The Grove — Restaurant in Houston

My family and I eat at the Grove often. The atmosphere, location, service and food are all great. That has been my experience until today, July 12, 2015. My husband and I were there with another couple eating a late lunch. I had a macaroni and cheese dish, whereupon eating the first forkful, I bit into a piece of metal. I let the waiter know, he immediately took the piece of metal(after I photographed it), the mac and cheese and went to tell and get the manager. He was upset and concerned about that occurrence. He came right back and let me know that he had informed the manager, and that he would be coming to our table. However, the manager never came to our table to check on me, the metal, the mac and cheese---nothing. He sent a message that he would comp the bad mac and replaced it. We resumed our meal, waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting some more for a visit, look see, walk by, something from the manager, but he still did not stop by. I finally asked a waitress to have him come to our table, which he eventually did that time, only to repeat that he had been told of the occurrence, why it happened, he had comped the mac and cheese, and that those things sometimes happen.

Needless to say,his lack of customer service was egregious in a situation that could have been much more serous for me and in turn for him and the Grove. His lack of effort to even provide a perfunctory visit was a slap in the face of human decency and basic concern.

I would hope that he gets the message from his management that a better response this type of situation requires a greater sense of urgency than what was shown to me today. I know that people pull fake food issues often at restaurants, and that staff and management may fear folks crying wolf, but this day, this restaurant and especially this being me, did pull a fast one. God forbid I did swallow that piece of metal, and he heard from me via my attorney and medical expenses.

Until I hear from him regarding his horrible customer service during my horrible eating experience today, I WON'T be eating at the...

We had our wedding on the 2nd floor of The Grove in March 2022. We have very mixed feelings about our experience.

We fell in love with the space the second we saw it. The venue is stunning and the open concept with all of the trees is exactly what we wanted! The food is amazing. However the customer service was extremely lacking. If it wasn’t for the location and building itself we would have never put up with the customer service.

We were given wrong information on headcount, floor plans, etc from the first time we went until a few weeks before our event. The information on their website doesn’t match what we were told and we got different information from each person we spoke with. We actually decided to pass on The Grove for this reason (even though we loved the space) but reconsidered once we started to work with a planner who was able to get information for us from her past events there. We would have never been able to successfully coordinate with their team without our planner - and it was difficult for her.

They do not offer a food tasting even though your entire fee is for food and alcohol- we will say though the food is amazing! But it would have been nice to be able to try it before hand. We went a few times on our own for dinner to get a sense of the food and we always loved what we tried so that made us comfortable having the event there without a tasting. Even though the dinner menu is not the same as the catering menu it would have gone a long way to even offer us one complementary dinner at the restaurant to try the food.

After booking we were only allowed one 20 min walk through of the space during our entire planning process…. We took off work to be there and the manager who confirmed the meeting the day before wasn’t even there! And she did not notify anyone of our meeting so no one was prepared to cover for her. It was really disappointing.

Our wedding was amazing thanks to our planner and our other vendors! We had a great time but we wished that we had seen an honest review warning us of the pitfalls...

Tried to come here for a date the other day and had the worst experience. We called ahead of time and they said they weren’t taking any reservations, first come first serve only. Okay. We arrive and they immediately ask if we have a reservation. Note, on the phone they did not say “we’re full” they just said “we’re not taking reservations”. We brush it off and say no, we were hoping to sit outside. They tell us outside seating is full at the moment and there’s one open table for a reservation, and can’t even give us a simple estimate of when the next table might open up. They sit us at the bar even though we don’t want to sit there, and the waiter tells us everything on that side of the restaurant is open seating, including the patio. So I ask the hostess about it and she rolls her eyes at me, scoffs at me, and tells me no, there is no open seating.

I’m not one to leave a bad review, but this was just the most obnoxious service I’ve experienced in a long time. The amount of incompetency was mind-blowing. How can there be so much conflicting info from the person who answered the phone, the hostesses, and the waiter, re: reservations and seating? And the attitude was ridiculous. I’m not expecting restaurant employees to bend over backward for me, but it’s not that hard to at least be polite or even neutral rather than straight-up rude. We were being polite and kind even with the conflicting info, but everyone at the restaurant was incredibly rude to us for just wanting to eat there. I will probably not give it the time or energy again and would not recommend it to anyone unless it was maybe a Tuesday afternoon. But then again, there are plenty of other, better restaurants with patios in the downtown area with...