My friends and I came here for a kind-of soft opening that was meant to market Bubbles as an event space. First impression when walking in: looks like one of Tom Haverford's clubs from "Parks and Rec." Slight turn to the right and... OMFG WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE GIANT PORTRAITS OF DOLLS ON THE WALL?!? Seriously mondo creepy. Ugh.
Anyway, the decor looks like it's trying wayyy too hard. Lots of gloss, no substance. My ideal lounge is trendy without trying to grab your attention like a high-priced escort who just lost their client for the evening.
We sat outside since it was happy hour and would be fun to people watch. I will give Bubbles this: it has a wonderful outdoor view of Trade and College. However, the servers were moving slower than molasses on this particular evening. They were nice, but not at all attentive. The tray-passed apps were ever so slowly served to some tables and not others.
One interesting aspect with a lot of potential is that the bar opens up to the patio; you can order a drink without going back inside. They did this for maybe three minutes, took a couple orders and then closed it back up again without any explanation. Mystifying. Overall, I'd say everything was very poorly managed.
We did get to sample some food: they have a caprese salad tower which looked cool, but the tomatoes were of poor quality and the mozzarella tasted ordinary at best. They also served a smoked salmon on potato chip appetizer, which was interesting but not worth repeating.
To summarize, this place is doing the exact opposite of what a good gastrolounge should do: rather than have a trendy, but not-trying-too-hard look with fast and attentive service, Bubbles goes for the attention-whore look with the zero-fucks-given servers. I won't be back.