My family had an unusually bad experience Saturday night.

We were seated upstairs in a booth which shared its back rest with the only other occupied booth. Along side the two booths was a large family. Not sure why the only three parties dining upstairs were crowded together like that? There was plenty of empty seating available upstairs.

The back supports on both sides of the booth were very wobbly. My wife quietly mentioned that she could feel every movement that the woman in the neighboring booth would make. Surprisingly that same woman got up from her booth, faced my wife and complained that my wife was moving around too much. I calmly told her that the booths are just like that and that my wife was also having the same experience. The woman sat back down, looking disgruntled. My wife spent the rest of her time leaning forward, trying not to disturb anyone. The restaurant needs to fix their booths.

The server was consistently aloof. She seemed either inexperienced or indifferent about serving us. I had to ask for the complimentary bread since she seemed to have forgotten about it altogether. I started out being pretty friendly, despite our server seeming disengaged, but as the evening played out I began losing my patience as our order was taking quite a while. The server eventually came back to the table and informed us that the kitchen lost our ticket. Other groups came and went as we waited patiently. There was a small army of other servers bustling about us as they were receiving a large party. Meanwhile, I could see our own server across the room, trying to look busy at a service station, possibly preparing place settings or doing some similar filler task. As we continued to wait for our food, I eventually caught her looking back at me, and then she proceeded to go about her prep work. None of the other staff thought to check in on us amidst their preparations. We felt pretty ignored. I very nearly walked out, but didn't want to skip out on paying for our appetizer. I also didn't want to sour the evening for my family any further.

When our food eventually arrived, our server apologized and asked if she could get us anything else. I asked for water. She left and didn't come back.

Later, as we were wrapping up our meals, I had to stop our server and ask for the kids' ice cream and the check. I asked her to hurry. It was then that she said in a seemingly annoyed tone, "well, I was going to offer you a free dessert." NOW we're concerned about customer satisfaction?! I said no and that we we wanted to leave. She really wasn't reading the situation at all. She brought our check and the ice cream in to-go cups (not what I was asking for but whatever at this point) and then tried to disappear immediately. I wasn't in the mood to wait another 20 minutes for here to pick up my credit card so I stopped her and gave her my card before she could run off again.

I paid, left no tip, and left feeling aggravated about an experience that was supposed to be a nice family night out, something which we can afford less and less these days. For decent service I always leave 20%. For mediocre service, 15%. Even for bad service I'm usually sympathetic and leave 10%, which some would disagree with, but I sympathize with food service workers, even when I'm not particularly satisfied. I spent some time in that industry myself. It's an unforgiving job, but I can't rationalize leaving any tip if I'm that frustrated.

What is typically a 45 minute experience instead took 90 minutes. Our server neglected us and was tone deaf about the situation. Had she tried to be just slightly more personable or communicate a little better, I think we would have been more understanding. She could have offered to comp the appetizer. Hell, a smile would have been nice. For her sake I hope that girl gets it together because I don't think she's going to last long at this rate.

We're not coming back here anytime soon. It's a shame because it's a long time family favorite. We may try our luck with the Rancho Cordova location in the future... We'll see.