Whiskey Thief — Local services in Chattanooga

Nicely appointed room, not crowded seating areas, superlative view, showcased shelved bottles of alcohol in a rather unique fashion in front of a wall sized window totally unobstructed so that the sun shines through the bottles making the alcohol's different colors and bottles scintillate, sparkle and come to life. A shame good service I am used to receiving, accommodating, gregarious networking interaction was not present with the bartenders. Not friendly, didn't know how to hold a basic conversation given towards making a customer feel comfortable around cocktail hour. I ordered a whiskey sour, it was made delivered, and as I began to drink the cocktail I was asked if I was a guest, if not they needed a credit card to start a tab, and wanted to see ID. I am from California and the identification laws are complete opposite, but no problem, except the whole sequence of events was wrong, should of asked for the ID prior to me starting to drink the cocktail, and to ask a customer of my obvious level of wealth in a luxury hotel with a handful of customers in the bar for collateral is totally not in keeping and counterintuitive to elegance, privilege and entitlement that this type of establishment is looking to portray. That sort of impersonal rude exterior behavior I think you might run into and be consistent with what you would expect in a local bar. I paid for the drink, drank quickly, left, did some shopping, went to another Hotel -- I am from San Francisco, love hotel bar atmosphere -- had another whiskey sour, nice bartender, actually gave me the drink, was interested to hear about the Bay Area, he had been in the service, been stationed there for awhile at the Alameda Naval Air Station some years prior. I felt so comfortable I got a room, I guess the proper popular current term is a "staycation". One last thing I want to mention, I enjoyed the decor, fixtures, minimalist/classical/, modern motif, seating areas of the Edwin, and the exception in the attitude at the bar was a sweet waitress named Sarah, young, eager, amiable, nothing so catchy as enthusiasm when you are involved in a consumer oriented business. Maybe they didn't care for the fact that i knew the identity of the music and artist of each song played in the classic rock music steam playing, and they didn't, but that's the business I am in. Sometimes it pays to listen to and know your audience, when somebody sits down at your bar....

I've been asked to visit Whiskey Thief, at the top of the Edwin Hotel, several times. I finally made it up there on Saturday night with a party of four. The bar was nearly full and I found a table, unoccupied, with two chairs. I was able to wrangle two more chairs myself to make a full table of four. This was a seat-yourself situation. The wait staff was, as usual at trendy spots, completely overwhelmed. So dinging service is not entirely appropriate except when items are forgotten or requests unheeded. That happened to be the case, but our server was working very hard....too many customers and too few wait staff. Our drink order was taken after 10 minutes or so. I also ordered four items off the menu, with the selections all being appetizer size as entre's are served downstairs in the restaurant. We ordered the Burrata, charcuterie, deviled eggs and smoked chicken wings. The burrata was okay with a nice slab of cheese, very few tomatoes and a tangy balsamic. The chicken wings were so tough a hyena couldn't have chewed the meat off the bone. They did come with a tangy and spicy sauce that was very good and the skin of the chicken had a nice coating of spices. This is probably a hit of a dish normally, ours were just very tough. The deviled eggs were decent, I like a dab of horseradish in mine and these were bland. The charcuterie board was good, but not great. The drinks were aplenty of expensive. Make no mistake, Whiskey Thief is the best place in town to enjoy a drink, the tremendous views and a bite to eat. Emphasis on "drink" and "bite". There is a sizeable premium attached to the view and ambiance that I don't think it counterbalanced by the food/drink if you end up making a night of it, i.e. rounds of...

I opted for this place instead of city cafe because I wanted something better. This place was very disappointing. I am leaving the two stars for the atmosphere and mediocre service. Mediocre service seems to be the new norm. It’s a hipster thing from what I gather. It’s cool to be hip but it’s unkind to be uncaring, especially if you’re employed in a job which requires customer service. The bartender/server seemed irritated that anyone was ordering food instead of just drinks. I called ahead to ask about white bird reservations and they were full, so I was redirected to the upstairs haunt, known as whiskey thief, for brunch. I ordered fresh fruit which was really good, but it’s hard to mess up fresh fruit unless it’s rotten. My lil one ordered biscuits and gravy that was disgusting. Katelyn brought a bowl of the tasteless, cold mush that resembled flour mixed with cold water, atop two burnt, hard, inedible biscuits. Katelyn obviously hasn’t been in food service long because she pawed each plate with her thumb in the center rather than the edge. She even had her thumb resting in the gravy as she set it down. I expected much more from an establishment of this caliber. I didn’t want to complain but the dish was so badly botched I had to make mention of it for guest feedback. I had the biscuits and gravy removed from the ticket and I still tipped over 35% of the bill which would’ve been 20 if all was left on. I left 7 dollars which is still very good. The server really didn’t deserve it though he was quite disinterested in waiting on us. He was at least candid about the horrible food. He admitted that the food is bad. I will not be back. I’m so glad I didn’t get valet parking...