disappointedWhen our friends called they spoke to a few different girls. First they were told they weren't taking reservations, the next said no reservations until after 9:30 and finally were told to come in at 9:45. He asked if we came in earlier was there any chance we would be seated early and the employee responded that there was no point because our reservation was for 9:45 and that's when we would be sat. The first strike was when we pulled up. The valet parking attendant told us there were no more valet spots so we would have to fend for ourselves. It recently snowed about 2 feet here so street parking is impossible and though my friend let us out so we all didn't have to hike, he wound up having to park 3 blocks away.
Us girls went inside to check in and when we gave our name the hostess told us the wait was about an hour. We were understandably confused and asked how that could be when we made a reservation. Another girl stepped in and said that they don't do reservations, but they do call ahead which is their form of it. She said the wait was 2 hours for walk ins. We were very annoyed because if the wait was 2 hours for walk ins, we could have shown up at 8 (which was when we originally had the idea) and been seated at 10 instead of just starting our wait. We stepped off to the side and waited for my friends boyfriend to return from parking since there didn't seem to be anything else to do. Any where else would be closed by this point so we were kind of stuck. Once he got back we explained the situation and he was just as annoyed and asked where our pager was. We never got one. He returned to the counter where the hostess seemed astonished that we hadn't received one even though we never left her line of sight.
Five minutes later the pager goes off and we were all ready to put away our sour faces since we obviously weren't being made to wait an hour and maybe someone had figured out what reservation meant. It was our mistake to get our hopes up since they only paged us by accident. They then assured us we were the next table to be sat but we watched 2 other parties sit ahead of us. Two more strikes. We found a bench to sit on and wait and eventually we were seated.
The four of us were put at the grill with one other couple and after ordering our drinks, we asked the other couple if they had called ahead or were a walk in. No surprise they were a walk in so clearly our "reservation" meant nothing other than to give us a false sense of importance. However we were sitting down, getting our drink on and ready to watch the show. Three of us had been there before but my girlfriend had never had the pleasure. Unfortunately (I'm assuming because it was now about 11pm) we got the most lackluster chef in the place. There was no food catching, no beating heart rice, no egg twirling, nothing. We dropped $100 (per couple) to watch him mix some fried rice. I could have done that at home with a box of chicken helper for about $5. It was extremely disappointing and I can't see myself going back there anytime soon. I understand that V-day is a big eating out night but if they had just been honest with us and not told us we had a reservation we could have walked in earlier or gone somewhere else. All in all a disappointing night.