| rev:text
| - I'm going to call this review, "the scene of the crime". The Round Bistro was one of the few remaining decently rated restaurants in Gastonia that we hadn't yet tried.
We decided to have a valentines dinner early - the date 2/12/15, a Thursday - the time shortly before 8 PM.
The exterior of the restaurant looks impressive, but the decor and dining furnishings on the inside are comparatively lacking. The walls appear to have a weird kind of mural.
The bartender seated us and our waitress came over quickly. She told us about their monthly regional food menus - this month was New Orleans themed - and about the daily specials. She recommended the she crab soup. We ordered drinks and a cup of she crab soup and a cup of gumbo. Things went downhill very quickly from here.
It took quite awhile to get out drinks and even longer for the soup. Isn't soup already prepared and easy to serve quickly? (For reference, the restaurant was not busy at all and there were at least two waitresses - also for reference ours had glasses and multiple tattoos- one being on her hand).
Another waitress brought out bowls of soup ( I was confused - I thought we ordered cups?). My wife reported the she crab soup was tasty but barely even warm, almost room temperature . People like soup to be hot.... My first bite of gumbo had chicken ( also barely warm), the second, shrimp and the third something rock hard. My first thought was a chicken bone, maybe a wishbone from how big it was. I pulled the piece that I had been chewing out of my mouth- it was part of a zip tie. YES, A ZIP TIE in my food. Thank God I did not break a tooth or try to swallow that thing. I was disgusted. I was furious. I knew we were going to leave. Dinner was definitely over.
I tried to get the attention of our waitress for at least 5 minutes but she was way too busy for us. When she came over I showed her what I found. She was mortified and only somewhat apologetic. I told her we were leaving, to cash us out and charge us what she thought was fair. She disappeared for quite awhile. She returned and apologized again. We were charged for the drinks and not the soup. Was that fair? Probably not. Were it my business, I would have said "my god, I'm so sorry - just leave - you don't owe us anything". It might have cost them $3. A manager and or chef should have come over and apologized as well. Foreign objects in food is a really big deal. Lawsuits can happen, and do. It should have been handled in a professional manner and wasn't at all. The staff really needs some sensitivity training ( or maybe just some common sense).
I'm wondering if the staff even informed a manager, chef or owner at all, or just tried to "sweep it under the rug" to keep from getting in trouble.
Needless to say we won't be back and can't recommend this place.
I even left left the waitress a tip on our drinks. Why? Because even when others don't know how to handle a situation, I still try to keep things classy.
I know that odd/bad/unexpected things can happen in a kitchen. But this was not a small foreign object and the situation was handled extremely poorly.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)