Harvest Vine

06/08/09

Poor Service + Lack of Manager = Disapponting Night

by MadisonValleyDiner at Citysearch

I hosted a birthday dinner for 12 friends on a Saturday night. I made the reservation a month in advance and reconfirmed that afternoon. Yet, somehow, when we arrive at the restaurant the table is set for 10. Strike 1.

25 minutes after finally getting seated, we were left with empty water glasses and still no wine. I got up to track down our waiter, who was very apologetic. I selected a red and white and told him to keep 'em coming. Back he came 10 minutes later... to tell me they were out of the white. Now we had been in the restaurant for 45 minutes and hat yet to have a glass a wine. Strike 2.

With a group of 12, our waiter recommended that we pick 3 veggie dishes, 3 fish dishes and 3 meat dishes. Essentially each one would be a 'course'. I agreed and away we went. The veggies/salads were delivered about 20 minutes later. Hungry, we quickly ate them all. We attempted to re-order, but were told we should wait until the Fish course arrived. That took another 40 minutes. The fish was OK, but not great. 2 hours into our meal, now, and we are a dozen still-hungry diners. 45 minutes later, out comes the meat course. Delicious... but of course not nearly enough since this became our 'last chance' to fill up. The waiter offered to bring us more of Round 3/Meat course, but we had just run out of patience. Instead of sitting down in the basement (no music, 80+ degrees) for another hour, we decided to cut our losses and get out. Strike 3.

Note: Our server did his very best. Unfortunately he was assigned to 30+ diners. Of course, the kitchen was a bigger problem. it is so tiny, it just cannot scale to meet the growing size of the restaurant. The unintended upside to this is that we spent about half what we had budgeted; the slow kitchen prevented us from running up the bill!

• Pros: Food
• Cons: Kitchen Service Staff, management staff

07/24/08

Attitude

by kekoajaber at Citysearch

I heard good things about this place and we went there for my wife's birthday. It was a Wednesday and they were slammed. This a good thing in my book as long as the waitstaff doesn't have an attitude. We learned the hard way you have to have a reservation (yes, even on a Wednesday) to get their attention. Otherwise the servers look right through you. No host/manager to guide you through either. All I need to be told is that there isn't any availability, not be ignored.

07/07/08

Excellent food and a great spot!

by trufflemonger at Citysearch

I love this restaurant and go there quite often. The food is always good and if you sit upstairs you can watch the kitchen at work. I will say that the service can be a little spotty, but the food more then makes up for it. Try the octopus, it's my favorite.