The Copper Lounge — Restaurant in Albuquerque

Acceptable food, but with service wavering between merely inattentive and actually snide/rude, with little knowledge of meal ingredients. Dinner for two begins with a walk-by drop-off of a photocopied flyer as a menu (protip: it DOESN'T take you to the menu, see attached.) We asked if we may see a printed menu. "Nope" he replies snidely and walks off... to which I respond good-naturedly "it looks like you're picking dinner recommendations then. lol" A few minutes later, he delivers a single un-requested cocktail to me ($25), having not even addressed the woman at the table for her order at all. We're both baffled. He says "well, you said I was picking." Dinner friendo. We're here for dinner... but even if we had meant drinks, one would think that speaking to us might have been a fair precursor to making a selection... maybe even pairing the drink selection with your dinner recommendation (gasp!)... and taking the table's order should certainly precede one single person's unordered drink arriving. I order a beer. She kept the unwanted cocktail. We order loaded chicken nachos and steak tacos to split, carefully talking through the facts that we're splitting the she can't have anything with heat. We request the roasted jalapenos and jalapeno crema on the side of the nachos. Server leaves, comes back with 2 side plates (so we can split, he understood.) Food arrives. Tacos slathered in exactly the jalapeno crema we had taken off of the nachos... which we might have noticed if we'd been able to get a menu. True, we failed to order them without it, but I think it's a fair expectation that a server know the ingredients of the dishes as well. We begin to eat anyway. Midway though the meal, the server returns and says frankly "Dinner's over (it's, like, 8:32pm). I need a credit card to pass your tab to the bar. Go up there if you need anything." Mmm-kay. I set down the bite I'm in the middle of, pause the conversation we're also in the middle of, provide credit card, and return to eating. To my surprise, he wasn't getting off of work or having a shift change, and continued to take new tables all around us! I guess he just decided it was convenient for him to move to the other register right then and that our dinner (which we'd just been served) "was over." Ultimately, we finished... sat empty-glassed with an unbussed table for 20 minutes until I finally went to the bar to try to close out with the bartender as the server had asked. But... the server jumps in to interrupt my conversation with the bartender, runs my tab, and hovers oddly for a tip. I tip 35% (less than normal for me) and we leave. All told, it was a touch over $100 to have light snacks and drinks for two, poorly served. It was... um... not what we expected. The place still looks great, and the food is passable... but it has definitely slid off into the "too hip to bother with basic service"...

So, let me start with the highlight and boy are they a highlight. The drinks are really top notch, some of the better cocktails we have had in the city, so a super big shout out to the bartenders. Also, a quick shout out for the atmosphere, super cool digs and environment. However, that concludes the niceties for our experience. Let's start with the service. It was a Friday night and while fullish, I certainly wouldn't have called this busy. At the fullest, we counted 16 people in our service section. We waited a solid 15 minutes to get a touch from our server after being seated. Since we had ample time to review the menu, we put in our drink and food order all at once. We received our drinks in a reasonable time line but here is where it started down hill. Our server would touch a table near us but then blow right past us and then continued to inexplicably disappear for long periods of time and then when they would reapear, they would blow past us. I'll detour for a moment to talk about the food, it was delivered by someone that wasn't our server and at no point did our server ever ask about our food. I got the biria tacos, calamari and my wife got the fries and elote. The fries were cold but based on service, we weren't going to touch that. My wife loved the elote. The calamari was solid. The biria tacos were beyond a disappointment. The beef was bland and flavorless and there was no offering of consume, so they were dry and really were just a big nothing. Again, someone else cleared out plates, because again our server vanished. We really wanted one more drink before cashing out, we nearly bailed on this notion because again our server seemed to avoid us at all cost but again, the great bartenders saved the day. In summary, would we return..... possibly if we wanted a good cocktail and had an abundance of time to surrender to the abhorable servers and yes, I used the plural because the table next to us, on the dividing line of sections, at one point, so desperate for a drink, approached the bar in attempt to get their needs met, only to return dejected and left to the cattle call that was the...

I came in for my birthday. I made reservations a week before for 10-12 people. The service wasnt great, took forever to get any drinks. Some drinks never even made it to our table so we had to ask again! Food was okay loved the wings fries needed salt and the blue corn taquitos were gross. The waitress wouldn’t stop HARASSING us on how we were going to split the check and kept saying they could only split my table of 10-12 into 3 tabs. And we would have to figure it out among ourselves who owed what. And when I say harassed I mean it she wouldn’t shut up about who was on what tab and wouldn’t stop bugging my guest I invited for my birthday. When I already said just put them on my tab and I’ll figure it out later. If she worried about getting our drinks and food to us in a more timely manner, instead of bugging about the tab I wouldn’t be writing this. The hostess wasn’t welcoming from my experience and then my guests told me the hostess / door guy was rude to them when they arrived. “She said it was 10 not 12!?” Which I did say 10-12 but at this point a few people had already left. When the last 2 people arrived. So I only had 10 people at my table at all times. And then our waitress disappeared for a good 20 mins and would come back to drop something off and leave as fast as she could without asking if we needed anything. When we wanted our checks because we wanted to go somewhere else where they would actually serve us. She was no way to be found AGAIN! Took way too long to get our checks. Also the music was way too loud! And since I had a larger party they automatically took 20% gratitude. Lol the service was definitely not worth 20% This was my first time and...