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| - My husband and I were so overly disappointed in our experience on New Years Eve at The Carlton that I will never return or recommend this restaurant to anyone. While this was my first time dining here, my husband had gone in the past and very excited to take me for a special dinner on NYE. He, and others, had such great things to say about past experiences that I was very excited to give it a shot - even though I had read some of the mediocre reviews before going.
We made our 8 PM reservation for NYE on December 8th. When we booked through an online site, it appeared as though we had secured one of the few remaining reservations. We showed up right on time and were told to go sit in the bar by the hostess. I looked at her confused and she told me that they were running about 30 minutes behind and hopefully would catch up. Being that it was New Years Eve, we understood and found a seat at the bar for a before dinner drink.
The only good part of our experience at the restaurant was with the gentleman who was tending bar. He was friendly and responsive allowing us to get served quickly. After about 40 minutes and into our 2nd drink, my husband and I started to get curious about when we would ever get seated so he checked in with the hostess. When he came back and was telling me that there were still 2 parties ahead of us, the couple next to us started up a conversation with us about the long wait. This is when we came to find out the other couple had just made their reservations on the 30th. We couldn't believe how over booked they were. After a few minutes, the couple who booked at the last minute were seen to their table and my husband and I sat around until almost 9 PM waiting for our table. The bartender tried to make it up to us by comping a glass of wine for me and offering my husband a fresh pour on his scotch.
The hostess walked us to our table - and right past the coat check - without allowing us to stop and check our coats. Mind you, most people were able to check them as they arrived but we were not given this offer. The hostess finally offered to check them for us once we carried them all the way to our table.
At this point, it's nearly an hour after the time of our reservation and we sat at the table for well over 5 minutes before our waiter stopped by to simply say hi. We had no menus, no water, no offer to get a drink - NADA! After waiting another 5 minutes and watching our waiter clean off tables, put on linens, etc. I stopped a passing hostess to ask for menus. The waiter overheard and made it seem like we were being impatient but finally brought them to us. Keep in mind - it's now 9:10 and our reservation was for 8 PM. He said, "Oh you are in luck, usually at this time of night we don't have everything on the menu but tonight we do."
Disgusted with the experience thus far, my husband and I opted to skip appetizers to save time as it was NYE and we did have plans after dinner. We ordered the surf and turf ($37) and a 14 oz. prime rib ($36). This was certainly the straw that broke the camels back. About 20 minutes later, we were presented with 2 underwhelming and barely lukewarm dishes. On the surf and turf, I had a very petite lobster tail (maybe 4-6 oz) and the meat was cooked in a way that most of it stuck to the shell. The turf part of the meal was the ends that typically get cut off of a prime rib and discarded. The Carlton called them prime rib caps - wish I would have inquired on that one! I have 2 "puffs" of some type of whipped potato that were cold to the touch and a few small pieces of limpy asparagus. My husbands 14 oz prime rib was 8 ox at best and was served with a small lump of mashed potato that you could tell were cold by looking at them. He also mentioned that it was so salty he could barely eat it.
Starving, we began to eat. Torn on sending the food back and possibly waiting another 30+ minutes for something else or just sucking it up and eating what we could stomach of our plates, we opted to just suck it up. The manager stopped by at one point to ask us about our food and we were honest in what was wrong with it. The problem was, he wanted to know what else he could do for us and we honestly didn't want to be there any longer or have to eat any more of the food. A bit later our waiter returned to clear our plates and set a dessert menu out in front of us saying the manager would comp us anything we wanted for dessert. My husband and I looked at each other in disgust and declined the offer.
This is the real kicker - at this point, the waiter, who we never saw while eating, started to put the blame on us for not liking our food. He said we should have spoken up to him - we were very clear with the manager, so there was obviously a barrier in what was relayed back. After waiting yet another 10 minutes for our bill, the waiter brought it back and gave us 50% off and to be honest - we should have only paid for the bottle of wine we got!
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