Leeward — Restaurant in Portland

This is the first negative review I have ever posted online, and I hope it will be the last, but my experience at Leeward this Saturday was so unpleasant that it would be wrong not to say something. In fact, I'm sorry to say that it was the worst restaurant service I have ever experienced in my life.

My two friends and I arrived a few minutes early for our reservation, and we were greeted by a hostess, who was unfriendly from our first interaction. We went to the waiting area as instructed and noticed that another party of guests waiting to be seated had some cocktails. After no one approached us for our drink order, my friend tried to go to the bar to order espresso martinis. She was intercepted by the hostess, who said they only have "house" espresso martinis, that included tequila and amaro (but no real espresso because they don't have an espresso machine, which is inherently odd for an Italian restaurant). My friend ordered three of these, and then asked the hostess to come explain the drink ingredients, because she had never heard of a tequila espresso martini before and was not sure if she was relaying the ingredients correctly to us. Then the hostess listed the ingredients to us in an antagonistic manner, and when I tried to clarify if the tequila was forward tasting in the drink, she replied in a patronizing tone that "it tastes like all those things mixed together." We were taken aback by her attitude and lack of care / knowledge. She then notified us that the drinks were already being made, and so to cut this unpleasant interaction short, since she was visibly annoyed and did not seem to want to help us understand the drink or amend the order, we said we would be fine with them. A while later we received the drinks while still waiting to be seated, and sure enough they were disgusting.

We were then seated at our table with our awful cocktails, which none of us were drinking. We looked at the menu, asked the waiter some questions, and after he had taken our food order, we asked to order a bottle of sparkling wine. The waiter then said, "my manager told me not to bring you any alcohol for a while because you have been overserved." We were flabbergasted at this point and barely knew how to respond. He offered no additional information when asked why and for more details, and so we asked him to pause on placing the food order as we all felt deeply uncomfortable at this point. The interaction with this waiter also then felt disingenuous, as we would have hoped either he or his manager would have addressed whatever concern they had with us directly. As we were discussing what had just happened and trying to process what was going on, the same hostess came over to ask if we liked the drinks -- yet again in an unfriendly and, at this point, clearly also disingenuous manner. We were so uncomfortable at this point that we did not say anything about how horrible they were, as we wanted her to leave us as soon as possible.

After that interaction, we decided we needed to leave as soon as possible given the passive-aggression and underhanded hostility we were encountering. We politely told the waiter to please cancel the food order and please bring the bill for the drinks. As we waited, the hostess came yet again and asked if we liked the drinks and said she would comp them if we did not like them. Unfortunately, the hostess had made us feel so uncomfortable and stressed at this point that we did not think she would be receptive to the feedback on the drinks, and we did not want to experience any further hostility from her. So we said we would like to pay for the drinks please.

We paid for the drinks and left, and unfortunately this left a very black cloud over our night. I have honestly never felt so uncomfortable in a restaurant before, much less one in Portland, Maine. I genuinely hope this hostess and the manager and the waiter were just having a bad day, but this negative interaction was really unnerving, and I will certainly be warning any friends about going...

