Stopped at Steve’s as we were passing through on a recommendation from a friend who lives locally. We were greeted by a wonderfully welcoming hostess. Our waitress was equally as friendly but stretched a little too thin with how many tables she was handling. We ordered a relatively simple lunch……..a $10 appetizer of Onion Rings, a Southwest Chicken Salad and my wife ordered a Chef Salad and asked to substitute shrimp for the chicken. Our waitress indicated this substitution was a not going to be a problem. When our Onion Rings arrived, I was saddened to see only 6 onion rings on the plate with a small bowl of tartar sauce on the side. That’s $1.67 per onion ring. Hmmmm. When our salads arrive, they were decent portions but I’ve definitely seen larger for the $15/$16 price tag. When the bill arrived, we were charged for both a $14 Chicken Chef’s Salad AND $15 for Shrimp Scampi (3 small pieces of shrimp). I asked our server why we had been charged for both and she said it was a mistake and then left to go speak with someone in the kitchen. She emerged shortly thereafter and told us that the kitchen informed her that shrimp was more expensive than chicken so they were going to take $5 off the bill to cover the substitution. I told her that was unacceptable because I was not told there was a cost increase by swapping out the chicken for shrimp and I wasn’t going to pay for something about which I was not aware in advance. She said that she would go talk with the kitchen again. She emerged one more time and told me that “he” said shrimp was more expensive and they were refunding me the $5 for not putting chicken on the salad and charging me their “standard” charge of $5/shrimp (btw - later this same day, we had Chinese food in another town and got 16 shrimp of similar size for $14). She then offered to give me $10 out of her tips. I told her that while I appreciated this gesture, I didn’t want to take money away from her when it was clearly evident the issue was coming from the kitchen. I told the waitress that I wanted to speak with the manager (who was evidentially cooking as well). I waited another 5 minutes and she returned saying he was busy and she didn’t think he could talk with me. By now I was getting very frustrated as I didn’t feel like I was being overly demanding and all I wanted to do was have a conversation with the manager. I told her I would wait until he could talk with me. The waitress disappeared one more time into the kitchen. Again, I waited several minutes until she emerged one last time and told me that “he” had taken the full $15 off my bill and she apologized profusely again. The “manager” never came out to talk with me. Frustrated, we left. In the end, while I understand businesses are struggling to find staff and they are trying to make ends meet in a less than favorable financial environment, customer service is even MORE important to get right. If you are the manager of a restaurant and you can’t find one minute to have a conversation with a frustrated customer, it doesn’t bode well for your businesses ability to retain customers when that ability is even more important. And if management doesn’t value it’s customers, it makes me sad for the lovely people we met working at this establishment. We won’t be returning. Sorry Steve, you lost these customers.
UPDATE
While a gentleman who identified himself as the husband of the owner did apologize for our experience, he then proceeded to argue with me over social media about the details of the experience and castigated me for posting a negative review on social media. The ONLY reason I posted on social media was because neither the owner nor this gentleman could take ONE MINUTE of their time to talk with me while I was actually in the restaurant. I have since deleted the post but I sincerely hope that for the employees sake, management is able to make the necessary changes to make this a great place...
Read more
Learn more insights from Wanderboat AI.
