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| - Longtime eastsiders know this location seems to be cursed. It's been the home of some truly bizarre concepts. From the awful Gali Gali to the upscale Clyde's which destroyed the original diner interior, nothing here lasts long. The latest concept comes from Doug Katz and with his track record, he should be able to break the curse. But thanks to some serious issues, even he might not be able to do it.
Lets start with the positives. The place looks great and much of the ghastly looks of Clyde's are long gone making this once again, a true diner. The omelettes are awesome. The ham is among the best I've had. Hash browns are outstanding. The "pop tarts" are genius. Sounds great right? Well, not quite.
The Katz Club Diner suffers from serious service issues. Lets start with serving coffee. Seems easy enough. Normally, a waitress will ask if you want cream with your coffee. That's standard virtually anywhere, even at Denny's, but not here. The coffee was poured and the waitress promptly ran away. Nobody showed up at the table for another 40 minutes. Not even to refill glasses. Finally our waitress lets us know that our food is "on its way." I'd hope so since I've had shorter waits for much more complex items at Katz's fine dining spot - Fire. I realize virtually everything here is house made but waiting so long for diner food on top of not even getting a drink refill is a tad ridiculous. At least the notice that the food was coming soon allowed the waitress to finally realize she should refill our drinks.
Another 10-20 minutes and the food finally arrives. Here's where more mistakes occur. I get the right side dishes but my omelette is wrong. It's a dining companions. Yes, the omelettes are on the wrong plates. You'd think after waiting this long, the dishes would be correct but nope. Not a big deal but still. Another oddity is the toast is unbuttered. So you'd assume they'd ask if you want jam and/or butter. As happened earlier with the serving of coffee, this simple process is totally bungled. The food runner left without asking or even letting us tell them what we wanted with toast. We had to wait for our waitress to return 10 minutes later to ask for butter and explain the kitchen mixup to her.
3 out of 4 diners at the table liked our meals. The outlier was an egg salad sandwich that lacked flavor. The waitress was kind enough to take it off the bill and offered to bring something else but after waiting so long earlier, my wife didn't want to sit at least another 30-40 minutes just to get a different sandwich. In the time we were there, a neighboring table also sent food back while several others also waited around an hour. I'm wondering if that's the norm or if we came on the wrong day. Either way, its not good and shouldn't ever happen at a Katz restaurant.
Even with our long wait and the kitchen screw ups, no manager ever came to apologize or even check up on us even though one was clearly on the premises. That's disappointing since this is supposed to be an upscale diner as the higher price points show. Sadly, the service resembled that of a greasy spoon that relies on value meals to draw in diners. The kitchen problems were essentially blamed on new cooks in the kitchen who just started there. Not sure why a new restaurant already has new cooks but it might say something about its future and whether this place will last long term. Apparently, the kitchen is chaotic and that's usually a bad sign. Professional and friendly service is a key factor when deciding where to go and this place seems to fail at that in the kitchen and in the dining room.
The Katz Club Diner is loaded with potential and perhaps I'm being harder on it just because of who is at the helm and the fact that Douglas Katz even put his name front and center. Chef Katz is very talented and when I go to a restaurant of his, I expect a top notch experience from top to bottom. It is my fear that Katz has spread himself too thin thanks to this new venture, plus running Fire, Provenance and his growing catering biz. Our last visit to Fire was also full of service missteps and kitchen errors. Katz needs to find some better people working under him or his reputation as a top chef with top restaurants will probably suffer as will his restaurant's long term viability. A restaurant can put out good food but if diners are not having a good time and are not treated right, there's little reason for them to return. Because of that, it might be a long time til we return to this diner no matter how much potential it might have.
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