(updated name only) Tonight's Joey experience was a mixed bag.... but thanks to their amazing staff Britney, it became a better experience because they proved that they truly cared about their customer feedback! kudo to Britney and thumbs down to our server.
We decided to drop by Joeys to have an after work mall walking and impromptu date night.
We were greeted by hostess with big smiles. Good customer service to start...
However, the experience went downhill from there.
We could tell that there was a problem when it took almost 5 minutes before someone came by and asked us for our drink selection. After the water was delivered, our server came by. Ms. M (dont want her to get fired) is a somewhat shy server and we could tell that she was a bit inexperienced. When we ordered our steak dinners, she did not ask us how it should be done. So, we knew that she is a newbie. But hey, she needed to get experience and we went along and tried to give her our order without being too complicated or condescending. We ordered an appetizer, and 2 steak dinners. There were some minor changes: substitute the vegetables to Cesar salad, remove onions from my order, and go light on the Cesar salad dressing on one order. Otherwise, it was all good.
When the sliders arrived, it had onions but i just picked it off, and did not complain.
We were seated quite close to the open kitchen and therefore, it gave us a view of where our food was lining up under the heat lamp (yes, I had bad experience with my steak turning from medium rare to almost well done due to negligence) .
Our slider sat for a bit but it was slider, it was already well done. We ate it and by then, our water was done... It was a min. 5 minute wait for water service.
Then the steak dinners arrived. they were sitting pretty under the heat lamp for a few minutes. finally, our server got our steak which fortunately were still medium rare, getting closer to medium.
Unfortunately, there was a mixed up of my food and it had onions all over my potato. Ms M noticed it and started to switch the food right on our plates. In the repositioning, she spilled my partner's mushroom sauce on my plate and on the table. She ran to get a towel to wipe it up. I was actually surprised that she did not go back to the kitchen and re-arranged our food which would have avoided this mishap.
But guess what, now my partner had half the sauce. Instead of offering to replace the sauce, our server sort of disappeared for a while. After we found her, we asked for another sauce. Of course, my partner thought it was nice of her to do it. The sauce came after about 10 minutes which we were surprised but it did come fresh and hot.
Now we could finally start to enjoy our meals. Well, i realized that Joey's chef loved Salt. While the steaks were tasty, they were very salty and covered with 1/8 inch of steak spice.
The special smashed potato looked a bit like Pig in a blanket. It was an unique concept as it was mashed potato wrapped in spring roll wrapper and deep fried, dripped with sour cream and cheese. Definitely different than your run of the mill mashed potato..
I managed to consumer the salty steak because i was quite hungry from waiting for my partner's mushroom sauce... (dont want to be a rude date and start eating).
After a while, I dug into my Cesar salad which i found out was dripping with salad dressing. It was definitely not lightly dressed. I tried to eat it but I could not.I decided to ask Ms M to see if my salad could be replaced. She said "sure" and went off to the kitchen order counter.
well, that was the last time we saw Ms. M (20 minutes and counting) because we managed to finish our food and our plate was collected by another server, and our leftover steak was packaged by her as well. Ms M came by and asked if we wanted coffee or dessert without mentioning about our salad. By then, we had enough of salty food, missing salad and simply silly experience. We asked for the bill and found out we had to pay for $3.50 for the extra sauce. We asked for it to be removed from the bill which she did. We gave Ms M the minimum tip of 10% before tax which was not our usual tipping habit, because we knew that the server staff worked hard for their money.
When we left Joeys, we swore that this will be our last visit... and while we were walking out, Britney approached us and asked us how was our experience tonight. This was when I did the unusual thing and spilled my guts (not literally, the food was salty but fresh) about our experience. Britney pulled us aside and listened to the whole sordid details...then she apologized and asked if we minded waiting. Then she came back with a gift certificate and asked us to come back...She would also let the chef know that the food was over salted.
NOW this is the saving grace for Joeys! Attentive management and great recovery!
So they got our business back, and a 4 Star rating... Thank you Britney ! You are a the 4-Star!