Mercantile — Restaurant in Denver

I made a reservation for 11 people for my birthday dinner last night at 8:15 pm. Our server was Travis D, who from the beginning was not very kind or accommodating. After ordering our drinks, we waited almost 30 minutes for them to eventually come out. The oysters were fishy and had shell remnants in them - all 6 of them. When he took the oyster plate away, he spilled some of the oyster/ice water on my friend's leg and did not say a word. After waiting some time again after the appetizers, I asked if the entrees were on the way and Travis coldly said "they're plating the food right now" with no mention of the lack of timeliness or why the food was taking so long. It was a total of almost 1.5 hours for the entrees to come out to our table. The broccolini in the chicken was so salty, it was hard to even finish them.

My friends brought in a cake as a surprise and after the servers cut the cake and delivered the slices to our table, there were a few left over which we ended up offering to our primary server and the 2 other female servers who helped bring the cake out. It wasn't until we received the check that we were shocked with a $55 charge for cake cutting, some additional 5% charge with an acronym that we could not decipher what it could be for (not stated on the menu), and an automatic 20% gratuity charge (which was stated on the menu). I went back to the kitchen to ask Travis about the cake cutting fee, which none of us were informed about, and his response was "Anytime you walk into a restaurant with your own cake, there is always a fee to cut it at the restaurant. This is our policy and there is nothing I can do about that." I told him that with the 10 other people in the group and 10 other birthdays we celebrate, there has never been an instance where we were not informed first that there would be a fee. It was outrageous and unreasonable, especially when 1/3 of the cake was offered to and eaten by their own staff. I also told him that if we had known this, we would have saved the cake for after dinner since we were going to a friend's house anyway. Travis had a pretentious demeanor the entire conversation and I asked to speak to someone else. He then called the manager over, who apologized for the miscommunication and agreed to refund the fee, which I am still waiting on. She said the fee would have been mentioned at the time the reservation was made. I made the reservation myself over the phone and did mention it was for a birthday, but was never told anything about an additional fee.

Overall, this has been a nightmare of a birthday experience. Not only did the food take almost the entire dinner time to come out, but the service was extremely lacking because of Travis' cold personality and "customer service skills," if you could even call it that. This was undoubtedly the worst group reservation experience any of...

Upon the unfortunate closure of Fruition, my wife and I made reservations at Mercantile in the hopes of being served the same exquisitely crafted dishes of excellent quality ingredients that we had experienced at the former. Even more unfortunate than Fruition's closure was the dreadful ashtray-like meat we were served here. It reminded me of something my mom would make, whose signature quality as a chef is imposing a salt diet on all of her victims. The server asked us how everything was tasting, to which we responded that we plainly and simply didn't like it and that it was dry (and let it be noted here that "dry" is a poised way to say "tasted like a clump of horrors found in the drain of a garden store greenhouse"). Hilariously, she stared at us and basically said "okay...?" LOL. Fair enough, but hospitality is the name of the game is it not? We were left at the proverbial curb for twenty minutes after this, basking in the cold fluorescent lighting that is frankly reminiscent of Ryan Murphy's desperate attempts in recent years to revive American Horror Story with props only known to TJ Maxx shoppers and artistic directors jumping from one pharmaceutical advertisement gig to the next.

I will say that we were also served a hard-stop at satisfactory carbonara dish that some little-neck clams must have used their little-feet to sneak their way into. The vision was lost but, in all fairness, I did have to postpone my upcoming Lasik operation to pay for this humbling ritual.

Sadly, tragically, I believe that the Michelin "nod" that Mercantile received was mistaken for a nod towards the exit. We did witness a red-faced 40-something meathead on a "date" with an OnlyFans escort. They both got burgers and then asked for cinnamon roll. My man.

Edit: I contacted Matty from below to see if he would offer something to make up for the experience and let him know that I would be happy to edited my review with a positive comment. However, he literally just gave me the phone number of Mercantile to make a reservation, lol. These auto replies definitely make for good optics but be warned, they are...

What a disappointing, overpriced meal at Mercantile. We were so excited to dine here, after missing out on our last visit to Denver. Menu was compelling, if a bit spendier than we expected for Denver. No matter, we were game even at the cost and decided to make it an event.

Dinner started with focaccia (awful - truly the gummiest, oddly clammiest least authentic focaccia I've ever had...yes, the butter was nice but the bread was horrible), fried artichokes (um, in italy, for that price you get a basket overflowing with about a dozen...here, 2) and the beef tartare (worthy, tasty, very good). Drinks were fine but meh and not generous.

Waitress insisted we needed large portions of gnocchi for both our kids so we went with it. We got the venison (too peppery, too fussy presentation of the mostarda that wasn't particularly tasty) and the chicken (well presented, very good). She then arrived with 1 1/2 portions of the gnocchi. We pointed this out and said that was fine, our son really didn't need more as we'd just arrived from a flight and it was enough. We asked her not to have the kitchen prepare any more. 10 minutes later, she shows up with a second 1/2 portion and says the kitchen made it so it was ours, even though we'd asked her not to. We declined and said we are staying in a hotel and couldn't take it with us.

So, any guesses on what happened when the bill arrived? She charged us for 2 full portions. We paid it, and then afterwards, we told her she really shouldn't have done that: it was her mistake in putting the order in wrong, we asked her not to order a second portion, she did so without our consent and then charged us for it. Rude. She made a half hearted attempt at an apology but it was clear she really didn't care and why should she? We'd already paid and yes: we'd listened to her in the first place and over-ordered at her insistence, but when a restaurant makes a mistake and serves you something you didn't order, they shouldn't charge you double the price of it later on.

All that said, nothing about Mercantile was particularly impressive. We would not...