Where do I start...it was a Monday night and my wifey and kiddo went to this fine establishment for dinner. We have been to the Char Bar in Matthews several times and have always been pleased however, tonight wasn't as pleasing. We were quickly seated and given menus, then we waited...and waited...and waited. Approximately 10-15 minutes with not even being acknowledged before the manager made her rounds to check on everyone although, several staff members walked right by us seemingly trying to not look our way. Great that she did, note to self, if I ever open a restaurant execute the manager making rounds strategy. I told her we had not been helped or even acknowledged. She quickly took our drink orders and was back in a couple of minutes with our server.
Our server was nice and responsive, he did forget a couple of things but not a deal breaker. He was nice and attentive. The interesting thing was the ratio of wait staff to tables was close to 1:1. Odd that there were that many servers to tables but once you saw them catch up on all of there chatter you realized they needed to beef up the help to allow everyone to chat.
Exactly 40 minutes, thats right FORTY minutes after we were seated our food arrived. Nothing complicated, chicken, kids steak and a salad. It was all very well cooked but dang, after 40 minutes I could have screwed it all up five times and had plenty of time to fix it.
I pointed out our wait time to the server and the manager quickly came over and both apologized. They reduced the bill and continued to apologize so I was okay with that. It was their first week being open so I give them credit on their recovery and would recommend giving them a shot...I will.