of Love & Regret — Restaurant in Baltimore

I will be thoroughly detailing my dining experience, for the TLDR, see bottom.

We wanted to love it, but for my girlfriend and I, the evening was one of regret. We had a 7pm reservation on a Friday night and were promptly seated at a long, thin table shared by multiple parties. This would have been fine, but there was no space between us and the two parties adjacent to us. I hope you don't want to have any romantic or intimate conversations, unless your voyeuristic side loves others overhearing.

Seeing as they only had QR codes on the table, I asked for a printed menu and was told they don't have any because their menu changes too frequently. Humorously, the "Figging Delicious Burger" was marked as out of stock, but later in the evening was available again.

Shortly after being seated, a party of 6 joins our table and our drink orders are taken, a "Thirteen Chapters" and a "Yes Queen." Our drinks were exceptionally slow to arrive, so much so that the party of 6 received both their drinks and their food before we got our drinks. When our drinks did arrive, the Thirteen Chapters was clearly the wrong drink. It was supposed to be a gin-based cocktail with strawberry shrub and agave, garnished with brandy-soaked cherries. The drink we received had a slight yellow hue, very obviously containing no strawberry shrub. Additionally it was completely ungarnished, neither the expected cherries nor anything else. I asked our server if this was the right cocktail as it didn't appear to have any strawberry shrub in it. Our server checked with the bartender and told us that it was the right drink.

Prior to getting our drinks, we asked our server what meat was in the Vietnamese meatballs. They said they didn't know…and nothing else. After a few moments of awkward silence, we had to ask if they could check what the meat was. (Pork, if you're curious)

After 55 minutes, our food was no where to be seen. I don't know when it eventually came, but I recall checking my watch and commenting that we had been sitting there almost an hour and not even received our appetizer.

When our food did come, the server apologized that the appetizer and entrees came at the same time. While minor, this small thing was exacerbated by the lack of table space that was the result of sharing a communal table. The appetizer we had ordered was the Burrata, which was supposed to come with tomatoes, basil, and balsamic. What we got had no tomatoes, no basil, and no balsamic. But there was burrata, so that's good. What it did come with was beets and what I believe were parsnips. Thankfully, I wasn't allergic to either.

Our honey-ginger salmon was delicious, though the "sous-vide candied sage sweet potatoes" were definitely not candied and were inconsistently cooked, having some pieces still be raw/crunchy.

The Marsala Cream Pasta was fine, just fine. My girlfriend, a pasta nerd, noticed that the pasta wasn't the advertised pappardelle, but rather campanelle. Not a big deal, but it adds to the lore of the story.

After eating our meal, we asked for the check. It was a 20 minute wait, but then another server brought us our check and informed us that our tab had been accidentally closed, so our check had someone else's food, but the amount was right, due to the $20.88 price adjustment. I checked the math and found it was off by $1.81. Not a big deal, just funny given how precise the discount was.

I know it sounds like I'm difficult to please, but I'm really not. My girlfriend and I's experience truly was laughably bad.

We had heard wonderful things about Of Love & Regret, so it's possible this was just an off night. That said, this was undoubtedly the worst dining experience we've ever had. But I've got a great story.

*TL;DR

Horrible service, was uncomfortably close to other parties, one cocktail was totally wrong, took over an hour to get our food. When we did, one of the items had almost no resemblance to what was on the menu and the others both had...

Of love & mostly regret. This would have been 5/5 if the service wasn’t so bad. Things started off great, I accidentally canceled our reservation when I tried to modify it, I called and was told it’s all good we’ll see you soon. Perfect! We arrive and it’s an awesome vibe, cool theatre seats, eclectic decor with a unique vibe. We were sat immediately, greeted by a warm and friendly server. They recommended the Yes Queen… which YES QUEEN GET THIS DRINK!! And something akin to an espresso martini but with whiskey, also phenomenal. That’s where it ended.

We waited over an hour and fifteen minutes for four appetizers. No one came to check on us. No one offered to refill water or asked if we wanted another drink. Our server didn’t even tell us there was a mistake, another server came over to tell us there was an error and apps would be out soon… but not all of them. We received 3 out of 4 apps and despite me waving at the server and making eye contact they didn’t come down. Not even to check to see if the apps were okay.

One of the people in our party had to stop the server and ask where the last app was. We received an excuse that didn’t make sense. It was then dropped off by someone else. Our server never came back. I walked down to grab them from the stand where they were sitting idle most of the evening and asked if we could order another drink, water refills, and they finally came to the table. Sadly, despite the exceptionally long wait for appetizers (it wasn’t busy either), making us approach the server, while watching customers that came in a half hour after us receive their food and drinks quickly, our drinks didn’t come. We waited an additional 15 minutes before we decided to forego the drinks and just leave. So I walked down to tell the server we just wanted our check and to speak with a manager. Surprisingly there was no manager on duty. On a Saturday??

Despite this, Jonathan came to hear about and apologize for our experience and make it right. Nile brought us the drinks anyways (thank you) and took care of us more than our server.

We are all former servers or bartenders. We understand someone is new and mistakes being made. However, making these mistakes and doing nothing to rectify it or improve the service is not okay in my book.

Let’s skip to the good part. Drool city. Get the pretzels, bulgogi lettuce wraps (better than Korean bbq - I said what I said) corn dip and the burrata. We would have ordered more apps and entrees had we not been there for two hours already. The drinks were also incredible.

We will be back eventually and will update our...

My fiancée and I had our baby shower at OLAR. We have mixed feelings on our experience. Ellie, the owner was wonderful to work with. She was kind, approachable and caring. She did a great job with the setup, decorations, ambiance, etc. However, there were several issues we weren’t happy with.

We asked multiple times to see pictures of the food that will be served at our event, but never received any. A day before our event, we stopped by to drop off a few items and noticed water leaking from the AC vent. We were told this would not be an issue during our event. That wasn’t the case. The leaking got worse as the event went on. We were told that the water is from the condensation and the staff would clean as often as possible. This was very dangerous. My fiancée was 6 months pregnant and could have accidentally slipped at any time. Our guests were very concerned each time they walked in that area as well.

The appetizers were okay. However, we were all very disappointed with the main course. We gave our guests the option of the crab cake platter, lamb lollipops platter and the coconut rice platter. I have lived in Baltimore for 20 years and that was the worst crab cake I ever had. The lamb chops didn’t have much taste to it. We paid all that money to give our guests really great food choices, but was left with disappointment as many didn’t even...