The Gold Mine Saloon — Restaurant in New Orleans

I wish I could give the gold mine saloon negative one star. a few close friends and I decided to end our night out here after great steaks and service at Mr. Johns Steakhouse. We decided to come in for the nightlife and great drinks. well. we were a bit disappointed. after paying a cover of $3 each (all good and fine) we go to order drinks. I ordered 4 flaming Dr. peppers and requested that I pay before she (our bartender) lit the drinks so that we could toast and end the night together. well, after pouring our drinks the bartender walked to the back with my credit card and ID for about 1 minute (this is forever in bar time.) She comes back, lights the drinks, spills them, then hands me my credit card and ID with receipt saying the tip is already included. We take the drinks, and I sign using descriptive words of my experience (we all know no one cares about how the receipt is signed.) We take the drinks and walk to a less crowded area of the bar and continue our night. Minutes later I am surrounded by bouncers and some sort of police enforcement telling me in a forceful way that I must sign my receipt with the signature from my drivers license or I will be forced to leave in a police car. the person that is in my face about this seems to be in some sort of wireless communication with an officer, and he tells them to pull around front for me. being that I have never had any issues or problems with the law I feel I am forced to sign this receipt for services I did not receive. I signed the receipt many times as the person enforcing this law felt my signature was not close enough to my drivers license. at this point I am quite upset but also not wanting to spend a night or weekend in jail. so I focused as best I could and signed my old scribbled signature. from there I left. I will be contacting my credit card company about this and taking this experience to the highest level possible. I understand it is a bar but bullying is unacceptable in this and...

Very sketchy business practices and RUDE bartenders. $20 minimum - that's fine, but the bartenders are charging inconsistent prices so that every customer meets the minimum regardless of what they ordered. My friend bought two drinks at the beginning of the night (orange juice/vodka & redbull/vodka). When she went to close out later her total was $25 and when she questioned it she was reminded of the $20 minimum + automatic gratuity; she asked if she could order another drink on that tab since right now it was equating to $10 per drink (OUTRAGEOUS). The bartender told her no, that she'd have to start an entirely new tab and would be charged another $25. This means that she'd be charged $20 for ONE drink!! So she paid the $25 tab for two drinks that had barely any alcohol (see next complaint) that are usually only $5-6 each. Also, when we ordered the oj/vodka & redbull/vodka, the genius bartender COMBINED ALL FOUR LIQUIDS INTO ONE DRINK and got incredibly aggressive when we pointed out that we'd wanted two separate drinks - not redbull/orange juice/vodka all in one glass. The same rude bartender didn't explain that they hold IDs AND debit cards all night, so when my friend politely reminded the bartender (who was already mad about the drinks) that she hadn't given back her ID the bartender yelled at her. I apologized and tried to explain that we didn't know the policy but she repeatedly yelled WHATEVER over me. As she was correcting our drinks she barely poured any alcohol in them, and then she slammed them down on the bar and told us to go away. Clearly the bartenders are treating people however they want since their gratuity is automatically included in the tabs. I usually recommend the Gold Mine to friends and tourists, but I don't think I'll be doing...

The "owner" of the place profiled the hell out of our buddy because he was black. She initially tried to stop him from coming in saying his outfit was not proper attire even though it's a bar and he was wearing the same thing the rest of us were wearing (she didn't stop any of us). After we argued and were eventually let in, she proceeded to stalk our buddy around the bar doing things like reminding him not to start trouble even though he just got there and wasnt planning on doing anything but chill at the bar. Eventually our entire group left after about 20 min because she was harassing him. It was the worst place we went to on our otherwise amazing trip to NOLA, and ironically it was a few blocks away from bourbon street and the only place that charged us a cover to get in ($5 for guys that night). It's like they want to make sure no one goes there. It was jarring to watch racial profiling happening right in front of you especially in this day and age, and in NOLA where every night there were huge mixed crowds with everyone vibing together. I'm definitely staying away from that place and telling others to...