Yikes. After quite a nice meal here two years ago, I organized a brunch for my mommy group and the service was really pretty bad:/
We had a reservation for a party of 8 and after being sat waited 45 minutes to order, then subsequently had to wait and wait and wait each time we asked for so much as a refill on water. Twice a porter came to refill waters and then walked off with several of the glasses still empty- never to return with more water! We asked for our checks in the middle of the meal because we could foresee it being a looooooong wait, and unfortunately we were right.
When the manager came over to ask how everything was, my friend mentioned that the service was really, really slow. He seemed surprised and eventually told us that it was because we needed separate checks. When we (nicely!) let him know that every aspect of the service had been slow, not just the check-getting portion, he mentioned the separate checks again and blamed our wait on an outdated computer system. When he came back 15 minutes later to find us still waiting he told us he had comped our bottomless mimosas due to the wait - which was nice of him! Only...none of us had had bottomless mimosas ($20), although 4 of the 8 had had single mimosas ($8). We all said thank goodness that we had ordered the singles, because I can't imagine how long we would have waited for a refill on the bottomless ones.
I do understand that separate checks are not ideal (when I organize a group outing elsewhere in the future I will definitely remind everyone about bringing cash) but they can't treat separate checks like some sort of puzzling phenomenon that has never been encountered before. And the separate check situation just doesn't excuse the long waits and poor service in every other regard.