The Garden of Eden — Local services in Cleveland

I visited this location on a Saturday in the late afternoon. The weather was nice, and they were having a wedding up there in one of the sections that was already seated and in the ceremony. The music was a Rolling Stones playlist, which was apropos as the band was in town that weekend and it seemed many of the patrons were there ahead of the show.

Alas, the actual bar experience was quite poor here. The fist bartender we queued up for was incomprehensibly slow. She seemed to know what she was doing, she was just absurdly meticulous and deliberate in every action. It took her over four minutes to make what appeared to be a pretty simple drink. Most of that time was garnishing! Eventually we made our way to the other side of the bar and found the bartender there to be much more efficient and very pleasant. He quickly whipped out the cocktails for two groups ahead of us and started working on our order before the other bartender finished lighting a cigar for the two people she had been serving this whole time.

The drinks were good, but nothing special. Most were just simple three ingredient drinks that were basic twists on existing recipes. They tasted fine, but were unreasonably expensive for what we were getting. I don't mind paying a premium for exceptional service, or for innovative drinks, or even for great atmosphere. Alas, this place was pretty average on all the fronts. Only one of the three bartenders was high quality (the third one was being pretty short with the customers in his section). It's a rooftop bar, but it's the shortest rooftop on the block, so there aren't really any good views from most of the angles.

I don't think I'd return to this place. I can get a drinks of that caliber at most restaurants or bars, usually for less cost, and always faster.

And in case your thinking it, while there were a lot of people up there, the bar wasn't what I would call slammed. There was a polite queue of people in front of each of the three stations, a bar back on duty, and no good reason why a quality bar team couldn't be dissolving the line.

Oh, and the bathrooms were really hard to find! Everyone up there was asking each other where they were. There were also some pretty bad tripping hazards. some of the carpets were curled up, and there were some gaps in the stone work that were pretty lethal. An old woman got her heal caught in one of the gaps and nearly...

We planned a Welcome Party for the night prior to our wedding at Garden of Eden rooftop. Let me first say that our contact, Kennedy was great to work with and very communicative about planning, however she was off the day of our party—understandable given it was on a Friday evening. We planned the party to order food but do a cash bar for guests to meet the minimum total. This was our decision to help cut wedding costs, but also to make sure our guests weren’t too spent on the wedding the following day. Unfortunately, we had a few missteps in the evening. We were short a bartender (which prompted guests to order from the inside bar where drinks weren’t added to our total), the reserved space was smaller than originally agreed (limiting seating and space for our 100-120 guests) and the valet started turning away our guests stating they were only taking overnight cars which made parking difficult on a busy downtown weekend. The most frustrating moment was about two and a half hours into the event when the assistant manager notified us that our bar tab was only about $900 (so we were expected to pay the remaining balance to meet the minimum requirement). This didn’t seem correct. We had over 100 people at our event for over two and a half hours with cocktails at about $12/each; the math didn’t add up. The manager had left already but I was able to speak with him, and he agreed to review everything and follow up with us after the weekend. Shortly after this, the assistant manager came back again and said the total was closer to $2100 and we still owed a few hundred more. This still didn’t seem correct but given the circumstances of our wedding the following day, we just paid for the remaining amount. Come to find out later, the designated bartender was not charging our guests for the first half of the evening. Overall, our guests greatly enjoyed our event, but the logistical issues were questionable, and several things seemed to go awry. Proceed with caution when planning an event here—beautiful venue, but concerning management issues. We did appreciate Kennedy following up and reimbursing us for the cost of the second bartender that was...

Went here last night for my birthday. It started off okay. The view was nice, our section was nice... I wish they would've had some type of method to keep the bugs away but whatever. After getting a Mojito that was wayy too sweet, My husband and I tried to step outside to a quiet place to call our children, and my mother had to get her wallet from the car. My sister was gonna go to the car with my mom, so now there's 4 of us that need to leave the party for a second.. We hadn't paid for our tab yet but two people from our party were Still at our table, and another person was at the bar watching the game, so I didn't think it was a big deal for us to step outside. Before we even reach the threshold, the bartender darts over to us and says: "I still have several tabs open at your table!" I was trying to explain that I wasn't leaving, but clearly she couldn't hear me. We hadn't even worked out who was gonna pay for what in our party yet but, but to keep conflict down, I just handed the lady my card to hold so that we could step out for a sec. But when I come back, I realized that she already charged my card! We were gonna order more drinks but the way we were approached and the way she just closed my tab because she thought we were trying to walk out without paying was so embarrassing, that I will...