choice of one of two entrées (sausage ragu rigatoni or sous vide chicken), and a brownie dessert to share. We had a $32 charcuterie board on top of this.
The ambience is warm and inviting. The smell of truffle fondue was strong in the air. The seemingly disinterested bartender seated us, gave us a print out of the prix fixe menu and told us to "just let us know what entrée you want" before leaving. He didn't give us the regular menu and we were astonished at this omission. He must've thought we wouldn't be interested in ordering anything full price. Bartender, how else are you going to advertise your restaurant if you don't give customers the full menu? That's strike one.
Our server was friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The charcuterie board was pricy but the server sold it well. It came with 4 types of house-cured meats, honeycomb, olives from Turkey and Greece, apricot chutney, curried pickled veg and crackers. It was freaking delicious and the honeycomb was the bomb!
The prix fixe menu was delicious. The kale salad was fresh. The brioche croutons were a unique touch but I wish they used more green goddess dressing. Kale is the heavyweight of the leafy veg world; it can handle more dressing.The pasta and chicken were amazing. The portions were generous and we managed to save room for the brownie. It was moist, chocolatey and not too sweet.
Strike two came when the bill arrived. This isn't my first rodeo and I always tip based on the regular price. We were charged 15% gratuity on the regular price which was NOT mentioned to us. Before or after our meal. At all. For 2 people!!
Living Room, I hope you're reading this. I really wanted to fall in love with you. I understand that maybe other diners with vouchers skimped out after a wonderful meal and you'd rather get a guaranteed tip than trust your servers to provide quality service and your diners to tip accordingly. However, you SHOULD inform your diners if you're going to charge gratuity! That's customer service 101! My high school English teacher would call that "lying by omission". You're also the first restaurant I've encountered that's charged gratuity for a table of 2. Are you TRYING to commit business suicide?!?! Your blatant dislike of voucher users is apparently more important than attracting new customers during a poor economic climate. Wasn't that the point of the voucher? Living Room, you need to take your heads out of your butts and smell the recession.
We were originally going to tip 30% on the regular price for the awesome server and amazing food. However sneaking gratuity on a bill for 2 people and not be upfront about it left a very bitter taste in my mouth. That's how restaurants trick diners into tipping on top of tip. I'm normally a happy and fair customer, but suddenly, even the best food in the world couldn't fix this insult to injury (I haven't forgot the snooty bartender). We paid the 15% gratuity and not a penny more.
Strike 3 was for pissing me off. Apologies for the long winded review, Yelp.
Tl;dr: food was great, but staff are snooty and restaurant is trying to commit business suicide by charging gratuity to our table of two WITHOUT informing us at all. The nerve!
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