Culinary Dropout — Restaurant in Charlotte

Progressively Worse Service

PEOPLE OF COLOR BEWARE

Been coming to this restaurant since its opening weekend in CLT. Service has gotten progressively worse for me as a bar patron over the last several months. I’ve come in during the less busy evenings when the bar is least busy, to read and order food and occasionally a drink.

Today I had the worst experience yet, being completely ignored by 3 bar staff for 10+ minutes, while the entire bar had only 4 other already seated patrons. What is odd is that a particular bartender, “Sal”, actively checked up on and greeted other patrons at the bar, even walking past me to do so several times without once acknowledging me.

Short of yelling out, I had to have a staring contest to catch eyes with any bartender to hopefully be recognized. I understand it gets busy; the bar makes drinks for the entire restaurant, but at this point it was clear I was being actively ignored.

To simply glance over and acknowledge the only ‘new’ patron at the bar after 10 minutes takes no time at all. It honestly felt like I was wearing an invisible cloak, had just come from the school of imaginary negros, and accidentally walked into a segregated bar time machine or something.

A 4th staff member now comes behind the bar, a manager, Kyle, who thankfully makes eye contact with me and walks over. Kyle had a pleasant and reassuring attitude and demeanor, which was much appreciated.

I place my order finally and carry on, despite how things were going. The staff has treated me as though I was a ghost on previous occasions, although less severely over my months of eating there (the bar atmosphere is very laid-back and mellow on a weekday evening, so i’ve continued to go there despite this).

The situation became a bit more perturbing when “Sal” began actively engaging even more so with existing and new patrons, still never once acknowledging me there at the bar. I personally don’t want any attention drawn to myself, but at this point it was too intentional to not become an issue for me, all things considered up to this point.

what did i do to deserve this treatment?? was there egg on my face??

I’ve been a consistent customer, and have highly recommended Culinary dropout for its scene in the district, bar layout specifically, and the MAC burger (the toasted pine nuts on the pesto chicken pasta is also delicious, as well as the chicken katsu sandwich).

My food arrives and of course, i have no napkin/fork knife combo, and at this point I am done playing the staring game to be acknowledged as a paying patron. I have to actually get up and go to the bar crossway to get someone’s attention to get silverware [mind you the patrons seated AFTER me have silverware, are being properly serviced, joked with, laughing etc.). I do not know what is going on. It’s at that point I asked for a manager, and Kyle comes over. He can’t explain why I was actively ignored, but comps the meal for me. Thanks Kyle that was honestly appreciated.

Too bad the entire meal was soured by such apathetic and discriminatory service. I’ve defended against sayings of a ‘pretentious’ vibe from this place by other people, but alas. When I checked the reviews to see many other PoC have had the same awful service, it confirmed what kind of establishment this is. The staff is filled with fashion model rejects with no idea how to actually serve food.

P.S - The portion control on the fries is too conservative. I’ve had the MAC burger and chicken katsu sandwich with fries many times, and on every occasion it’s never more than a toddler’s handful.

P.P.S - It is also odd that the korean ribeye dish is always “limited availability” with “i just checked there’s only one left” on multiple occasions. I actually heard this script used again today on a patron next to me. It’s either a coincidence I hear this on the many slower evenings I dine there, or a dishonest practice which should be taken out of play completely. Make good quality, reasonably priced food and you won’t have to use gimmicks to...

Finally made it for my long awaited visit to Culinary Dropout. Last fall I visited the Denver location for the first time and I loved it!! When we found out a Charlotte location was in the works we were ecstatic. Unfortunately the excitement was short lived. However because this is a newly opened restaurant I added an additional star to my review.

For the positives:

The decor is really nice. I get mid century modern vibes which is cool. And the space is huge! Much bigger than it looked in the pictures I saw.

I made a reservation about a week out, which worked great. We arrived for our reservation and were seated in a reasonable amount of time.

