Cleats Chardon — Restaurant in Chardon

Had to be probably the worst service I've ever experienced in a restaurant.

My husband and I came in tonight for a later dinner. We haven't been out on a date night for quite some time and opted for Cleats over Mangia Mangia or Zeppe's as we always go to those places. We've been to Cleats a couple times and it's never been that great, but we decided to give it another shot. We arrived about 7:45pm. They close at 10pm this evening. It's important to note that they were NOT BUSY AT ALL. Pictured, you'll see the parking lot and also the patio. The patio (where we sat) was totally empty, aside from us and the parking lot only had a couple cars. The inside only had a few couples and maybe 1 family of four. We know this because, although we sat on the patio outside (since it was such a nice day out.... huge mistake), we HAD TO GO INSIDE TO GET OUR OWN REFILLS FROM THE BAR. Awful.

Our waitress, Vikki, took our drink orders, dropped them off and didn't come back for 20 minutes. Finally, she came back and took our appetizer order and told us that a table of 8 had just left from inside so she would be able to be attentive to us.... and then she was gone again for another 20 minutes. Came back again, took our dinner order and then was nowhere to found for about 35ish minutes. During this time, we had obviously drank our drinks totally dry while eating our appetizer. Now, we're not complete a$$holes, we know food takes time to cook, but she could have AT LEAST checked on us. After waiting almost 40 minutes for at least a refill, my husband started going back and forth to the bar to refill our drinks for us (which was so ridiculous that we couldn't help but laugh. He started saying "Waiter Hubby, at your service!"). The waitress DID NOT REFILL OUR DRINKS EVEN ONCE during this whole visit (I'm still dumbfounded about this. Never in my life). My husband had gotten our refills for us 4 times before she eventually came back.

Once she came back with our dinner, she half apologized, but made several excuses about why she forgot about us and how she "had a table of 8 people that was taking up all her time".... And then gone again for another half hour or so.

My husband again had to go to the bar to get our refills. The bartender was getting annoyed, not at my husband, but at our waitress for not taking care of us (I think the bartender was the manager). She said she would talk to our waitress and figure out what was going on. After that, a different waitress came out and brought us to-go boxes and our check. Finally, after all of this, our waitress re-appeared to again tell us how stressed she was that she now had "two 8-top tables" and how she can't believe "they can do that to her". I mean, again: We're not a$$holes, we understand things get busy, but in the event that you do fall short, just apologize and leave off the excuses. We would have traded the excuses for a few refills, honestly.

Oh, but of course she was more than attentive to the check and asked 3 times if she could take it up for us. I'm sure she was hoping she was going to get a good tip, but that's a whole other story....

Anyhow- Moral of the story here is: If you sit outside at Cleats, you WILL be forgotten. Apparently a party of 2 here isn't as important as a party of 8 (I didn't know that a party of 2's money was different than that of a party of 8). And on the off-shoot that Vikki is your waitress, get ready to serve yourself. If we were going to have to serve ourselves, we could have saved ourselves some money and stayed home. Definitely definitely...

12/17/2021 I have to update my review! I do not like leaving bad reviews but sadly, this place earns one. I came in 10 days ago for lunch, I ordered as I was sitting down to the bar and stated to the Kayla the Purple Hair bartender that the google menu said they had a steak salad, she said yes and I ordered that and a Long Island. From there things go from great to bad & then bad to worse, she decided I was a secret shopper that was there to get her fired, I tried to reason with her that I was not a secret shopper I was a google guide and was going through my phone trying to show her my other photo's from when I had been there on prior visits, she wasn't buying it, I kept telling her I was just there for a few drinks and a steak salad. Over the next 2 and a half hours, I kept saying I needed my check I'm not walking out without paying. during that time a girl from the kitchen came out screaming at me to leave twice. Today I look at my bank statement, I have several charges to Cleats that day, not just the 1, and I still paid her a cash tip, despite her humiliating me the entire time. Also during this customers got up and left as they could not believe what was happening. What a shame. They really do have the best steak salad ever. It's just not worth getting beat up over. ughhh

12/10/2021 - I stopped in today hoping they had brought back the steak salad, they did. Thank you whoever made...

The food was absolutely terrible. We ordered for pick-up and had to wait for it to be ready. Everything we got was hardly warm or less. It was like it was leftovers from yesterday that they just threw in a warmer today, and it sat there until it was time to bag up at 5pm. • Ordered 20 wings; 10 Buffalo Ranch, 5 Honey Mustard, and 5 Erie Island. The wings were dry and hardly sauced. We also received just Buffalo, not Buffalo Ranch. • An entire order of fries was missing. • The fried chicken tenders had absolutely NO crunch to them and were so dry inside. Completely inedible even for my 3 year old • The cheese inside the Mozzarella Sticks wasn’t melted at all. Like a breaded, room temperature string cheese • Beer Cheese Pretzels weren’t even warm. Just room temperature. They were soft and tasted like pretzel. That’s about all they had going for them.

Needless to say, we will never try this place...