Carlyle Cafe — Restaurant in Miami Beach

$38 for 2 daiquiris. This means $19 for 1 daiquiri. This restaurant had the AUDACITY to charge $19 for a drink that costs about $5-$6 to make. That's an extremely large profit margin, charging the customer almost 3 to 4 times the amount the restaurant payed to make the drink. Furthermore, most of us do not recall ever seeing prices on the drink menu. Probably because there WEREN'T any. Indeed, there were no prices on the drink menu, leaving the staff to come up with their own prices to make up for whatever deal they strike with you before you enter. "What?", you ask, "you get a deal before you enter?" Yes. The restaurant tries to lure you in with discounts on their "Entire Menu". For some reason, this "entire menu" does not include their "drink menu". Combine this with the fact that there are no prices on the drink menu and you have the perfect scam: give the customers 50% off food and make up for it with the price of the drinks. Let me pose a question, why does a drink, that takes 2 minutes to prepare, cost more than a meal, which takes minutes upon minutes to prepare? It shouldn't. The manager was no help. He was sort of like the gum you'd find underneath the table of a restaurant: gross, firm, unwilling to move, and static no matter how much you pick at it. But let's get to the point, because 1 star is pretty low, right? Truth be told, I would have given this restaurant a NEGATIVE 5 STAR review IF IT WERE POSSIBLE. Why? Let's get down to an analysis of what the restaurant is trying to do. First off, the food was definitely not amazing. It was decent, but the steak was terrible. It was bland and somewhat burnt. I personally don't enjoy chewing charcoal for my dinner, and I'm sure others don't either. The pizza's decent, but not quite there. All the food followed this pattern of decent, but not the best. So, we established that food is not the problem. Is it service? The service was much like the food. They weren't the best of the best although they did comply to many of our demands. Except, the one demand they didn't do too well in complying with, was negotiating. You see, you can't pamper the customer and then treat them like dirt afterwards, that's not how it works. You have to be consistent if you want to be successful. We were brought in with the claim of "50% off everything", but they didn't keep their end of the deal. When we told the waiter, he went to the manager, and you all know how that ended up. Mr. Maurice obviously has this planned out. To make sure his business stays afloat he's willing to do anything, including having a staff who're willing to help him scam innocent individuals. That said, Mr Maurice does not run his business in an honest way. He makes "bad money" by scamming people into eating at Carlyle. He doesn't make any "good money", and he ARGUES with you when you try to bring up the claims made by his staff. This is already a disaster, but let's take a bit of a deeper look. Mr Maurice charges more on DRINKS, both NON-ALCOHOLIC and ALCOHOLIC drinks. Charging more on alcoholic drinks means that he's trying to target young adults and adults, college students and married couples. His assumption is that you're not from Miami, so you won't know how bad his restaurant really is. That said, he tries to use the warm temperature and salty food to get you to buy a drink from him at 4 to 5 times it's original price. However, add the fact that they're ALCOHOLIC drinks and you add one more factor: stress. People drink when they're in a casual setting or when they're stressed. But, a depressant, like alcohol, definitely is more linked to relief of the stresses that many young adults and adults face in today's society: expenses, work, social life, etc. This means that Maurice over here is trying to take advantage of the negative aspects of your life by charging you $29 for a mojito. The fact that he wants to take advantage of you is really bad. Same goes for your kids. The pricey virgin drinks means he's after the money you pay for your children. He doesn't care about you. He just...

Overall Experience Not so good!!! food was good! expensive but good. My waitress was amazingly nice, worried about me and my family. Then at the very end, everything went wrong! My whole experience was infected by a very negative fact, that I share bellow. My bill was 154.74, including the 20% tip (20% mandatory according to the menu). they try to make you put an additional tip at the end, with a "suggested donation", or something like this, at the exactly same place all regular restaurants suggest the 15-18-20% tip. I noticed, and agreed to pay only the 20% mandatory tip. and I tried to pay in cash, with all my changes, so I gave a bunch of coins. Can you believe she turned me back all those coins, saying the manager refused to accept coins? like if coins were not money... And she said she was sorry, but was not her fault, and the bill was 2dollars missing.... I should have left! but i didn't. I went to the ice-cream shop that they have in their "lobby", asked the nice lady to accept my coins, and she happily accepted, and gave me 2 one-dollar bills. (what they could have done after my payment, but seems they were to "good" to do this) To sum up... all the good things that happened in my one-time experience were contaminated by this ridiculous policy of not accepting coins and treating customer like garbage. (by the way, the manager was busy having his own lunch, so he did not come to see me at this time) - i felt like the worst and least important person in the world... Complete disrespectful behavior with a customer... maybe they do not need customers ... do not need money... God knows... So sorry for being there. Not coming back and unfortunately (for my nice waitress), do not recommend the...

Unfortunately after speaking with the manager, Maria Fernandez, and getting nowhere, it has come to this being put up publicly. I would not advise anyone who is visiting Miami to go to this 'cafe', not only are the prices extortionate but we were also over charged on our bill and when I spoke to the manager about this, she laughed in my face and was very rude towards me. I gave her every opportunity to rectify the mistake and she refused to listen. I was told that we hadn't paid $87 of our $301 dollar bill (7 of us, 2 beers and a shot each �) which I know we had paid because I personally counted it and we were going to leave extra for our waiter. Also this was buy one beer get one free so should not have been so expensive. We then asked could we count the money we had already paid ourselves and were refused. I then gave $70 myself to pay what they said we didn't pay and another gave $40 which we also asked could we count as we handed it to him and the waiter grabbed it out of my hand and refused to leave me count it. This is when I requested the manager who left me standing in a closed restaurant for 45 minutes and then when I spoke to her she told me she had known what was going on from the start meaning there was absolutely no need for me to be standing there that long. Another response I got from her was that people at my table were very drunk and they obviously didn't know what they paid. If this was actually the case, should you not have refused them service? The manner in which I was treated was extremely unprofessional and I will be taking this further to get not only the money we were overcharged back but also the rest of the bill. They will be hearing from...