Vinaigrette — Restaurant in Santa Fe

Be aware what the restaurant does to your credit card! Credit card fraud!

I like the food. But terrible staff and service. The service is slow, and I noticed other customers complained about how they had the wrong checks while I was eating there. That is understandable when the restaurant is busy. BUT, can you believe that as a restaurant they committed credit card fraud?! So check your credit card bill after you eat there and don’t be surprised if you find an unauthorized charge by Vinaigrette.

I paid a visit to Santa Fe and tried this restaurant. Two weeks after I dined in there, however, I noticed an extra unauthorized charge of $151 on my credit card! Yes, this is two weeks after they charged me for my dinner.

I never experienced this before, but I understand that people make mistakes, so I called to ask them to investigate this issue. The lady answering the call told me that the manager Gabe is in charge of this and ask me to call back later. The next day I called again and asked to speak to Gabe. I was told he was not in and asked to leave a message.

I didn’t heard back from them for the following two days. I found that it is actually not hard to find the manager’s number using Google — Gabe Calhoun, the catering manager. I called him explaining the issue, in the hope that he would resolve the issue. Then he told me he was driving, asking me to leave my phone number and my card number to investigate the issue. I texted him with the information he asked. Well, never heard back from him, and he never picked up my call again.

The final call to the restaurant angered me. I called the restaurant again for Gabe, and was told that Gabe was not there. I explained to her that I had called several times about this unauthorized transaction, already left a message, and never heard back from them. I asked when Gabe would be in and how I could get reach of him. She put me on hold for a minute and talked to other people.

After a while, I started to hear people talking on and off. She told another lady, ”This guy is called to speak to Gabe about an unauthorized transaction .” Then the other lady said, ”I will take care of him.” Then this other lady picked up the phone, saying “Hello. Hi, sir? I cannot hear you? What did you say? Could you speak up?” AND then HANG UP the phone! This angered me. It really made me feel that they were trying to hide something — maybe charge people’s credit card randomly to get more tips? Then I remembered when I gave them my credit card, they kept it for more than 5 minutes. I was thinking “how slow the service is, not only the food, but even for payment!” Now I cannot help thinking that they were doing something on my credit card.

They obviously have zero respect for customers. Now I believe the unauthorized transaction is not a mistake, but an issue will be taken care of by the court.

Update: the night after I wrote the review, the manager finally texted me with a reply and asked me to take down the bad review. The money was credited back several days later. It is hard to tell whether my complaint would be taken seriously had I not given the review and decided to file a police report and take the issue to the court. At least I found the way how the waitress treated the customers on the phone...

This is for the Santa Fe location: This was the worst dining experience I've had in years--which was highly surprising as the restaurant has excellent reviews and the decor was welcoming and bright. The service was terrible--we speculated that it was because we didn't order drinks, but after being seated and attempting to catch our waiter's eye as he walked back and forth past our table without asking if we were ready, it took roughly 20 minutes to order. I had the Greek salad with an addition of steak and my husband ordered the frisée with duck confit. It was a confusing experience when our food arrived and my salad had exactly one leaf of romaine lettuce for garnish and the miniscule portion of flank steak for which I paid $7.50 extra was overcooked and and sitting on a bed of diced tomatoes, cucumber, and bell peppers with three olives and a couple theoretical crumbles of feta. All of this would have been okay if there had been more....lettuce. What a weird thing to think about a salad! My husband had the opposite problem; his salad was entirely dry lettuce with some comical shreds of duck (added again as an extra) and a tiny "poached" egg that looked more as though it had been fried over-easy, but that's more nitpicky than anything else. Overall, I felt like I'd paid $18 for a chopped cucumber. The waiter also made us uncomfortable with what can only be described as an extended pour of tepid water while staring blankly ahead, like a business man impatiently waiting for a train. Furthermore, the waiter was bizarrely rude when we asked to split the bill on two cards--one was an Amex gift card and while he said with a snarky expression that "we'd see if it goes through," we distinctly did not see if it went through as we watched him not run the card, come back and tell us he'd tried it twice, then take the other credit card to an entirely different part of the restaurant to run it. We were still hungry after finishing dinner and ended up stopping by whole foods on the way home--which, incidentally, I'd vastly recommend before Vinaigrettte. We will not be returning.

Update: annnnd now I can't stop vomiting. I'm not sure if it's food poisoning or if there was cross-contamination with fish--or if the "traditional vinaigrette" includes anchovies that are not listed on the menu. I didn't inform the staff of my allergies but it also didn't occur to me to do so as there seemed no possible...

This is for the Santa Fe location. I work in Santa Fe, so I'm not just a tourist writing a review. Twice we've gone with co-workers during our lunch our, even getting there early to avoid any crowd.

The first time we arrived around 11:30 and didn't get out of there until 1 pm. We had to apologize to our boss for having a lunch over 1 hour.

This second time however, was absolutely unacceptable in terms of service, quality, attentiveness, management, and time. We went on Monday June 13 for our manager's birthday. We arrived at 11:45 and were seated quickly by a young female employee. Over 20 minutes later, she asked if we wanted anything to drink. We asked for water and it took another 10 minutes for water to arrive. Another 15 minutes pass before she checks our table again to take our orders. Over 45 minutes have passed, we each order 5 of us total. One Cuban, two of the special salads, and two of their regular salads. Around 12:30 we ask for bread and water refills, still not having good service. We got our cups slightly refilled exactly this one time. Around 12:45 our food arrives, but our co-worker who ordered the pear salad special, does not get hers. She waited an additional 10-15 minutes to get her salad that they forgot. Our waitress doesn't apologize, nobody from management comes to check on us, nothing. Other tables that were seated after us had their food well before ours. We finally all have our food and eat quickly, because we were only supposed to be gone 1 hour, even with our manager with us. We work for the state and have very strict 1 hour lunch policies. We got our check and never saw our waitress again, to even take payment. my co-worker whose salad was the late one, got up to talk to a manager. She was rude to us and wouldn't consider removing any items or even apologize. We paid our full price meal of $75 and left.

Needless to say, we will not be going back, nor will any other members of an entire office building. Service needs a huge improvement. It should not take from 12:45-1:45 to dine in and...