X-Bar, WTF?
So I have kind of a beef with X-Bar, located in the Century City Hyatt. I'm not going to even link to their website, I'm just going to vent. This is a classic story of a nice visit quickly gone sour.
Our friend Cat had been to X-Bar with her company and said it "sucked." I figure if you go somewhere with work and don't have to pay, but you still think it sucked, it was probably pretty bad. And not being super keen on keeping up with the bar scene, we figured we weren't missing out on too much. J went the other day with his office, however, and really enjoyed it. So he brought me there for nice summer cocktails, since how many months of the year can you enjoy daylight at an outdoor bar until past 7?
It started out great. X-Bar is fantastically adorable. It's chic, it's casual, the decorations are all bamboo and white canvas, and the seating is adorable. I'm a sucker for cute lounge chairs and unique knick knacks (funny plates, unusual glasses) at bars. So we grabbed a bar table outside and ordered some drinks.
Service was slow, but we figured it was an unusually busy Thursday and they had understaffed themselves. Our server took our order and my credit card to start a tab. We told her that we were going to pay with cash later and not to run the card, but she needed it anyway to make sure we didn't dine and dash.
About half an hour after ordering our drinks and sitting around watching amazing looking bar food float by, we got our Citrus Monkey (a grapefruit cocktail) and X-Margarita (made with anejo Patron and Grand Marnier Centenaire). The X-Margarita was excellent, the Citrus Monkey fine but not worth re-ordering.
Halfway through sipping (we'd been there an hour at this point) we decided to ask for our check because it seemed like it would take her awhile to come back with it. BOY did it take her awhile to come back with it. I think it took forty-five minutes for her to bring the check (we immediately handed her $40) and come back with change. She kept rushing by and blaming the holdup on the bar, so finally I just went to the bar to see where my change was. Bar was not helpful.
Then, she came back with $8 in change. AHEM, TWO DRINKS DO NOT COST $32. Okay, some places they do, but the menu clearly said $11. We couldn't find her to fix the mistake, for about ten minutes. We found her inside, she looked confused, apologized, and then insisted that one of our drinks was $18. We were so fed up by this point we took her word for it, left her a generous tip because she seemed so frazzled, and left. On our way out we opened a bar menu. Hm. $11 each it said. Too tired to argue, we left.
Do you see what's missing? She never gave me my credit card back, did she? Hmmmmm...so we had to call back, get the voice mail two times, and then call the Hyatt main line to complain that no one at their bar was picking up and I desparately needed my credit card. They had to physically send a security guard up to find my card and bring it down to hold in the safe.
What the hell?! Now I have to monitor my card for fraudulent charges, plus it was a pain in the ass to go back for it in the first place. I wrote a big long complaint to their manager. We'll see what happens.
Yes, it's my fault for not remembering to get my credit card back, but the place needs to be run better. What kind of bar server doesn't know that drinks don't cost $18, and what kind of restaurant lets a credit card sit around unclaimed indefinitely without turning it in to lost and found? They weren't even able to tell me if it had safely stayed at the cashier all night, or if it accidentally went out to another customer who had the decency to return it (with or without jotting down my number, hm?) And since when does it take two hours to grab two drinks and a check?
Our friend Cat had been to X-Bar with her company and said it "sucked." I figure if you go somewhere with work and don't have to pay, but you still think it sucked, it was probably pretty bad. And not being super keen on keeping up with the bar scene, we figured we weren't missing out on too much. J went the other day with his office, however, and really enjoyed it. So he brought me there for nice summer cocktails, since how many months of the year can you enjoy daylight at an outdoor bar until past 7?
It started out great. X-Bar is fantastically adorable. It's chic, it's casual, the decorations are all bamboo and white canvas, and the seating is adorable. I'm a sucker for cute lounge chairs and unique knick knacks (funny plates, unusual glasses) at bars. So we grabbed a bar table outside and ordered some drinks.
Service was slow, but we figured it was an unusually busy Thursday and they had understaffed themselves. Our server took our order and my credit card to start a tab. We told her that we were going to pay with cash later and not to run the card, but she needed it anyway to make sure we didn't dine and dash.
About half an hour after ordering our drinks and sitting around watching amazing looking bar food float by, we got our Citrus Monkey (a grapefruit cocktail) and X-Margarita (made with anejo Patron and Grand Marnier Centenaire). The X-Margarita was excellent, the Citrus Monkey fine but not worth re-ordering.
Halfway through sipping (we'd been there an hour at this point) we decided to ask for our check because it seemed like it would take her awhile to come back with it. BOY did it take her awhile to come back with it. I think it took forty-five minutes for her to bring the check (we immediately handed her $40) and come back with change. She kept rushing by and blaming the holdup on the bar, so finally I just went to the bar to see where my change was. Bar was not helpful.
Then, she came back with $8 in change. AHEM, TWO DRINKS DO NOT COST $32. Okay, some places they do, but the menu clearly said $11. We couldn't find her to fix the mistake, for about ten minutes. We found her inside, she looked confused, apologized, and then insisted that one of our drinks was $18. We were so fed up by this point we took her word for it, left her a generous tip because she seemed so frazzled, and left. On our way out we opened a bar menu. Hm. $11 each it said. Too tired to argue, we left.
Do you see what's missing? She never gave me my credit card back, did she? Hmmmmm...so we had to call back, get the voice mail two times, and then call the Hyatt main line to complain that no one at their bar was picking up and I desparately needed my credit card. They had to physically send a security guard up to find my card and bring it down to hold in the safe.
What the hell?! Now I have to monitor my card for fraudulent charges, plus it was a pain in the ass to go back for it in the first place. I wrote a big long complaint to their manager. We'll see what happens.
Yes, it's my fault for not remembering to get my credit card back, but the place needs to be run better. What kind of bar server doesn't know that drinks don't cost $18, and what kind of restaurant lets a credit card sit around unclaimed indefinitely without turning it in to lost and found? They weren't even able to tell me if it had safely stayed at the cashier all night, or if it accidentally went out to another customer who had the decency to return it (with or without jotting down my number, hm?) And since when does it take two hours to grab two drinks and a check?
posted by Pei at
9:42 AM
2 Comments:
If a server asked for my credit card in advance, to insure that I didn't leave without paying, I would demand to see the manager, complain in the strongest terms about this policy, and then walk out.
By
Anonymous, At
8/31/2007 04:57:00 PM
Is that the case at bars too? I know a lot of people just hand over their cards to start a tab. This was the first time I was asked to do so even though we said we'd just have two drinks and pay in cash. Is it unorthodox? If it is, I'll have even more complaints.
By
Pei, At
8/31/2007 06:44:00 PM
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