HydeOut Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Columbus

I never would leave a bad review, and I never have.. but I have never received such bad service before. First of all we walked into the restaurant and sat ourselves as the sign said, and when we did our server walked past us and literally threw the menus onto our table and said she would be back. (Mind you there’s 2 people at the bar rail and one other table of 2 people in the restaurant) As a bartender/server myself, I completely understand being understaffed and having to take a second to come back to the table. But I would NEVERRR throw menus onto a table/at a customer like that. But we moved on, said oh maybe she didn’t mean it that way. She came back over to us-no hi or how are you or any form of introduction. Just straight “what do you want to drink”. Okay fine, some servers are different whatever. She comes back and takes our order and asks us if we both want fries with our meals and we say yes. She did not inform us that fries were not included with our meals- we found out when we got our check. She also informed us that our smash burger would be half priced as a special going on that day. So she puts our food in and everything’s fine. Our food comes up in the window and I watch her stand there next to it while it’s ready just talking to the people at the bar rail. Once again, as a server and bartender myself, I understand not being able to run food as soon as it is ready. But she was doing nothing- quite literally just chit chatting with what looked like another employee at the bar rail. But once again, whatever we can brush it off it’s no big deal. She brings us our food and walks away and that’s the last time we saw/spoke to her. While we’re eating she made herself a shot or a drink of some kind, and sat down at a booth a few down from us. We needed a new water because ours had dirt in it, but she didn’t return. And then a new server/bartender arrived for the night shift so our previous server just sat down, drank, and then left (assuming transferring us to the new bartender). Once again, I UNDERSTAND being at the end of your shift and getting that last table before you can go home and wanting to transfer them to the night time bartender. Inform your guests! Let them know! And at the very least check on us before you hand us over to a new person- who also did not come over to us at all. Finally we just stacked our plates up and pushed everything to the edge of our table so the new bartender would bring us our check. We get our check and there’s an automatic 16% gratuity added? In my opinion, and everywhere else I’ve seen, gratuity should be for parties of at LEAST 6 or higher. Not 2. But, I’m not going to complain as a customer because I know it’s not the servers fault. She also had not half priced the burger she said was half priced. Honestly I didn’t know who that 16% should even go to? Tipping for what? You throwing menus at us? Or you bringing us our food 10 feet away and then never to be seen again? Honestly ridiculous and horrible service and I’m shocked that she still has a job there. It’s unfortunate because the food was good and the atmosphere of the restaurant was nice, but service truly can ruin a business and...

After reading the previous rave reviews I was excited to try this place. Here's my experience: 1st, we had a reservation for 5 so the server had our table set up, had to remove 1 setting because only 4 of us could come. My point is: the table was set up for us, But noticed when we received our food, we have no utensils to eat with and no napkins. Ok, no biggie, so far. Things happen. The utensils came wrapped in dingy washcloths. They aren't even cloth napkins. Then the server rushed us while ordering. It was like we had to order one item at a time. 2 at the table ordered drinks and she started to run away, and I'm like "uh, hey, can I order some small plates?" (that I just finished asking you about)...?". But then she only let me get 1 of them out of my mouth and literally took off. I actually wanted to order 2 more. She got me so rattled with this process, when I finally got to order my house salad, I forgot to say "dressing on the side". But I figured it will be ok. No restaurant serves salad anymore with the dressing mixed in. Boy was I wrong. The salad was DRENCHED in dressing, extremely soggy. It looked pre-made. Not made to order, because the grape tomatoes were beyond mushy and old. I could only take a few bites. But at this point we had so many other issues I just let it go without asking for another. The roasted cauliflower with hummus came with bread and ZERO cauliflower. The bean hummus was good. But I don't eat much bread, which was why I ordered roasted cauliflower. Then came my husband's and bro on law's salmon dinner. They both said that they do like salty food, but even for them it was so salty they couldn't eat it. So I tasted my husband's. Words can't even express how much salt that piece of salmon was soaked in, not to mention the salty sauce it was sitting on. At this point our water bottle had been empty for quite a while, she never bothered to bring more, and when I asked she forgot again. But of course now we had to wait on another meal to come out to replace the inedible salmon. Never did we receive any type of apology or gesture to make things right after several mishaps. No discount, no mention at all. Honestly I'm almost embarrassed we brought guests there for a special night out. Overall I'd say the place was kind of dingy...my re used paper menu had been wet and dried, and was all rippled up. Wash cloth napkins dingy. The server rushed us and made no effort to provide a good first impression. The food: half the items were tasty, the other half inedible. After reading the other reviews I'm puzzled how our experience could have been...

Last Saturday, my wife, son, and I visited this restaurant after the Columbus Arts Fest. We knew restaurants were going to be busy, but the issues we encountered were not due to traffic. When we arrived it was hard to miss the mess the restaurant appeared to be in. Most, if not all the open tables were dirty. We included a picture in this post. After greeting us (a very nice lady), the staff apologized for the messy state and proceeded to blame it on the busser being late. What was evident was the lack of care by the rest of the staff on the importance of keeping their tables clean. They would walk by with empty hands and not bother to pick up any dirty plates. Even worse, they took my empty plate, and just placed it on the table next to us, and left it there. My wife and I have worked as servers in the past and part of our training was FULL HANDS IN, FULL HANDS OUT. Very simple. This practice has been used effectively in many upscale restaurants. It ensures the restaurant stays clean, and that the patrons are happy and in a clean environment. The staff at Lola’s Kitchen were polite and friendly, but they seems to lack training. To make matters worse, after paying, my wife was still working on her dish, she noticed that the chicken was not fully cooked. Since they already processed our credit card, they tried to offer us a gift card, which we politely rejected. We weren’t planning on ever coming back. So they gave us our cash back. I do have to say that my tacos were good, and my son’s pizza tasted great. I’m leaving this review as constructive criticism in hopes Lola’s Kitchen improves its training. It is not only up to the busser to clean a table. It is a team effort to keep a well-run restaurant.

Remember, FULL HANDS IN,...