Ivy & Varley — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

Saturday June 3rd. 1st time here & Overall poor experience. I had taken my grandmother, mother and sister to a theatre show at the Eccles theatre about a 4 min walk away. We came to Ivy & Varley for our first time after the show. No one was ready for guests it seemed and it was a little after 5 pm but they had been open since 10am. Except for the hostess. She was pleasant and sat us outside as we requested. There was a guy using a leaf blower on the grounds, tables weren’t ready. The staff was slowly shuffling around the courtyard looking like they didn’t really know what they were doing and not in a hurry to ensure anything was prepared for dinner guests. No one looked at us, acknowledged us. No smiles, nothing. If the atmosphere wasn’t as nice as it was the staff would have immediately created a depressing environment. Our waitress name was Jen. She didn’t come to us until 5-10 min later. We were parched! She was scattered brained not ready to work. She was immediately forgetful, didn’t know the soups of the day and just had an overall attitude of she didn’t care about anything that day. The water tasted unclean like tap water. The side plates that were given to us to eat the flavorless hummus to share that looked beautiful but tasted bland were all dirty with old food spots on it. The hummus was much of a disappointment as it looked beautiful. (Not really appetizing as it’s a wild purple pink color but it was pretty). The charcuterie board was expensive with barely anything on it. 4 tiny slivers of toasted bread. 4 little olives. 3 slices of strawberries about 8 little slices of meat and 2 different cheeses with some almonds and walnuts ($24) . A lot of room still left on the board to the point it looked pitiful. The vegetable root red pepper bisque tasted exactly like a peanut. No other flavors. The Wagyu burger had no jalapeño aioli like it said on the menu and if it did it had no flavor and you couldn’t tell. It just tasted like medium rare cooked ground hamburger meat even with the toppings and bread. No quality flavor and was expensive($27). I have never paid $27 for a ground beef hamburger as that would have been ridiculous and that’s what this tasted like. The ice tea didn’t taste good and had a weird flavor. We told Jen our waitress about our food experience after she asked and she didn’t apologize or ask if there is anything she could do to make our experience better she just asked us if we are going to split up the check or pay one 1 check. That just solidified the poor experience we had so we didn’t tip her and she threw the receipt in the general direction of my mom instead of handing it to her and walked away about without saying anything. I asked to speak with a manager inside, my family didn’t know I was doing that. I sat back down so they could gather their things to leave. The manager Reen came over quickly and we explained our experience. Not asking for anything but to just give her feedback as so to improve other guests experience in the future. She was very level headed, listened thoughtfully, was respectful and didn’t over do it in her apologies and didn’t undo with. She said she would like us to come back and made recommendations for what she knows to be good on the menu from personal experience. Our bill $120 and she gave us a $50 gift card and said to come back and ask for a manager and let them know our first experience was bad but hoping a second chance will be much better so we can enjoy coming there again. Thank you Reen. If it wasn’t for you our night could have had that negative experience be impactful to the awesome day we had. We were able to just brush it off and continue the rest of our night else where with no ill...

I am very sad to give such a review to a lovely place and one that was highly recommended. I work in the industry as well and i tend to lean on the side of "things can and do happen" instead of how some in our industry can be down right rude with extremely high expectations. i want to give my detailed experience.

My partner and i visited Saturday evening 9/21 for 7:45pm reservations. There was a female host that check us in. the most unfriendly encounter ever! she didnt care one bit that were visiting SLC for the first time and was recommended to go here. There was a nice host that sat us. she was super sweet.

That said, we got sat in the farthest corner outside that you could possibly get that was closest to the sidewalk. It made us feel like we were put there on purpose so we could not be seen by others.

it took about 10 minutes for our server to see us. she was super sweet as well, but that is a long time to wait to be greeted

We saw the menu with the 2 drinks that were part of some contest, so we wanted to take part of it and rate it. the survey, we thought, was internal only, and not part of a larger contest in the area. the drinks were awful!! terrible drinks.

We ordered the Grilled Zucchini Bread. It was super dry and hard and almost inedible. but since neither one of us have had it we decided maybe it was a local dish that we just are not used to.

We both ordered the available steaks. the Wagyu Beef and the prime NY Strip.

And once we placed that order, we got it, no joke, in 5 minutes. 2 steaks in less than 5 minutes that we asked to be done medium well. That is NOT normal. i dont care where you located. so that lead us to feel very concerned about the quality of the food and made us feel like we were being rushed out. "Get the Gay couple fed and out of our restaurant" is how we felt.

The presentation of both dishes was messy. again, that might be a local thing so we didn't focus too much on that. but they looked like everything was just thrown on the plate and served to us with no Chef inspired presentation. everything tasted fine, but it was not exceptional or memorable.

when we asked for our check, the server came back with her handheld. We never saw our check first. so we had no idea if it was accurate. afterwards, and once we left, since we felt like you wanted us gone, i had to crunch the numbers from my memory of the prices. Luckily it was correct.

we quickly paid and left so we could no longer feel like we were a burden to an embarrassment to your restaurant.

this by far is one of the most disappointing restaurant experiences i have had in...

I did NOT have a great experience here. The staff was very RUDE rolling their eyes at us?! The food was COLD, RAW, and or DRY. Back Story: I planned my Birthday dinner here with 23 other people. I emailed their event planner to coordinate a date and time two months in advance. The Dinner was set for 6 PM. Half the party showed up early and my self & the rest of the group got stuck behind an accident on the freeway. Causing us to be 25 minutes late. That was out of our control, I felt terrible about it. When we got there we ordered a drink and it took over 40 minutes to get a drink if you were lucky... Half the party never received their drinks and just went to the bar their self. I know the servers were doing their best, It was not their fault. I felt for planning this dinner in advanced, they should have had the servers taken care of / more coverage...Since I had to plan it with their event coordinator. The Food was AWFUL. The food came out so dry we couldn't even eat it, one was gluten free and the server tried telling her that her plate of risotto pasta was gluten free when in fact it wasn't. The hamburgers came out so raw they were cold. No one came back to check in to see if the food was good or not. Half of us didn't eat dinner and by the time we got our checks it was 9:30 pm. The Manger asked how the service was and I told her not the best.. that we didn't get half our drinks, the food was awful and the servers barely checked on us. She started to argue with me saying it was my fault since we were 30 minutes late. First of all half the party was early ordering drinks and appetizers....You're telling me the food was awful because some of us showed up a little late? You're also telling me that it makes it ok for your staff to ROLL THEIR EYES at us? I'm in customer service my self. Specifically management, I would NEVER talk to a guest the way she did. I was being kind about the whole situation and all she could say was "well can I tell you my side, you were 30 minutes late." As people are trying to sing happy birthday to me. She was suppose to come back and talk with me. Instead she said someone else will reach out to you... and they never did. AWFUL SERVICE. AWFUL FOOD. AWFUL MANAGEMENT....