The staff was friendly. But there was still some opportunity for improvement - especially with our server. We were greeted pretty quickly and she took our drink orders right away. We were told that the bar was taking longer than expected so it might be awhile before drinks came out. We asked for water in the meantime and she said she already had those orders in.

While we waited on drinks we picked out some appetizers. After awhile we realized the server had taken app orders from half the table and said nothing to the other half. So we sat there watching half of our group enjoy their appetizers as we sat there hungry.

Fast forward about 30-40 mins and our drinks started to come out. They were very watered down and we assumed it was because they sat on the bar a long time. I ordered sangria, thinking about the tasty sangria I had at the Denver location. It was nothing like that and instead tasted like fruit punch or kool aid. When I mentioned this to another staff member who came by, she acknowledged that their sangria is on the sweeter side. I’ve had sweet sangria; this tasted like it had zero wine in the mix. I got a Riesling instead.

We finally flag down the server and put in our appetizer orders. About 15-20 mins after that she came to take our food orders. As she read my order back she confirmed my appetizer order. This is when I realized she still hadn’t put the order in! Unbelievable.

Waters finally came to the table almost an hour and a half after we were seated. At this point I honestly assumed we weren’t getting them at all.

When the server returned to our table a little bit later to tell us the food would be out shortly, we reminded her we were still waiting on our appetizers. She told us they would come out with our food and surprisingly asked if we wanted them before our food. Frustrating. She did go back to the kitchen to ask them to move things along, but we got everything at once. That defeated the whole purpose of ordering appetizers.

As for the food - I enjoyed the crusty bread, cheddar cheese and olives. The olives had pits which I didn’t love, but they were good.

I had the 36H ribs as my entree. It came with slaw and I swapped the fries for brussels sprouts. The brussels were ok, and the ribs got sweeter as I ate them. They were very tender, but the sauce needs more flavor.

Last thing I’ll mention is that there was a live band. That could be a nice touch, but this band did not fit well with the ambience. The music was way too loud, way too upbeat and the tambourine/cowbell drove me crazy. It felt more like something you’d hear in a hotel lobby perhaps? I think this could work better with a different choice of songs and...

Really disappointed with my experience tonight at culinary drop out. I was telling all my coworkers about how me and my girl were going out to a nice restaurant for dinner tonight, it’s not my first time at culinary drop out we probably go every quarter as a couple and I bring customers out to dinner here when they’re in town. Normally it’s a nice place, it’s not too fancy but it’s good quality food and high quality service. Tonight it’s starting good, our waiter is attentive we get drinks and an appetizer in, we put in entrees and I get a salad with my meal. Our waiter asks if I’d like my salad before the entree and I said sure. The salad does not come out before the entree and our waiter doesn’t notice, no big deal I will ask for it in a box if it’s on the check when we get it. After our entrees come out waiter asks if I want another beer, yes please. A few minutes go by and our waiter brings our check with Caesar salad and extra beer on it (haven’t received either) explaining he had to leave due to a personal emergency and another waiter would be with us shortly to continue serving us. We wait 20 minutes, no beer no salad no human contact. I go to the bar with my check to try to talk to the bar tender about it wait about 5 minutes, make solid eye contact and bar tender walks to the other side of the bar. Understood that clear signal, so I go to the hostess and ask her to send a manager to my table. I’m pretty sure she sent her coworker to ask what the problem was and we explain the problems with the check, she disappears and who I can only assume is the manager finally appears with our corrected check and an excuse for his employee who had an emergency. He proceeds to disappear as we try to pay and end up waiting for probably 10 minutes just trying to give them our money and leave but NO ONE comes to talk to our table and take our money, we ended up having to scan the QR code on our receipt to pay and leave. I want to be clear I have no problem with someone having a personal emergency and needing to leave work, I think it’s unacceptable there wasn’t a manager on site who had the ability to divide the tables our waiter had among the other waiters and waitresses, it was not a busy night and waiting 30 minutes to settle a bill is unacceptable. I will not be back to culinary dropout for a while and I would not recommend it to a friend. There are better fine dining restaurants in Charlotte that actually value their customers and deliver high quality customer...