Benedict's — Restaurant in Wayzata

First, let me preface this review by saying that I have NEVER left a 1-star review for anyone. Just to make it clear that I am not the typical negative person who only leaves bad reviews for establishments.

I am going to give the full story below, but for those of you who don't want to read a story, the hostess and host/manager were terrible to my pregnant wife, myself, and our 2-year-old son. To the point that we were uncomfortable and chose to leave the establishment. We've eaten here before a few times and had a great experience with the food quality and table service. But what happened today was unacceptable.

Full story:

Myself, my wife (8-months pregnant), and my 2-year-old son had an absolutely terrible experience today at Benedict's. My pregnant wife walked in to request a table and was told that the wait would be 20 minutes. No problem. At that time, she requested a booth positioned next to a wall, as we have a lively toddler, and normally seat him on the inside of booths to encourage him to stay seated. According to my wife, the hostess was very lackadaisical and had a poor attitude from the start of the process. Even to the point of being rude to my visibly pregnant wife when she asked about being able to sit down somewhere so that she could rest while waiting for the table.

I had been waiting in the car with my son until the table was ready, and once we received the notification, we came inside. Despite asking for a booth next to a wall, we were seated at an open-ended booth, which was not going to work for our toddler for the reasons I mentioned earlier. We asked the hostess if we could be moved to a booth next to a wall as we had originally requested, and she told us that it would be another 20 minutes. I spotted a booth that fit our needs but was just dirty and pointed it out. She said that she would clean it off and get us seated.

Mind you, as all of this is going on, our son is getting very impatient because he is hungry and doesn't have somewhere to sit. Due to the craziness, my tired and 8-month pregnant wife sat at the dirty table which we were happy to wait for to be cleaned. Before I could even sit down to join her with our son, a male host/manager wearing an ivy cap style hat (whom my wife previously witnessed being rude and indifferent towards customers), approached us and asked my wife if we had been on the waitlist. My wife quickly explained the situation, but this man did not seem to care. He told my wife that she needed to get up because the table was dirty and they needed to clean it off, making a few snide and passive-aggressive comments in the process. His entire exchange with my wife was rude, condescending, and petty, all right in front of my face.

I took exception to the way that he spoke to my wife and treated my family, and informed him that we would be leaving the establishment, to which he replied "Ok, good.".

That remark from him infuriated me to the point of raising my voice to him and using a few profanities. I'm not going to hide that. But, he spoke terribly to my wife and disrespected all of us in the process. This behavior by these two staff members and the experience as a whole was completely unacceptable. We will not be returning as long as that man is working at this establishment.

To the owner of the establishment, if you would like to make this right then feel free to...

We thought we would try the new breakfast spot in Wayzata after hearing our friends talk about it. It was a Sunday morning and it seemed fairly busy. We were told it would be a wait of 30-45 minutes and decided to wait. I started looking around and saw several open tables and wondered why they were not calling names and filling the open tables. I asked our waitress and she said that when the kitchen gets backed up they do not fill the empty spots can catch up. With the long wait time, we did see several groups of people just turn around and walk out after hearing the long wait time. Why not seat the people at the empty tables, explain to them it may take longer than normal to get their food order, and get them some beverages and maybe some complimentary doughnut holes to ease the wait time? It might keep some of the people from walking out. Plus it looks better to those who are waiting instead of having them thinking that the hostess is not doing her job. Once we were seated, our waitress (Sara) was very apologetic about our wait. We Aordered the avacado toast for starters and it was very good. I ordered an omelet with chorizo, cheddar, and mushrooms. When it arrived, I started eating and thought it was odd that the first few bites did not have any cheese or mushrooms. It open the omelet up and it was missing those ingredients completely. I showed our waitress and she offered to have the kitchen make me a correct one, but I declined, since we had been there for close to an hour and a half by then. The omelet itself was made the way I like it, in that the outside was brown from too hot a griddle. It also was thick, and my preference is to have a thinner egg and have it wrapped around the filling. This omelet was more like a taco. The GM came over to our table and apologized, and took the omelet off the bill, and also gave us a gift card “to entice us” to return. She did exactly what I would have done had it been the other way around. Cudos to her. My wife had the normal eggs, bacon and toast. She said the bacon did not have much flavor, but otherwise it was good. The bright spot on our visit were the potatoes and the avacado toast. Sara our waitress apologized several times and was very sincere. She did a great job. We will be back to give it another shot, but will not order the...

I worked in the service industry for over 20 years so I know Sunday breakfast/lunch service is difficult and can be hectic. However, today it was very sad and I may not go back. I was told that the wait would be around 45 minutes, so when it got to be past an hour, I walked up to the host stand and asked when is my name coming up? They said oh I’ll check you in. Almost as if I had checked in online and hadn’t come in and said I’m here. No, I checked in on arrival at 10:45 and they said 45 minutes approximately we got seated at 12:15, my fried hot chicken Benedict was wonderful, my sister’s side of fries was ridiculous. She had like 15 fries for seven dollars. The bloody Mary’s that we ordered, came after I was finished eating, the ice was partially melted and the bloody Mary and the beer was warm, so that just meant it was sitting on the bar for about 20 minutes. While we were waiting for an hour and a half my sister had grabbed a cup of coffee, knowing that she was going to order one anyway, so the waiter asked if we’d like that filled up I said yes please. Well, that didn’t happen until after I was done eating either. I went to the wait station to see if I could fill it up myself and the pot was empty. I wish the food runner that dropped off our food would’ve asked, “Is there anything I can get you” like normally happens, then at least I would’ve gotten a warm up on the coffee and I would’ve asked them to remind the waiter about the bloody Mary’s. I’m the type of person that likes to take a bite of food. Take a sip of my coffee. however, understandably so they were dropping stuff off and dashing off, hoping that the waiter was going to do their own job. Yes, I tipped 20% anyway as I know that there could’ve been extenuating circumstances. Maybe he got seated six tables all at once, but if I was the waiter, I would’ve said these drinks are on me. I’m sorry I completely forgot about them. It’s too bad because I really loved going to Benedict’s maybe they can only handle a...