I Wanted to Get It So Much, But I Didn't For a few weeks we were looking forward to experiencing Leeward based upon recent reviews. Later we learned about its James Beard award nomination. But I will say - I just don't get it. I want to get it but I don't. To be direct and more specific. I will address the vibe first, then service and then food. The vibe was intense, serious and without any soul. The staff seemed focused on performing and not making a mistake. So much so, that they appeared very phony and transactional. We sat at the counter and the cook staff were there, but not there. The music was a bit too loud - you would think talking should not be challenged by the music. The decor and layout was great - but that was it. Regarding the service, when we arrived - no welcome. I shared we had a reservation. The person at the front of the room looked around said they have to do something else and left. We had no idea what that meant. Someone else showed up, grabbed menus and seated us. There was no pleasantry, no comment such as have a nice evening or thank you for coming have a nice meal. Just a walk away. The waitress was not a good experience at all. There was no welcoming, just an arrival and asking us if we want a drink - very curt and transactional. The smile seemed fake and there was an interest in leaving as soon as she arrived. We ordered a bottle of wine, She came back to show me the bottle and then said she had to leave to have the wine checked. I have no idea what that was about. She reappeared with the bottle and I said I did not need to try it - I am of the mindset if it is corked we would know, and asked her to kindly pour - we would be fine. She said they tried it too and it was okay. So do you try the wine in the bottle before serving it? That is weird. Next we said we would be sharing our appetizers and entrees but that we only settled on the appetizers for now. We were told we had to order everything at once. But once she took our small plate order, she disappeared. I guess that was not true, but why say it? We did order two main meals. The food was just okay. As someone who is an avid cook with flavors, textures, balance and presentation, I cannot tell you what I was eating and explain how it tasted. I was left very disappointed. The artichokes were okay. We got what we expected with some caramelization, but the overall dish was very dry. The best experience of the night was the burrata, charcuterie meats and wonderful pillows of fried dough. The burrata was the best I've had - a real depth of creaminess. Everything together blended well and we savored each bite. As for the main dishes, the ravioli was overwhelmed by the lemon zest. We could not taste the egg yolk, the fresh pasta or the pureed bean. We could taste the texture of the white beans, but not the flavor. A+ for the technique of serving a raw egg inside the ravioli - that was cool. Our other entree was the gnudi. This dish was so disappointing. They were bland, and only with sauce was there flavor. I couldn't believe I made myself put sauce on the gnudi in order to have a flavor in my mouth. The sauce was tasty, but the gnudi felt like I put food in my stomach and cannot tell you what I ate. Lastly, it was strange to experience the staff. At the end of the entrees, the waitress eventually came back and dropped of dessert menus. She never asked if we were interested in dessert or if we would like something else. When she came back we told her we were passing on dessert. It felt like everyone was so focused on performance and not making a mistake that they left their joy and passion behind. I would have rather had a dish where no cotton was used to clean the rim before presenting if it meant the staff could be more relaxed, would engage authentically and the food was cooked with passion and soul. We were very bummed out from the experience. I still left a 20% tip because the staff works hard and deserves to be paid for their efforts. However, the culture means we...

My girlfriend and I arrived at Leeward at 6:30 for our reservation and were greeted by a nice hostess. Our server came with water immediately and asked if we were ready, but we told her that we need a few minutes since we literally just sat down. Over the next 15 minutes, she proceeds to serve a few other tables, including the one right next to us for whom she retrieves the bill, comes back to grab their card, charges their card and bring it back to their table all before coming back to us to ask what we would like. I did notice that this couple happened to be two white people (I’m latino), but I assumed it was coincidence and gave our server the benefit of the doubt. We gave our server our entire order (wine, appetizers, and entrees) at once since we had plenty of time to think about it and didn’t know when we would get her attention again. When she brings out the bottle of wine, she tells us that she’s going to bring it back inside so that SHE can taste it to make sure that it’s okay. I’ve never been anywhere that didn’t let ME taste the wine that I was paying for to make sure that I thought it was okay, but we let her do her thing and then bring the wine back. We also never received anything to keep our white wine chilled which we’ve also never experienced at a place charging these kinds of prices. After waiting for a full hour from when we ordered, we received our two small plates of pasta that left us about as hungry as we were when we arrived. When our server came to take the plates away, I asked for the check so that we could leave ASAP (at this point it was 8pm and cold outside which I didn’t prepare for since we sat down at 6:30). We saw the server serve multiple tables of white people before handing us our bill (I had my card in hand to continue to try to speed up the process) and then check on several more tables including the two next to us before handing us our paid bill. Pretty different from the way she seemed to be treating everyone else. We finally got to leave at 8:15pm still hungry after spending more than $140 and had to stop at a nearby pizza joint to make sure we didn’t go to sleep hungry. Lazzari treated us very well even though they could probably tell that we were visibly frustrated walking in and the food was truly amazing. We made sure to tip them as much as we did at Leeward because we got better service there for almost 1/10 of the price. Lastly, after doing more research when I got home, I realized that the only other non-5 star review for this restaurant on Google was also given by a...