The High Hat — Restaurant in Saint Paul

This will be long: First off I want to say I have never had to write a restaurant review before because I have never been this disturbed. From the very start we had a problem. Of course I’m well aware that most restaurants have a weekend crowd and are usually busy with long wait times. When I went in the restaurant to put our name and size the hostess (who happened to be the manager) had an attitude. I told him party of 8 (6 adults 2 kids) and he immediately said no we don’t seat more than 6 at a table on weekends. I had no idea about that policy so I was surprised with his response, maybe they should have a sign? I was okay with their policy so I asked if possible, could we do 6 and 2 next to each other. It never hurts to ask right? He had an attitude and said he couldn’t make any promises and that it would be an hour wait. No problem since we were willing to wait. Through it all I remained calm and did not respond in kind. About 30 minutes later he said they had 2, 4 tops next to each other if we wanted to be seated. I accepted and our party sat down. Our friend in the group still thought she would ask if the tables could move closer. They still said no and we were fine with it. The waitress started off nice, she took our food and drink order and everything was fine. I ordered tea for my drink and it was a glass with hot water and a tea bag that I needed to add. Unfortunately my clear glass of water had something floating in it. So I politely asked for another water. Then my friend also had a tea and noticed something in his glass. No big deal but we still wanted clear water so he asked for another glass. We proceeded to eat our delicious food. It was so delicious we were contemplating if we should order another round of the blue corn pancakes. After a while I wanted more whipped cream with my pancakes and asked for extra. While eating I noticed a long string of straight hair, apparently from the new whipped cream. I was disgusted. My hair is not straight and I had a hat on so it definitely was not mine or anyone in our group. I took a picture. Usually I don’t like to complain but I just had to tell the waitress. To my surprise the waitress was extremely rude and instead of apologizing kept insisting on talking over me. Saying “yea that’s what happens when humans serve you”or something to that effect. She also said she didn’t care if I told the manager. The manager also came over and was extremely rude and wouldn’t allow me to explain. He also said he didn’t care about us writing a review. They never allowed me to explain that I was NOT looking for a free meal but because the food was so good I wanted to give them constructive feedback especially since our glasses were dirty and now my food had hair. They gave us one check $176 and never asked about if we were splitting anything since it was 2 different tables. Because of the commotion my husband just decided to pay the whole thing and we left. But our friend from the group still wanted to go back to the waitress and give her a tip. NOT because of good service but to prove a point. She gave the waitress $100 bill. The waitress came outside saying how she is not racist and she was just overwhelmed. She apologized and started crying. I won’t play the race card, maybe they are rude to all their customers. But I do feel she made A LOT of assumptions about us. Perhaps she thought we were complaining so we could get a free meal. She did not know how much money we had or our occupations which should not matter. I’m not a guest in your home so you’re not doing me a favor. We were PAYING customers. I have a right as a PAYING customer to expect clean glasses, plates etc without hair or anything else in my food and drink. The food is excellent but it’s not the best food I ever had. I can take my money elsewhere. So although they have good food I will not, in principle, spend my money at...

I heard great things about The High Hat so I decided to take some family from out of town here for brunch on Black Friday. We arrived around 9:50 without a reservation and were promptly greeted by who I assume is the owner. We were invited to sit anywhere that was open. We sat and were greeted by our server within a couple of minutes. She took our coffee order while the last member our party of 4 was parking. He arrived at 9:52. Coffees came out fairly quickly and we were told she’d be back shortly to take our order. She did not return until 10:20. By then one of our party had to leave because it was taking too long. We were sitting at the corner table right before the bar so she had to walk by us every time she had to get to another table. Our menus were clearly still on our table. The owner walked by a couple of times and also didn’t say anything.

Our food finally came out at 10:45 so pretty close to an hour after arriving. It was not worth the wait. It was all so bad that only one of us finished our meals. We ordered the waffles and gravy (added chorizo), breakfast bowl, and the classic breakfast (eggs, hash browns, bacon, and toast). The classic breakfast was the only meal that was finished.

The waffles looked like Eggo waffles and tasted and felt raw. They were closer to a pancake than a waffle and flopped around. It came with two and I maybe was able to eat two bites out of one of them. There was barely any gravy which was maybe a good thing given how undercooked the waffles were. The chorizo was burnt and greasy. The poached eggs were cooked properly.

The breakfast bowl looked great when it came out but had no flavor on anything. There was way too much of the wild rice which took away from everything else. Some veggies were cooked properly and others not.

When we were finally ready for the bill our server stood over the table while we paying which was awkward. It definitely was not 20%+ service but we would have felt uncomfortable tipping based on the actual service with her standing over us.

Overall a nightmare of an experience and a place I won’t be back to nor would...

IF YOU HAVE A FOOD ALLERGY OR IF YOU LIKE GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE, DON'T GO HERE. Went here at 12pm on a Friday with my husband and an old friend. The seating was about 70% full, at most. We started ordering, my husband has an allergy and asked the waitress if she could double check the bread for the allergy. The waitress said “I don’t even know what that is to be honest. You can just get it without the bread because I don’t have time to go check on that for you.” I told her we’ll just go somewhere else that has time for us then and she said "ok, sounds good." My husband went to address with the manager and the manager told my husband that the waitress is just really stress right now and has a lot going on. My husband said that’s understandable but how she communicated to us was very RUDE and inappropriate. The manager then asked my husband if he’s ever worked at a restaurant before and he told him no. Then the manager said “why don’t you try working in one first." As someone who has worked at busy sports bars, I know to always take food allergies very seriously and have always had managers who assist when us employees are THAT busy. My husband and I eat out frequently and all restaurants take my husbands allergy very seriously. Many times a manager and/or chef will even come out to discuss the allergy with him. I will be reaching out to the Minnesota Department of Health to report this incident as well.

I also want to mention while we were waiting on being served, a customer told the waitress that her matcha tea wasn’t sweet enough and the same waitress said she’d make her another. Very interesting that she had time to make an entire new drink for a customer but not to lift up a bag of bread to see if it contain's soy. I read another one star review with a very similar...