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Saturday, October 27, 2007

What a Barrel of Pickles

Last night my girlfriend and I headed out to dinner at the Pickle Barrel restaurant at Promenade Mall. We had hoped to have a nice dinner out before heading home for the evening. I had been to a nother Pickle Barrel restaurant before with my fellow coworkers and thought the food and service was excellent. The Promenade Mall location was on our way home so we decided to try this other location out.

What a disaster it turned out to be!

We arrived and were seated at 6:00 P.M. The hostess had a long line up and several reservations to deal with. There didn't seem to be any help for her, but she did keep plugging away and was very courteous about it.

My girlfriend and I pondered over our menus for about five minutes before putting them down. We waited until 6:10 P.M. to even know who our server was! Mitchell, our server, then took our drink order. Now normally in my restaurenting experience drink orders are normally taken at most five minutes after the people sit down. This got my ears perked up that something was wrong.

Perhaps another inclination that we were not in for at least decent service was Mitchell, even before approaching our table for the drink order, was seen playing around with a three year old a table behind us.

Next when Mitchell brought us our drinks he explained there were no large cups left and that he would have to keep refilling our small cups. He even switched our drinks around so my girlfriend and I had each other's drinks instead of our own. We quickly rectified that problem after Mitchell left our table.

At 6:25 P.M. Mitchell refillled my 7 Up. However, instead of getting a 7 up, I recieved a large glass of water! Nice, after paying the usual outrageous restaurant price of $1.99 for watered down pop with free refills, they forget to get you the same thing to refill!

After a few dirty looks to Mitchell, I flagged him down and asked why I received water. He quickly got a new 7 Up in a large glass.

The food came about 6:35 P.M. which was adequate timing between ordering and receiving of the food. However, I was a little dissapointed with what I ordered:

CANADIAN CHEDDAR CHEESE BURGER ~ 7.99
Original deli burger topped with Canadian cheddar.Served with French fries & coleslaw.
Add bacon...1.00

The above is what the menu said I ordered. The burger was decent and I added the bacon for an extra dollar. However, there number of fries was dissapointing. My girlfriend ordered:

MUSHROOM & SWISS BURGER ~ 8.99
Original deli burger topped with Swiss cheese, grilled onion and mushrooms, served with French fries & coleslaw.

And got way more fries than I did! Basically both orders of burgers were the same except hers had added mushrooms, swiss cheese (instead of chedder), grilled onoin and mushrooms. So why does she get twice as many fries as I did? I didn't question it verbally with the waiter, but my mind was now not leaning towards ever returning to this restaurant again.

Finally, after we finished our meal, we asked for a refill on our water and 7 Up. It took Mitchell another five minutes to complete this task and then get our bill.

Our bill was screwed up. On the bill for my order to add the bacon the price was $1.99 instead of the $1.00 listed in the menu. I got up immediately to speak with the manager. The manager gave us a discount of $1.00 off the price we paid (including taxes).

My girlfriend and I gathered up our cash for the bill. I approached Mitchell to pay for the bill. I asked for change, he searched and said he didn't have any below a five. A waiter not having any change below a five? HELLO! Something is wrong! Usually wait staff have gobs of coin as that is what tips are usually done out in. I grabbed the cash and receipt and asked him to bring the change to our seat. My girlfriend and I refigured out the cash and got it to within ten cents and left.

To say the least we both hope Mitchell enjoys his ten cent tip. Do we care? No not really as we will never be back to this location again.

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