Shake Foundation — Restaurant in Santa Fe

This place is wrong in all the ways. Overhyped, underwhelming food, subpar customer service. The fries are the exception.

My junior foundation was "missing" a mouth feel. They put the patty on top of the lettuce, tomatoes, etc. so the meat's not hitting your tongue correctly. Flipping it over helped, but truly, it's missing the salt and umami. I used to have a burger dinner once a week, usually Shake Shack, and the fact that I spent months in Santa Fe and never felt the urge to come back says something.

In terms of the customer service, I know Santa Fe restaurants tend to do the whole close before their posted hours, but this was egregious:

They close at 7p. We arrived at around 6:25p. I also got a phone call as I was stepping up to the window so when they asked us what I wanted, I excused myself (because I didn't want to be one of those people on the phone at the register) and the cashier told the picky eater that their kitchen was going to close soon and we needed to order now.

And we can't order shakes.

As I was trying to take my call, picky eater bugs me to tell me I need to hang up and order now. And in my mind I thought maybe they think I'm going to be on the phone for a long time and she wanted to close the kitchen 15 min before closing time, but I had plenty of time before that moment.

No. No. They are closing now. Order now.

?!?!?!

Fine. I apologized with my call, hung up to order my burger, and waited.

While we were waiting they turned away three other people within a span of no more than five min! The first time I thought I heard wrong. We JUST ordered...how are you closed now if it's not even close to 7p? That potential costumer was upset and left. Another gentleman came by and no one was at the register so we told him "I think they're closed." And he was a little thrown off too: "they're supposed to close at 7." We shrugged and told him about the previous interaction. He shook his head and left.

The third one came, lady with rollers in her hair. The cashier came back and told her they were closed. And she was like, I just want ice cream. Can't I just get ice cream?

No. No she could not.

Clearly this lady left her house in a hurry wanting ice cream, can you really not just scoop her some? Listen I've worked in costumer service too, and I get wanting to close and go home, but also, show some compassion. She clearly looked like she was going through something and rushed to get here before your posted closing time. Why can you not just quickly ring up and scoop her a ball of ice cream?

So I thought, okay maybe they changed their hours and they weren't properly reflected on social media, which happens, and I would never blame a restaurant for that. On the way home though, I checked the website and it clearly showed 7p for closing.

I get closing early on a slow night. But turning away these customers clearly means it was not a slow night.

The burger was barely worth it. The lying to costumers and mistreatment is clearly not.

If you want to help your employees get home earlier (which again, I totally get), then...

We visited on 5/4/19. Our nephew lives up in Espanola and we decided to treat him here for his birthday. We have eaten here before and had a great experience. This time was much different. The girl in front taking orders is absolutely rude. She asked what we would like to order, I proceeded to tell her what I wanted, the phone rang and she interrupted me as I was ordering, answered the phone and told me "I'll be right with you". She then got off the phone and had me repeat the first part of the order that I had already given her. She had me repeat myself several times during my order. I understand needing to answer the phone, however she could have approached that situation better. I ordered garlic mayo on one of the burgers. When our order was ready, I asked the gentleman which burger had the garlic mayo as none of the 5 burgers were marked. He said "umm i'm not sure". I said Okay. We had to go through each burger to find out which had the garlic mayo only to find that NONE of the burgers had the mayo inside. Which I had been charged for it. No biggie, I went up to the register and advised the girl up front that I ordered the garlic mayo and we did not get it. She gets the receipt, and then asks me "so you didn't get the mayo". The way she asked me as if I was lying. Never says "i'm sorry, let me get that for you" She then proceeds to talk to the guy who gave us our order in spanish, and brings me the container of mayo. By this point my burger was cold and the rest of the family was almost done with their meal. While eating, I watched a gentleman go up to the window and this was obviously his first time here. He's there reading the menu deciding what to order. The girl in front has the audacity to ask him "ARE YOU OKAY"? what kind of customer service is that? she really needs to take some customer service lessons. It was as if she was pressuring him to hurry up and order. No one should feel rushed, especially if this is their first time visiting place. The food was good. However the customer service fully ruined our experience. To top it off before we left, we ordered 5 shakes. All different flavors, My husband went to the window to pick them up and they are all the same color. (vanilla looking) but great shakes. My husband asked how can we tell which shake is which, the gentleman then says "umm you can hold them up to the light" Really?! another guy in the back heard him say this and came up and marked our shakes with a marker, this should be standard when ordering more than one shake. For as much as we spent we are very disappointed with the service we received. Maybe will try again when there is...

When you pay at the till, you come to realize what you're getting into when you're given an all-plastic fountain drink cup and lid and an environmentally responsible paper straw - and no recycling bin to put the recyclable cup.

It's amazing to eat a burger at a place that serves fresh/frozen green chile. It adds a meaty flavor along with a subdued spice that is unrivalled. And then you go to this place, where only a couple months after harvest season you get green chiles on your burger that taste like they came from a year-old tin - ones which contribute literally nothing to a burger. And they show up in the chicken sandwich as "green chile mayo" - a condiment that tastes like watered-down tartar sauce with these same flavorless obstacles.

I am just fascinated at how a place can fall short of all expectations. The burger patty was cooked to "Congratulations!"-done - far from medium as the online menu insists. It was dry, to the point where I thought maybe I was served a vegetarian burger, but I'll chalk that up to their special "Beef Blend".

The chicken sandwich's cutlet is cut almost as laughably thin as they do at Arby's (the one on my sandwich was approx. 8mm thick) and is overcooked to the extent that it curls up and looks identical to a catfish sandwich. I didn't even know you could do that with chicken.

The fries were brown, oil-logged and limp despite being eaten fresh - as if they were not blanched even a little bit. Granted, there are a lot of folks who like this sort of fries, similar to the ones they sell at Five Guys, so ymmv.

Even the unsweet tea was burnt, bitter, and undrinkable - as if it were brewed and stewed at way too high of a temperature. Coming from someone who makes tea daily using a simple coffee maker, that's just crazy. It's just tea.

I have worked around machinery all day long for the past decade - air powered impacts and grinders, welders, lathes, etc. But the entire time I was there, music was being blasted out from above the pickup window to such an intense volume that it physically hurt. I could not hear the cashier when placing my order, and when it came time to pickup, all I could do is cringe and get my order as fast as possible and move as far away as I could from the speaker.

Nothing says "Get the heck away from my restaurant"...