The Story Cafe - Eatery & Bar — Restaurant in Richmond

A very disappointing visit for happy hour on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I have dined here previously several times for dinner and brunch. My partner and I walked in to try to happy hour items and a beer. The only positive experience was the host (a friendly blonde young lady) sat us to the corner two-top underneath the big letters.

She offered us water in a friendly demeanor. Then later on, we had a semi-flag down another girl to take our order on the their tablets. Carpaccio was out, surprisingly, as it was only 3:30pm and happy hour just started. We ordered the onion rings, mussels, prawn cocktail and dry ribs. Ordered a IPA for myself.

Wait time was reasonable, i would say roughly around 20 minutes. From that point on, service was non-existent. Our food was ran to our table, and then we had no server. There was not a single time where any wait staff came by to do a industry standard quality check, no even once. There was no indication we had a server. I'm not sure if you guys pool the restaurant, or have a certain server watching over their own sections. Regardless, no one came to us. We wanted to ask for a spoon and to take a look at the dinner menu, and had to wait almost 10 minutes to flag down someone.

The mussels were solid, dry ribs were solid, prawn cocktail was not chilled enough, and the onion rings were too hard to bite into. Overall, food quality was decent, but nothing to write about.

When we are done with our meal, the empty plates were on our table for almost 15 minutes, without anyone clearly the table or ask if we needed anything.

Yet again, i had to wait 10-15 minutes to flag a random wait staff down to get the cheque. I've also noticed the couple sitting next to us on the 2-top, their meals were done and no one attended to them. No one cleared their plates, and the guy had his credit card out on the table for 10 minutes to try to signal someone to give him the bill.

Absolutely terrible service. I've worked in the hospitality industry for 15 years before, and service-wise, this is one of the worse. If i was the front-of-house manager, i would seriously re-train all your staff to give the proper steps of service, even just basic service. I'm not expecting anything fancy as you guys are not a fine dining restaurant, but i find it ridiculous i have to go walk to the bar area 2-3 times to get someone to attend to us.

Maybe you guys would like to consult me, so i can help train your FOH staff.

And yeah, charged us a $1 for hot water with a lemon wedge. Not about the money, but that will leave a bad taste in most guests' mouth. Hot water and lemon is usually free everywhere, unless you are in a fine dining setting.

Oh yeah, I didn't stiff your server. I still left them a 10% tip. I know the wait staff have to tip out the kitchen, bar and house.

Overall,...

Had been here once before, enjoyed the food and service was good. Today was quite a different experience however. Upon arrival, I was sat at a table fairly quickly. Ordered, food came in a reasonable amount of time, was good. I then waited patiently for my waitress to stop and ask me if I would like a refill or anything else. Well over half an hour later, she finally stopped by but, only to inform me that my time at my table was up. In a courtesy manner I let her know just how long I had been waiting for a refill. No apology or anything, just went and got the coffee pot. I then sat for almost an hour waiting to get my bill. Finally had to ask for it. Am much more inclined to leave a positive review when service is either good or great. However, there are other times such as this where a negative one is warranted. The staff I had during the first visit were efficient and attentive. Service was very good overall that time. The waitress who served me today clearly doesn't understand the importance of being attentive, detailed, and caring in customer service.

Owner/management's response:

"Dear LG,

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. Upon arrival the seating time should be vocalized by our host and server. We sincerely apologize that this wasn’t done in a proper manner. Our management team will raise your feedback with our servers to prevent such a situation to occur again. Once more our sincere apologies, we hope that nonetheless you enjoyed your visit and we hope to welcome you in the near future. Kind regards,

The Story Cafe"

Dear Story Cafe,

I appreciate your response. However, it appears that your concern is more to do with the fact that I wasn't advised of your 'time limited seating' instead of the complete lack of service. Disappointing. Most people (myself included) are not looking to stay for such extended periods of time that would eat into our days, let alone your business's operations/profits. You might want to reconsider having a rule/policy where the first thing a customer is greeted with is being told that there is a time limit making them feel somewhat pressured to eat fast and rushed back out the door - Not very welcoming. Conversely, try putting your focus into training where customer service is of greatest importance. If people are serviced in an efficient and friendly manner, also receiving the bill once finished, I'm sure you'll find that your business will run quite smoothly. You won't lose as many customers after not making them feel uncomfortable (by timing them) and by just simply giving great...

It was a rainy Saturday noon, we reserved our seat outside because Opentable didn’t have the option to choose indoor dining (probably because it was full). We actually didn’t mind seating outside since they had the heater on (not really warmed but better than nothing). However, we were seating outside in the cold for at least 10 minutes, no one, NO ONE came to serve us and ask if we needed any drinks. We were simply being neglected by the staff. 10 minutes after, one server came to take our drink order and another 10 minutes, our drinks arrived, finally. By the time the server took our order, it was 1:15pm, half an hour after our seated time. We waited and waited and waited, the server came to us and apologised for her mistake: forgetting to punch in our order. Wow, it’s been 45 minutes and we didn’t even get to eat. We were absolutely devastated. The serve kept apologising and offered us a piece of cheesecake. She tried to solve the problem and make us happy but honestly, a piece of cake was nothing especially when there were 4 of us. Were we supposed to share the cake and each of us took a bite then our disappointment would go away? I appreciated you tried to fix the problem but maybe put more effort next time, it was almost like a joke to us when she offered the cake. I would probably come back in the future to see if there’s any improvement but not anytime soon.

Over to the food quality:

Steak and egg: The steak was over cooked, we ordered medium rare and it came out as medium, by the time we just wanted to get it over and leave the place so we didn’t bother changing it anymore.

Titanic: It has 2 porches eggs with their house made butter scones, we actually enjoyed the scones very much. The side potatoes were tasty too.

Fried chicken and waffle: The waffle was dense and filling, it only came with 1.5 pieces but the menu said there should be 2? The chicken itself was oily and tasted burnt (smelled burnt as well) tho I liked the honey glaze.

House salad: The portion was good and the dressing was citrus and balsamic glaze, very simple nothing special.

Honey garlic wings: The wings were cooked perfectly as they were not too dried.

Calamari: Dried. They called it crispy on the menu but calamari was extremely dried and dark. Perhaps they didn’t change the oil for a week.

Clam chowder: Meh. It was bland.

Prawn cocktail: It tasted like they got it...