Meze Estiatorio — Restaurant in Worcester

In a world where top-notch service is what earns praise, followers, loyalists, and happy, repeat customers, Meze Estiatorio in Worcester recently offered one of the very worst experience ever. Truly, it would be hard to top this bad service experience, which I had to give a credit card number just to reserve a table, lest I cancel and have to pay a $10 fine.

I'd been to Meze in the past and the food, service and atmosphere had all been fine.

On this night we had a 6 p.m. reservation made through Resy which offers the opportunity for special instructions. I included information about needing to complete the meal by 7:15 to get to our next event. We had no intention of ordering many courses or meals that had special requests that would have made that turnaround difficutl.

Here's just a "SHORT" list of failings:

Dirty menus on the table when seated Table next to use seated and ordered within minutes 10 minutes before our server arrives Drink order taken, 10 minutes for drinks to arrive (a bottled beer and a bottled mineral water) Food order taken Dirty menus still left on table 40 minutes for a SALAD appetizer to arrive and dirty menus to be cleared Other servers buzzing around all the other tables, other diners being taken care of promptly Our server ignoring us, standing at the back station staring out. Never once checked on us, asked us about more drinks or anything else to ease our discomfort. No meals at our table still at the 1 hour mark Table next to us had already had drinks, appetizers, a salad, dinner meals, and were at dessert already Other tables around us seated, ordering, eating, paying, leaving I complain at hostess station Meals arrive at 7:05

The only thing servicable about this meal was that the check was delivered right away - because I asked for it when the meals were served.

It was blatently obvious to everyone near us that something was wrong. Did our order not get put in? Did our server make a mistake and have to do it again? The kitchen was clearly on task and not slow. It was embarassing and infuriating.

We scarfed down a few bites, paid up and left. There is a reason good restaurants have staff work in teams. Meze clearly does not do that because not one other staff member checked on us during the whole time, not to clear the dirty menus, not to check on water or drinks, etc.

We were offered no apologies, and no concessions on the $100+ bill, nothing. Even in a time when it is difficult to get wait staff, Meze clearly had a number of other competent individuals working - but each in their own world.

Meze requires that you give a credit card if you make a reservation so that they will charge you $10 if you cancel. Take my advice and don't even...

I have such a mixed review - short story is the food was absolutely incredible but the service and the way they billed us are my complaints. I never write reviews but this was such an interesting experience that I felt the need to share. Got multiple apps, entrees and desserts amongst the party of 4 that I came with. We were greeted pleasantly by the hostesses who were lovely and quickly visited by our server but when we needed another minute to choose drinks, we didn’t se him again for maybe 15 min or more. This same pattern continued throughout the entire experience, the best example of the poor service was the end of the meal that left us sitting at the table, leftovers boxed and bagged as well as even desserts that we got “to go” bagged and sitting on the table and we waited about 20 min before we finally flagged someone down to ask if we could please receive our bill so we could pay and leave which I found odd. But the MOST odd and interesting piece of information to share is that even with as much food as we got and as large as our bill was which you can see in the photo, we were CHARGED extra for not paying with cash. This is a seemingly high-end and pricey place so that was really off putting and surprising to all of us. On top of the poor service and how long we had to wait to get anything going, getting an upcharge for using a credit card was the cherry on top. HOWEVER, it’s worth mentioning again and it deserves further detail how incredible the food was. Seemed very authentic, incredibly flavorful and such great dishes that I already miss and the desserts were also delicious. Pictured meal is the vegetarian entree of stuffed tomato/pepper with the side choice of their beans. Other members got the cod, octopus and gyro...

We had an awful experience at this restaurant and will never be returning. From start to finish, the service was unbelievably bad. We were the first customers to arrive when the restaurant opened, yet somehow, two other groups who came in after us were served their food well before we even got ours. It took forever to get our drinks, and even linger for our food to show up. When it finally did, the orders were wrong. When the food finally did come, one of our parties order was wrong, so had to wait an additional 35 minutes for the right order to come through, and when it finally did, it was undercooked, and it was so overbearing with oregano. Furthermore, myself especially even had a very bad experience with my order. I specifically asked our waiter if the stuffed pepper were hot and spicy, he told me no not at all. I have a very low spice tolerance, so when my order came it was very overbearing with hot spice, all members of our party tried it and agreed, I was not able to eat my dinner.

The service throughout the night was just terrible. Our server never checked on us, left dirty plates sitting next to us, never asked if he should have cleared the table for us until we asked him to and still left plates behind and cups. Furthermore, he didn't even bother to take our menus the entire night, sat on the table our entire dinner.

To top it off, the food wasn't anything special. For the price we paid, we expected much better quality and WAY better service. Completely unprofessional and frustrating from beginning to end. Avoid this place -- you're better off eating...