Serious Pie Totem Lake — Restaurant in Kirkland

First of all, one expects good things from a Tom Douglas restaurant, but I feel compelled to share the bizarrely awful experience my friend and I had Tuesday afternoon at Serious Pie. We were excited to meet for happy hour, but that quickly turned into disappointment.

I’d like to preface that this rating has nothing to do with the food and beverage because we didn’t even get that far. Upon arrival, a woman at the door, who I assumed was a manager since there was nobody else present besides one server, greeted me. I chose a table on the patio and was handed menus. There was only one other table occupied in the entire restaurant at that time.

As my friend settled in, I realized our table was uneven by at least half an inch and mentioned to our server that we might need a wobble wedge. The server seemed visibly annoyed and returned with two cocktail napkins, saying, "I don’t know where you want me to put them," despite it being glaringly obvious if she just looked down. I pointed it out and she put them under the foot, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize two cocktail napkins are not the correct tool here. She stood up abruptly and asked, "Were you ready to order some drinks?" and then, without pausing, turned on her heel, muttering "obviously not" as she walked away. Her tone and body language were objectively rude. She would do well serving at Dick’s Last Resort. My friend, who had only been there for about three minutes, called after her, “Are you kidding?” at an unmistakable volume, but she ignored us and kept walking.

Given that we were one of only two tables, her rushing us was so odd. We exchanged looks and said, "Yeah, absolutely not," and stood up to leave. On our way out, I stopped to speak to the woman at the door, but she only nodded slowly while I spoke, offering no feedback whatsoever.

You don’t have to walk far for better service. This feels like what happens when servers are no longer motivated by tips. Maybe I’ll try a different...

I had the oyster mushrooms pizza and added the sweet fennel sausage and tomato. The ingredients used were of excellent quality. The oyster mushrooms were fresh and tender, they used heirloom tomatoes and fresh grated mozzarella cheese. I could say the pie was expensive but those ingredients aren’t cheap so the price was fair. The atmosphere was upbeat, lively and fun

Disclaimer: I’m a server and have been in the hospitality business for 35 years. Our server was nothing more than an order taker. I could have gone to a kiosk and put my order in and gotten the same amount of service. I would expect this type of service from a 20% auto grat. house, not one that leaves it up to the guest. I read another review that mentioned the service being a bit standoffish and that’s ok if that’s how you train your waitstaff, but add the autograt to be fair to the server.

The young lady didn’t offer drinks, didn’t try to upsell, didn’t let her personality shine in anyway that made me want to leave a good tip. Unfortunately, some people aren’t cut out to be servers, she might be one of those. I would suggest retraining her in order to improve her tips. Otherwise she will get fed up with not making money and leave your establishment and possibly...

The food was great as usual last night, but the service was very questionable. The manager seemed like he couldn’t be bothered to get us on the waiting list. Apparently reservations are now an option. His tone when we asked about the many empty tables was dismissive and rude. We happily added our name to the list and came back in 40 minutes only to be told it would be another 10 minutes. We were finally seated and placed our orders. Pizzas arrived, except for one. We waited a couple of minutes to see if my mother in law’s pizza would show up. We then asked the waiter who then checked with the kitchen. Apparently her pizza was picked up by a different server and delivered to another table, and the kitchen was rushing another one. He added that he would make it better by taking that pizza off the bill, hopefully saving Mothers Day. The bill arrived the the pizza was included. We asked for the adjustment and he said the manager told him it was not appropriate to comp the pizza but he would check again. The bill was adjusted and we were on our way. Although as we were leaving the manager rudely glared at us until we were out the door. Very disappointing way to...