526 Main Piano Bar — Restaurant in Royal Oak

The Groupon allotted one appetizer ($9) two entrees ($13) and one dessert ($9.) That's $44 worth of food for the $35 I paid for the Groupon.

We had a reserved table but they put us in the corner where we couldn’t see the show. The waitress came over after about 5 minutes. She told us she was our beer list but didn't tell us any of the options. I asked if they had anything specifically vegan or could be made vegan. She said, "No. Honey this is Mexican cuisine." I know vegan food can be hard to come by but obviously a salad or a side of vegetables wouldn't be difficult to put together.

We ordered the Mexican fries as an appetizer (which turned out to be chili cheese fries.) We asked for half of the plate as it normally comes and the other half with just plain fries. They brought out 2 plates of fries, one as the regular Mexican fries and the other as cheese fries. Obviously cheese isn't vegan so I mentioned this to the waitress and said if there's nothing that can be done it's not a big deal. She said she was really busy (we were 1 of 5 tables in the entire restaurant) and had asked her manager to take care of this one for her. She said she would go back and get this sorted for us. We thought it was just a funny mix up that maybe the lines got crossed. We got a plain plate of unsalted fries a few minutes later. I ate these until I found a curly hair then decided I didn't need anymore fries. We were told the fries had been comped.

We had been there for about 40 minutes before our entree order was taken. My husband ordered a pizza and I got the fajitas with no meat and no cheese. Our plates came out and there was cheese on it. I figured I had already caused enough trouble so I would just eat around it. The vegetables that came with it were mostly onions and a few peppers. They weren't salted or flavored at all and there was no salt and pepper on the table. It was incredibly flavorless and felt like a true sign of someone that is following a recipe rather than given the freedom to cook a well flavored meal. To be fair it all looked like pretty poor quality food to begin with. My husband got The Cali pizza which turned out to be more like a flatbread than a pizza.

After 15 minutes with our entrees our waitress came over and noticed that we hadn't eaten much. She asked if everything was ok and my husband said he just wasn't into it. She pushed him for a bit more and he said "It doesn't taste good. I think muenster is a weird choice to put solely on a pizza." She said, "Well it's our house cheese. Let me go talk to my manager." We insisted it was really not a problem we were just ready for the check. A minute or two later the manager came out and frustratedly asked us what seemed to be the problem. We told him it really wasn’t a big deal we were just done with our food. He pressed us for more. My husband said it tasted like poor quality food and the way it was put together didn’t make sense taste wise. The manager said he was disappointed to hear that and he would comp 25% of the pizza. Then he turned to me, I was clearly not interested in discussing this again especially when I felt like I was being scolded. I told him about the hair in the fries and he said, “Yeah, we’ve already comped the fries for you.” As if I shouldn’t have mentioned the hair again. I told him about the cheese and he sort of brushed it off as if he realized he had already heard these issues before. He capped off our interaction by saying, “I’m really disappointed to hear you’re having such a bad time. We really never have stuff like this happen (the reviews say otherwise!) so I’m very surprised. Did you at least like the music?” We said sure just to make him leave but to be honest one dude was super rude. Neither were great singers and every song was played too fast to enjoy. The rude guy seemed to get upset that no one was singing along with him although there was a total of maybe 12 people in the whole restaurant? When we got our check it turned our we had only spent $33 which means it was actually $2 more to use...

