Vivante Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Carmel

Reading some of the other recent reviews I feel like I’m piling on but, alas, these are my honest takeaways.

The good: 1). The ambiance is old school stellar. Think Mad Men 1950’s classy. I really like everything about it. 2). The charcuterie board. Yeah, I know. It’s not usually a menu item someone would heap praise upon but all the food items were of high quality and paired very well with each other. Worth the $24. 3). The maitre d was very welcoming and sat us promptly.

The so-so: 1). The scallops. My dinner partner really liked them. Me? Meh. I though they lacked texture and were over seasoned and that natural sweet sea flavor of a scallop was lost. 2). The cocktails. My dinner partner had one of their signature cocktails and it was good, but not great. I had a non-mixed drink on the rocks (nothing overly fancy). At $15 a pour I guess I was expecting something a bit more....generous? After two drinks I could have just bought an entire bottle at my local liquor store. Like I said, it wasn’t anything top shelf. 3). The service was a little off. They seemed a little busy/understaffed. Given the times we’re living in, this is forgivable.

The not so great: 1). The ribeye. It was dry. There’s no other way to put it. Just not well prepared, at all. On top of that, the rub was over seasoned, and again, this washed out any semblance of organic flavor of the cut. The crab fritter sides were nothing special. Nor were the accompanying French fries. 2). Price. All and all, it’s overpriced. At their price range they’re competing with the St. Elmo’s type establishments. For the Indy/Carmel food scene, that’s the big leagues.

I’m hopeful that Vivante will be able to make the necessary improvements to make this establishment the kind of dining experience one should expect because a 3/5 rating won’t cut it for the price point they’re offering. It has a great deal of potential given their location and decor. However, they really need to focus on the consistency of the quality of the menu items they offer.

Final thought: I don’t want to sound too harsh. It’s been a helluva tough year for everyone and being a restaurant has to be extraordinarily hard right now. I’ll give them a second chance somewhere down the road. I think they did enough right to...

Had a reservation for brunch for a small group this past weekend and it started out well - the hostess was pleasant personable and asked if I wanted inside or outside and offered to show me what the outside table would be to help make my decision, which was really nice.

The rest of the meal didn't go so well. We had to ask for a drink menu twice, long waits between being visited by our server, missing items, no knowledge of the menu (didn't know the daily quiches or what the seasonal veggies were), lukewarm food, and it just didn't seem nearly busy enough to justify the inattentive service we received.

We asked for condiments 3 times (from 2 different people over 10+ minutes) before we received them, making those lukewarm fries even cooler before eating them.

No one had any complaints about the taste of their food, which is great! but everyone did have the same complaint about it being lukewarm at best. One of the dishes that was forgotten and followed a while later was fresh off the stove and hot, so that's an upside to it being late, I suppose.

We mentioned that we were celebrating a birthday in our group, but they didn't do anything with that knowledge - which, not every restaurant is required to give out a dessert for a celebration, but I was surprised that this particular restaurant didn't.

I know that being a server is hard - been there, done that! - but from the very beginning we knew that it was going to be a rough time service-wise. We were more chill about it (other than me writing this review, I'm sorry), I know that there are people who could be very un-chill about it and this is a heads up for them: the vibe is Carmel fancy, but the...

We went to Vivante for the first time in June and we had such a great experience with the service and the food that we couldn’t wait to go back! So today we went back…😒 After 20 minutes of sitting at our table, nobody had even come to take our drink order. When our server finally came to the table (after we complained,) she said nobody told her we were her table. If that’s true, they did her a huge disservice because we were already pretty ticked by time she got to us. We ordered our food and were pretty disappointed that they seem to have removed some things from their menu. Drinks weren’t even listed! I guess we were supposed to just guess what they had? We asked 2 people if the menu had changed (because maybe we were just missing it) and neither seemed to have any clue. We ordered and waited such a long time. We even ordered a starter and we still didn’t get any food for more than FOURTY-FIVE MINUTES past the time we’d arrived. And then the food we got was incredibly mediocre! We’re so sad. In one visit, this place had become a favorite, and one we’d planned to take all our out-of-town guests. Then, in one more go, we never want to go back. Even the service was different. It didn’t even appear to be that busy, and yet we had to ask someone who I think was the manager for our check because our server was never around. They didn’t offer us a high chair for our baby, they apparently took away the kids menu that existed a couple months ago, and they wouldn’t let us sit outside, even though there were plenty of available tables the whole time we were there. It was just an...