The Kitchen — Restaurant in Safety Harbor

This place failed in every way possible. My girlfriend made reservations for my birthday and we arrived early. We were seated and then greeted by the staff. We got the menus, water, and ordered a bottle of wine. We made our orders and that's when "FAILED" kicked in. Our Saganaki was ordered as an appetizer. Braised Ribs as our main course. We weren't told the Saganaki was burnt until we started to notice other dishes being delivered at other tables and we still didn't have anything on ours. The staff (I'm using staff to avoid making reference identification as the person is male or female so when the owner reads this, he/she will know who that person is and deal with handling any punishment to that staff)apologized and said our dish was burned and the kitchen had to do it over again....we were comped for that dish. However, while we were waiting for the Saganaki, a staff person brought out our main course. We informed that person that we didn't have the appetizer yet, and our main course was returned to the kitchen much to my worry that it was going to SIT in the warming bin. Our Saganaki was served but not before the lemon fell out of the hands of the staff and fell on the floor to be replaced by a new lemon slice....hot and tasty. Main course followed shortly and as I suspected, it sat in a warming bin and it was warm but not hot. I didn't send it back to cause more pain to my experience there. While we were eating a staff brought over a foam container and placed it on our table....what's that? I opened it up to find a fresh serving of hot french fries and wondered if that came with our meal but it couldn't because we had mashed potatoes and carrots. I didn't know about this container of fries and it sure looked tempting because it was hot and our main course was NOT. Moments later a staff person checked on how our dinner was, noticed the fries and said they didn't belong on our table. That staffer closed the container and brought it to the other table where it may have belonged. That couple just paid their bill but didn't take the fries when they left. I wouldn't take the fries either because they were served to another table AND that staffer took that opened container and gave it to the other customer. Health violation? To me, this was truly pitiful. A FAILED dinner...

We like to think we're pretty knowledable when it comes to dining out as we enjoy eating out very often and know the ins and outs of the restaurant business, Art having been in the industry as a liquor salesman for over 40+ years. Unfortunately our dinner last night at "The Kitchen" in Safety Harbor was messed up. First of all, they were out of a lot of meals. We were rushed to order before they ran out of more offerings. One part of Arts (filet) and Chris's (beef Stronganoff) meals came out first, 5 minutes later Joe's (pot roast) came out..... Apparently they forgot mine! or the order was never received. After questioning our server and with everyone else finished with their meals.....the manager comes over to see why Art is now questioning every server in the area; "what's wrong with this picture"??? because ours was no where to be found. He got lip service from one of the other servers who actually thought Art was rude for speaking up! and he rudely questioned Art whether he understood the meaning of "tapas" meals!!! Ugh. Finally mine (baked rigatoni) comes out easily 20 minutes after they've finished with their meals. So, these were easy meals that would have been prepared ahead basically. No complaints about the food quality, it was good. It was the poor service we received that ruined the experience for us. The managers and our original server apologized, offered to comp my meal and offered free deserts but basically it was too late, even though our meals were very good, the whole experience left a bad taste in our mouths! Top it off with our server bringing the second part (green beans!) out to Art after we were all done, the server stated "you can eat them now". to which of course he refused. Unbelievable. So what started out to hopes of a nice meal went from bad to worse, taking their potential 4 star rating down to a 1 star. I highly doubt we'll ever return or even...

A COMPLETE DISAPPOINTMENT! This was our 2nd and last visit. When we arrived, we wanted to sit at the bar and was told we would have to wait if we wanted to sit there, even though there was no one sitting there when we arrived. We took a seat elsewhere and observed that no one sat at the bar for an entire hour while we were there. We asked 3 different employees to explain why we couldn't sit at the bar and got 3 different explanations, none of which made any sense. (Holding them for the locals was my best guess).

So we sat around the corner and was greeted by "Peaches" who acted like he didn't want to be there and he made us feel like he didn't want us there either. We ordered a couple of mediocre appetizers. When ordering a salad, we asked for some regular olive oil and was told they didn't have any. "Peaches" stormed off and said he had to get a manager (not at our request, did this on his own). The manager said he had an oil he could give us, but couldn't clearly explain what it was exactly. What restaurant doesn't have Olive oil??

The entire staff has a general "attitude" and are very cold toward their guests (not just our opinion, others said the same).

We had about enough of the whole thing and decided to leave after we paid for our overpriced drinks. Told the manager how disappointed we were on the way out and he didn't even ask what was wrong. It's too bad, because on our 1st visit the entrée's were quite good, but the customer service is just about the worst I've ever encountered.

We walked around the corner to "The Oak" and had a great experience there. If you like overpriced food and drink, and you are into really bad customer service, go visit The Kitchen, they won't disappoint!!

Difficult to even give it 1 star. We will...