I’m super sad with my first experience here tonight. The food was ok, but the service was no where close to acceptable. My family of three arrived at 6:20 to an empty restaurant. The hostess greeted us, but informed us all tables were reserved for the evening. I thanked her for the consideration and said we would go elsewhere. She quickly debuted she could give us a table but would need it flipped by 8:30. Having previously been in the restaurant business, and the current state of the establishment, I felt that was entirely reasonable for our party, so agreed. Reflecting now, that initial lack of hospitality should have been a red flag for our experience. Our initial greeting from the waitress was positive, she brought waters and offered a beverage order. We asked for items to fufill the wanting expectations of our young child, placed drink orders and asked if Restaurant Week was still available. She didn’t know, but was able to provide the menu information within a few minutes; it is a pre-fixe 3 item menu. Both me and my partner selected this option. We received drinks and were comfortable. Around 6:45 reservations have begun to be sat around us. At 7:00, just long enough to begin to wonder where my salad is, especially since there was no one there when we placed the order, both the salad course and main dish arrive at the same time. The table was small and it was challenging to fit all dishes with beverages on it. I ended up holding my salad bowl while I ate it, watching my fajitas get cold by the bite. The salad was extremely overdressed with ranch which was not expected per the salad description but at least there were a good number of cucumbers and tomatoes. The fajitas were good. My partner ordered the steak tacos, which came on corn tortillas with a chimichurri like sauce. They weren’t his favoite combo of flavors, but ok in general. Now I do recognize our waitress had several tables sat in her section all at the same time, but the struggle she had to support all of them obviously indicated that an addition to wait staff is needed. Service to clear tables was very slow. We were never offered an additional round, or had refills on water. At about 7:30, the waitress finally returned to our table and we took the opportunity to ask for the brownie dessert order to-go and our check. While waiting the dueling pianos began, which were great, a highlight to the experience, but fairly awkward when a young child is present as it’s definitely not a show intended for that age group.(I never thought we would even be there that long when we walked into an empty restaurant.) Definitely not a family restaurant on weekend nights. The waitress was aware of the lack of service being given to our table, and said she would send the manager over to talk to us. He arrived 15 minutes after she mentioned this. He was obviously not aware of our experience up to this point and seemed less that apathetic but would get us those brownies. I honestly didn’t care about them at all at this point, I just wanted out of there. Desserts arrived in a bag at 8pm with the check. We ended up needing to hand it to a different waiter to get the bill closed. It was the worst service experience I’ve had in years. Every kitchen and person has their off nights, so I’ll return to give them a second chance eventually because the pianos were quite fun and I love to support local businesses, but I’ll be sure to...

We were looking forward to a fun evening spent entirely at 526 Main to celebrate a bachelorette party- unfortunately one rude, unwelcoming pianist changed those plans. The hostess and serving staff were very welcoming to our group of 11 upon arrival. Our waitress, Cara, was very friendly and excited we were there to celebrate! It was about 7:30, and Chris was playing the piano but the crowd had yet to really get involved. We began participating in the songs (like is expected at a piano bar) and more people started to join in. We put in some paid requests and some of the bridal party went out to the floor to dance to the songs. Chris made some comment over the mic to the bride about getting off the stage- we just brushed it off. He went on a break and Tommy came out who was awesome. Another young piano player joined him and was very interactive with our group. We gave good tips, participated, and even got other customers to join us on the dance floor and sing along. It was a great atmosphere until Chris came back. Upon his return, he was making snide comments to the bridal party yet when another group of older ladies were out dancing and doing a kickline on stage completely encouraged them (not a problem for me- this is what piano bars are for). However, immediately after he was so positively interactive with them, he began playing a song our entire bridle party went to dance to and he stopped playing. The other pianist even said "sorry girls I was going to play that for you but he just stood up and stopped." The bride was standing on the stage and Chris decided over the mic to sing to her to not talk to him and get off his stage- public shaming... really? We had paid $60 to make song requests throughout the night and another $20 for their phrase of the night (which they only did twice). Chris said the phrase to the crowd and said something about feeling the love and we told him we weren't and he just moved along. He clearly knew he was being unkind and didn't care at all. At this point we decided to take our business elsewhere. We spoke with the waitress and it sounded like he had these kind of complaints before. She was disappointed we were leaving but we couldn't support his disrespectful behavior. Waitstaff, bouncers, and young piano guys were all great, but this guy is killing...