We eat out a lot — probably too much for our checkbook and my waistline. This weekend we celebrated a birthday and Mother’s Day by eating out in Short Pump three times. We ate at three of the Short Pump neighborhood’s better-known restaurants — California Pizza Kitchen at the mall, Glory Days on Ridgefield and the new LongHorn Steakhouse — and we had three very similar bizarre experiences.
Friday night, my wife and daughter and I went to Short Pump Town Center to do some shopping at the toy store and Dick’s. We phoned ahead to California Pizza Kitchen to reserve our place in their waiting list. We showed up a few minutes ahead of the promised wait time, knowing we’d have to wait just a little bit for our table. We checked in at the hostess and we were told we’d be seated soon. Five minutes became ten and then became 15. When I checked again at the podium, the hostess said our name had been crossed off the list accidentally and that we’d been passed over. They got us a table within 5 minutes, but it was a frustrating 15 minutes extra wait. There was no apology from the hostess, no manager providing reassurance or sympathy. This was our third visit to CPK in the past 9 days (don’t ask — we sometimes binge on restaurants we like), and this third visit was our only bad experience here. Who knew it would be a precursor of things to come?
Saturday night our son had a baseball game at Tuckahoe Little League, and Glory Days seemed like a natural post-game meal. Also, our hometown Dallas Stars were on the tube in the NHL playoffs, and Glory Days has lots of TVs there. (A sports restaurant with TVs – who knew?) We’ve been to Glory Days a half-dozen times in our year here, and we’ve always enjoyed the food and the ambience. Saturday night was a different story. We went there at the height of rush hour, and we knew there would be a wait. They told us “30 minutes” when we checked in. We passed the time in the lobby and the game room. After 30 minutes, we checked with the hostess, and just like the night before, we were told we had been accidentally crossed off their list. The young lady at the hostess stand just gave the glassy-eyed “Gee – I don’t know what happened.” But no apology. She must have made that mistake before, because she didn’t seem phased by it. Five minutes after we found out we’d been passed over, we were at our table. Glory Days has some new menu items, and we enjoyed our meal.
Today we thought we’d do Mother’s Day lunch at the new LongHorn Steakhouse. Above, I called it one of Short Pump’s “better-known” places, even though it’s brand new, because no doubt everybody’s seen it go up on Broad Street. Today’s restaurant story outdoes the others, but it has a much better ending.
We had a party of 8 (my family and another family of four), which is never easy to seat. We tried to call ahead to LongHorn after we got out of church, but neither 411 nor my Treo phone could locate the number. (It’s 364-3800 if you want to know.) We showed up at the restaurant at 12:15pm. When we were told it would be a 60-70 minute wait for a table for 8, we didn’t blink. We knew every other place around would have a similar wait. We passed our time in the lobby and by making a side trip to the new “Five Below” store in the same shopping center — not a bad way to kill an hour.
About 1:15pm, we’re told that there’s a table in the back where the guests have paid their check. But the guests were very slow to leave. At 1:20pm, one of the managers walked past us carrying in a table from a storage closet somewhere else. He told me he’d be setting that table for us. At 1:25pm, we learned that the table was given away to another party. At 1:30pm, we were told there was still another party of 8 in front of us — something we weren’t aware of up to that time. At about 1:40pm (85 minutes), we were called to a table that had just been vacated. We were asked to wait while the manager cleaned the table. Five minutes later, we were still standing. The table hadn’t been fully bussed. Then another problem. While they had found a table for us, they didn’t have 8 chairs. More waiting. Finally, a booth opened up next to the table. We put the table and its 4 chairs with the booth and we were seated.
That’s the bad news. 90 minutes with three small children (who were exceptionally well-behaved) is more than I want to do again. The good news is what happens next. The manager first offered free appetizers. We said thanks, but we really needed to order, eat and move on. He profusely apologized for our wait and for also being teased with tables that were handed to other people. We told him that we understood the challenges that large parties can bring, particularly on a big family eat-out day like Mother’s Day. He said he wanted to make sure we left smiling. I said that we all looked forward to some very good meals. The rest of the dining experience was fairly routine, though we did enjoy our entire meal with empty drink glasses. The waiter went MIA for about 10 minutes right after we were served our meal by another waiter.
At the end, another manager came back by. He asked if we wanted dessert. Since we had birthday cake at home, we thanked him but declined his offer. He then said LongHorn would pick up our entire check. Wow, that floored us. We protested just a bit, but he insisted. We then asked if he would give us a $1.00 check so we could charge a tip on our credit card. My friend left a generous gratuity and we got up to go. As we left, one of the managers personally sought me out, gave me a discount card, and his personal business card. He told me to call him personally and he’d make sure we were taken better care of next time we visited. We’ll definitely be back. Like that manager promised, we did leave with a smile.
Three bizarre experiences in three days. But only one restaurant went above and beyond to acknowledge the initial mistake. That’s worth a blog post here.
One note about LongHorn. We look forward to our next visit, but it probably won’t be on a big family holiday. The nice thing about their dining room is that it has a lot of booths and not many tables. Booths are much better for comfort and privacy. But LongHorn’s layout works against them for large parties. You just can’t push booths together to make bigger booths. Their lack of space for big parties caused them a big traffic jam today, and left several families quite frustrated. We’ll certainly go back with our party of four, but I’d want a reservation there for any group bigger than 6. LongHorn takes call-ahead seating, but they told me today they don’t take reservations (although I’m sure there’s an exception for a big big group).
