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| - Okay here's the thing, the food here is great and the service was also pretty top-notch. I'm not sure what it is about Charlotte, but they are really good at splitting bills.
The reason that they're only getting 3 stars and an A-OK rating is for the confusing welcome we received.
6 of us walked in on a Friday at 4:55pm. I get that it's early-bird special dinner time, but we wanted to grab some drinks and apps before starting our night. They don't actually open until 5, but the doors were open so we just walked in.
The two hostesses who greeted us informed us that they weren't open yet, but since it was so close to 5, we just stayed hovering awkwardly by their station.
We asked for a table for 6 and they inform us that there are no tables available. Their entire restaurant is booked, but we're welcome to sit at the bar if we really want.
Well we really wanted, which seemed to put them in a quandary since they weren't REALLY booked. Or everyone happened to cancel their 5pm reservation. Both are equally likely I think.
My friend went on Opentable and found a reservation for 5:30pm for 6 so she booked it and went back to the hostess. At that point they "found" a table and asked if we wanted to be seated right away.
We stayed for an hour or so and had some terrific drinks and apps but the restaurant remained mostly empty. Maybe they didn't think we'd notice?
As we walked out, the more extroverted of our group asked the hostess about the situation and a new guy tried explaining it as "opentable told us to not accept any more reservations." Interesting since that's how we booked our reservation.
Maybe they didn't want our jeans and sneakers wearing, massive DSLR camera toting kind, in their upscale place. We'll never know for sure.
If you made it this far into the saga, congrats! The moral of the story is, the food is good, but if you want to have some, you best be reserving upfront.
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