Neighborhood Services Bar + Restaurant — Restaurant in Louisville

Meh. We were staying at the Omni and we wanted lunch before we had to make the drive to Purdue to drop off my son for freshman orientation. But the experience was disappointing.

I’ll start with the areas of improvement and then move on to the elements that were good.

Concerns Bad iced tea! This is the south! We live in North Carolina, and I was born in Tennessee and I’m quite sure that Kentucky is still part of the south ;) The iced tea was really unacceptable. I know that sounds like an odd thing to be picky about, but we travel all over the place, and when we are in the south, I really love to have a lot of good homemade brewed iced tea for lunch, with plenty of refills. I asked for a mostly unsweet tea with a splash of sweet on top. I was delivered a glass of unsweet tea with some granular sugar in the bottom. Either brew the tea hot and put the sugar in it and let it dissolve or use simple syrup to sweeten it a little bit. Any self-respecting Southern restaurant does not have granules of sugar at the bottom of iced tea. It just won’t dissolve. I think I learned that when I was five years old. The food was just… Bland. The concierge suggested we try the sweet chili cauliflower. And I have had that a lot. It seems to be trending. Just like when brussels sprouts were everywhere, now, it seems to be the chili breaded cauliflower. This one didn’t really taste like anything. And it tasted like they just used the chili sauce that is in the bottle. My wedge salad was good, but had far too much dressing. My husband ordered the Triple Crown which consisted of a lot of dips, and they seem to be a bit oily and also Bland. My son liked his sandwich though.

The prices. I know we’re in a fancy hotel, but I paid four dollars for iced tea and didn’t even really get a refill. The sandwich was $18 and although it was good, it was not an $18 sandwich. And my salad was $15. I don’t mind paying $15 for salad or $18 for a sandwich, but I want it to be something special and again, the food was just sort of… Blah.

It took a long, long time for our server to come.

Let’s move on to the good things. The atmosphere is nice. It’s a pretty restaurant. Shiny and bright.

Once our server did come, she was polite. We also recognized that because it took so long for the server to come, we were going to be late, so we asked her what the status was of the food, and she brought it out very quickly. She also brought out the check and some to-go boxes and an iced tea to go as well. When she learned that we were in a hurry, she really started hustling and did a great job of getting us out of there quickly.

But overall, I would say the food was not inspired. And they really need to work on...

We came here for brunch last Sunday to top off my friend's bachelorette weekend in Louisville. We chose this place because it was one of the few places we could make a reservation for on OpenTable the night before - we weren't sure till the last minute if we were gonna have time to go.

This restaurant is inside the Omni hotel. It's a pretty restaurant and has a fair amount of seating. Modern, clean, slightly upscale. The hostess seemed a bit confused about our reservation but it wound up not really mattering because there was plenty of space anyway.

Initially they only grabbed lunch menus (we arrived at 11) but we asked for brunch menus and they got those to us after a moment.

Other than the initial hiccups at the very beginning, service was great. Super warm and friendly, happy to get refills/condiments, etc. Food came out fairly quickly, and they even split the check up for each of us, which was such a relief since we were a fairly large party of 7.

The food was pretty expensive and mostly just okay, especially for the price. I kept my order very simple and fairly light because I was planning on eating lunch not too much later, so I got the steel-cut oats and a side of breakfast potatoes.

Now, maybe it's on me for getting something as plain as oatmeal for breakfast at a restaurant, but I've had some pretty outstanding oatmeal at restaurants before and this one was just kinda lackluster. I was expecting more toppings/mix-ins but it was just a smallish bowl of oatmeal with three small tins on the side: one with brown sugar, one with golden raisins, and one with butter -- which, side note, who puts butter in their oatmeal? On top was exactly one blackberry and half of a strawberry.

It looked pretty, and the oatmeal itself was a nice texture, but ultimately it was just very okay.

The breakfast potatoes, on the other hand, were quite tasty! Would recommend.

Almost everybody else in the party seemed content enough with their meals. I didn't get a full report from anybody on anything, but I do remember the bride enjoyed her French fries and the MOH did not like her macaroni and cheese. One of the girls who chose to drink said the Bloody Mary was excellent.

Idk, I'd like to give this place a 3.5 especially considering how great the service was, but for me the food is the most important thing and I thought it was just okay for the price. Perhaps if I'd ordered something heartier I would've enjoyed myself more. As is, I'd consider returning to try something different, but would probably skip the oatmeal...

So this is my first ever review. I feel as though there should be some justification as to why it even received the one star.. I don't know.. the water was good? We had a reservation for 6 for breakfast. We arrived 5 minutes before the reservation time. After being seated, we waited 10 minutes to place drink orders. 4 coffees, 1 water, 1 coke. There are approximately 25 people in the restaurant at this point. 10 minutes later we are asked for our food order. All orders are placed. 10 minutes after that we asked if we could get that soda. It is shortly there after dropped off with the reassurance of "here is your coke, or Dr. Pepper, or I don't know, I didn't pour it". We are now 30 minutes in with our food order put in 20 minutes ago. 20 minutes later (now 50 minutes into this morning outting, we ask where the food is. To which they provide us with the "just a few minutes" response. We inform them that we will be leaving in 5 minutes if the food is not here. 5 minutes later we get up and ask for a manager. The manager comes out. We explain the situation, tell her how we feel about it, pay for our coffee, and leave. The manager stared blankly at us and did not say a single word. She literally just stood there silently with a completely blank expression.

I know a single review won't matter in the grand scheme of things, but if this review will stop one person from going here, maybe that will help bring some attention to whoever reads these things.

Suffice to say, I will not return to this location and will inform anyone looking for a place to go somewhere else.

I would have loved to rate the food, but we...