Originally Posted by twoplustwo
...and am quite proud of it. There's a large number of people on our staff who've been there for several years, some for many more, and there's a reason for that. I promise you, none of us want anyone to come in and have a bad night from us old timers to any newbies and certainly not the new owners. That's why our suppliers haven't changed, our recipes haven't changed, and our portions haven't changed. I have several points I'd love to make.
There's no cut of prime rib on our menu for $29+ unless you've paired it with a lobster tail, claws, or crab legs.
If you get food you do not like, send it back! We want you to leave happy; when we bring stuff back to the kitchen they are apologetic, they do not like it, we do not like it, we want you to like it. If we leave a plate under a heat lamp for more than a few seconds as food goes onto plates then onto our serving trays, we hear it. Hard. Even if it means someone else is nabbed to take our food out for us. Food is not left under a heat lamp, I promise you. It did not happen when Lyn was there, it does not happen now.
I adore Lyn, and miss working with her very much. Lyn never went to every table in the restaurant. People working the front of the house each get a dining room, each makes the rounds in their area. It was that way when Lyn was there, it is that way now. Tables got missed then, they get missed now. It's unfortunate, they try not to let it happen, it's a rare occurence IMO. It sometimes happened then, it sometimes happens now although they try as hard now as they did before to avoid that situation.
Kitchens get out of synch, timing gets screwed up. It's difficult to staff a restaurant when a large percentage of the people in the dining room didn't have reservations but our owners try very hard to keep staffing above expected levels based on historic data. Sometimes we're overstaffed, sometimes we get surprised and end up understaffed. None of us likes that situation, it is stressful for all involved and the owners try hard to prevent us from having that kind of night, which means they work hard to prevent you from having that kind of a night.
Quality and price are absolutely a concern, if they weren't, we'd still have the NY strip and the lamb chops on the menu. The strips coming in were horrible cuts so they pulled it off the menu. The lamb chop prices got jacked up so high, they couldn't ask customers to pay for them.
If you complained and never got a response, well, I'm really surprised. I see the new owners responding to comments good and bad via email and the phones all the time, it's obviously important to them. Indicating they just don't care? Who the hell would take on a bank note of that size and the hours it takes to run a restaurant if they didn't care? If their intention was to run the place like an overpriced Hart's, those of us who've been there for years would've been out the door by now. All of those options you now have around town for dinner? Those are also options for us from an employment standpoint. I think it's a testament to Kirk and Denise that we're still there, because they are working hard to continue the traditions of quality and service we enjoyed with Lyn and continue to enjoy under their ownership.
Sometimes a restaurant has a bad night. No one ever wants that - not the owners, the managers, the servers, the bartenders, the hosts and hostesses, nor the kitchen staff. But sometimes it happens, and none of us leaves there happy when it does because we fear some of you may have left there unhappy, which we never, ever want. If you come in and have a problem with your food, please let us know. If you have a problem with your server, let another server or a manager know. If things are great from top to bottom, know we've worked to make it that way. We all care or we wouldn't be there.
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