The Best Table in Town
Sometimes I forget where the best place to eat is; HOME! After several days in “Computer Hell”, I decided to treat Masae and myself to an early Sunday Dinner somewhere at Ala Moana. There are so many places to choose from, that it’s not always an easy decision.

CPK
The first choice was California Pizza Kitchen. I was delighted to not see a line at the door. We went in and I held up two fingers. The hostess reached out with a beeper and said, “It will be about 20 minutes; our wait staff isn’t here yet”. I was shocked and said, “No thanks, we’ll go next door”. That’s one I have never heard before.

Ruby’s
As we entered Ruby Tuesday I watched the host (on his 2-way headset) talking with a co-worker elsewhere in the restaurant. Without looking at me, or saying anything at all, he handed a hostess two menus, and gave her a table number to take us to. I stared at him and said, “Aloha”. When he looked up I said, “I would prefer a table, not a booth, with floor level chairs.” By the time we reached our table we were freezing in there. Masae put on a jacket and asked me if I thought I would be able to survive the cold. Realizing that they were not likely to warm the place up just for me, I said, “No, let’s go”, and out the door we went. No one noticed our departure.

Macaroni Grill
The last time that I went to Macaroni Grill was the day they opened, and the manager comped our lunch due to the slow service. That memory has always stuck with me, but I decided to give them another try.
As we walked in I was surprised to see how empty the place was, but figured with that being the case, we would get some great service. I was wrong! After being seated for several minutes a waiter rushed by our table announcing, with no eye contact, something like, “I will be with you in a minute”. After sitting there another 10 minutes I went up to the receptionist and asked if we could be moved somewhere with a more responsive wait person. She said, “Sure” and directed me to the other side of the restaurant pointing to a large booth. I asked, “Can we have one of these normal tables with chairs?” There was six to eight empty 4-tops right there. She said, “Wait here, I will need to go ask the hostess.” When she returned, she took us into the bar area.
By now I was ready for a drink, so I thought to myself, “Super?” Well, after sitting there for another five or 10 minutes another waiter sailed by, stopped and wrote his name (in crayon) on the paper table “cloth”, and said, “My name is Chase, your waiter is real busy right now, but he will be with you shortly.” I said, “No, if we are going to stay here, you are going to have to be our savior, I am tired of waiting, and am ready for a drink”. He agreed and took our order. Well, he actually gave us an order form to write in what we wanted. That was different. Half way through our meal he returned to say, “Your drinks will be out shortly”.

Take Home?
And the food; well here’s what we left on the table after our $60 meal. Chase asked if we wanted a “doggie bag” to take that home. We don’t have a dog, so we left it.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Customer Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.