Grindstone Charley's — Restaurant in Kokomo

We went to dine there for mother's day. When we arrived there was a 40 minute wait for a table. Understandable for mother's day weekend. We had a table of 6 adults and 2 children and a baby. Needed seating for 8 and a highchair. So a wait wasn't out of the question. While we waited there was a huge misunderstanding about our seating. They kept asking how many and if we needed a highchair. So when we finally get to our table it's a plastic fold out table with a paper table cloth with 7 seats and a high chair. That had been wedged in front of the help entrance to the kitchen we were treated to a great view of the dish washing. The server that took us back there rolled her eyes when we said we needed another seat saying I asked you how many. The server rolled her eyes while taking our order because we hadn't decided on appetizers 2 minutes after sitting down. My nephew was being a grouch and didn't want to socialize our server didn't get the hint that tickling him wouldn't help. After our main order was taken she asked me how we would like to do the bill. I told her I needed to discuss that with my brother in law quietly I was wanting to treat everyone for mother's day. He likes to pay. So instead she ignored me and hollered across the table how would you like the bill. Our entrees arrived and she's passing food over the heads of the people behind that's how close we were packed in there. Naturally she asks if we need anything else and ignores my hand for hot sauce. We finish eating and she comes with the bill I motioned her for the bill she nodded and proceed to ask who wants this and hands it to my brother in law. We're finishing up and the bus boy is over in the adjacent booth chilling waiting for us to go. Pounding his hands on the table and everything. While we're still finishing up this lady who I'll assume is a floor manager or senior wait staff, someone. Keeps hovering over our table checking the dishes. If they were so concerned with the dishes they could of taken the stack of dirty dishes. As you can see their 1 start was well earned. The service was absolutely abysmal. My family will not be eating at a grindstone Charley's again. I expected better their reviews on TripAdvisor​ made them sound great....

My family and I went here last night (4-9-21). When we went inside, we weren’t greeted. No big deal. However, when we went up to the hostess, she didn’t say anything. She just stared at us. So I let her know we needed seats for 2 adults, and we also needed a booster seat and a sling for my daughters car seat. We followed someone back to our booth. She then asked if we needed a sling for our daughter. I told her yes and a booster. We sat down, and we didn’t hear from anyone for over 10 minutes! The waiter that was supposed to take care of us was never informed he was taking care of us. He also never went out of his way to ask if we’d been helped. So finally we got ahold of a waitress. She did her best to make the situation better. She ended up taking care of us, and She offered a free appetizer. So we ordered our drinks and food right away. I let her know I needed my sons food out right away (it was getting late and he was hungry), and she even offered to get him applesauce. So we got his food right away, and all seemed to be going alright. Well my son finished his food, and we still hadn’t gotten our food or our salads. So we waited for another half hour and finally our salads came out. At this point, we had to leave. Our son (who is 2) needed to go home and go to bed. He had been sitting in this restaurant for an hour and a half. So I let her know our main food would have to be bagged as we had to leave. We hurried to eat our salads, and finally came out our food. I looked at the receipt and noticed the appetizer wasn’t even free. I still paid a dollar. Whatever, it’s a dollar. However, after the service we had, we at least deserved a completely free appetizer. I’m not sure who came to our table to apologize, but it was a very insincere apology right before we were about to leave. On our way out the hostess also gave a very insincere apology and said “hey sorry about that”. All in all, it was the worst dining experience I have ever had. We weren’t valued at all, the apologies were so insincere. The service was extremely slow, and unorganized. The reviews I see seem to be good, so I hope this was just a fluke. We won’t be back to find...

Since it was Mother’s Day, I had called on the Wednesday prior to see if they would take reservations. I was very happy when I heard they would, so I made our reservations for Sunday afternoon at 12:30 PM. Most of our party arrived a few minutes before 12:30 and checked in with them and were told it would be a few minutes which was fine! Of course it was extremely crowded because of being Mother’s Day. I overheard one of the employees saying after a few minutes that she had no idea where they were going to put the party of nine (which was us) and the other employee pointed to a table where another large party was sitting and said “there when those people leave.” I heard the employee tell the other one those people had been there since 11 AM and would surely be leaving soon since they appeared to be finished eating and were just sitting around talking. Unfortunately it was almost 1 PM before the party left and we were able to be seated. Now I am NOT faulting Grindstone Charleys for this, but I certainly think that party was very inconsiderate to occupy that table for almost 2 hours on one of the busiest days for a restaurant particularly because their dinner was obviously over and they sat and talked for probably 30 minutes or so after eating. OUR FOOD AND SERVICE WAS WONDERFUL!! I was just hoping maybe this would be a reminder to people to be...