I organized a small surprise party for my wife at the Lighthouse Bar and Grill inside the Harbor Inn last night. I called ahead and made reservations for 6, with another 4-6 showing up later in the evening. On that, they were very accommodating. However, once my wife and I arrived, everything turned into a disaster.
From the moment we walked in, no one greeted us. Several employees (servers, bartenders, even kitchen help) walked by us and around us, hung out at the bar and talked to each other ... a few even looked right at us, but no one ever greeted us or seated us. After standing there for a few more minutes, we finally decided to look for our 6-top on our own. We found it (our name was on a reservation card on the table), tracked down a server to tell her it was our table, and proceeded to seat ourselves while she headed off in another direction.
Around 10 minutes later, she finally came back around to take our drink orders. I ordered a Blue Moon and my wife ordered a Mojito. When our drinks arrived, I noticed the orange stuck in my bottle looked pretty gnarly. Upon further inspection, I noticed it was dried out with fuzzy green mold. My wife's mojito looked like a martini that someone had sprinkled McCormick's oregano onto (instead of garnishing it with the traditional lime wedge with fresh mint). I took the rotten orange out of my bottle and set it on the table. When the server came back around she noticed it and said something like, ""Ewww, let me get you a new one."" and took off. And here's the best part - she comes back more than five minutes later with another orange wedge and it's just as bad. The orange was dried out and the peel was brown with specs of green on it. But she left so fast, I couldn't even say anything. My wife and I just looked at each other and laughed in amazement. So, I set the 2nd orange off to the side, but when she came back again, my wife asked for the manager. It was right about this time that some of the other members of our party began to show up. They asked us what was going on and I showed them the rotten orange #2 and the ghetto mojito. The look of disgust on their faces confirmed our frustration.
The manager was a young guy - he seemed embarrassed, was very apologetic and offered to make it up to us. But at that point, it was too late. I worked in the restaurant industry throughout my college years and one thing I learned is that if you must complain about a restaurant employee's job performance to their management, don't count on eating or drinking anything afterward if it's being prepared out of sight.
As we made our way out, I began texting our other friends to tell them we were headed to Hook, Line & Drinkers next door ..... which turned out to be its own unique disaster. But that's another story. Maybe these places turn to crap during the off season, I don't know .... one thing's for sure, we're never going back any season.
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