Vanessa S
Google
We were excited to try this place out as we are Lakers season tix holders and are tired of the LA Live options. The atmosphere is great! The food we ordered was actually good or had potential, except the Ceasar salad. It may have been ok when it was first made, but as we sat for 25 minutes after ordering without our server even coming by and asking if we needed another drink watching several tables around us that ordered way after us get their food, I finally flagged her down. I asked why the salad wasn't brought out yet, and she basically said, oh I thought you'd wanted everything at once. Obviously, this server has very little experience and wasn't trained properly. As a former restaurant owner, server/bartender myself and trainer, I told her, almost everyone wants soup/salad/appetizers 1st. And I wanted to tell her, it's not impressive to not write orders down because most servers get something wrong, but I refrained from schooling her. But she should ALWAYS ask how the guest wants the food to come out, especially when they order several items. The Ceasar salad was wilted, warm, tasteless and really an embarrassing item. You should just take it off the menu if your staff can't make it how you created it and if it's going to sit in the back to become mush. But the dressing itself was tasteless, absolutely no hint of poblanoes or a proper Ceaser dressing. So that was a disappointing beginning of our meal.
And I was right, the server who thinks it's impressive to not write down details of an order, got our order wrong. We clearly ordered a half baguette and she even asked twice, so a full or half and we both said, half, but we got a full and we're charged for a full. Despite this mistake, the hot pastrami baguette was really good. We also ordered the pastrami Flatbread. It has potential but was a soggy mess. I had to eat the toppings and throw away the wet n soggy crust. Again, this is poor execution, not bad taste. One thing as a former chef, I'd suggest not putting super thick slices of tomatoes on the bottom. Also, crisp up the pastrami a bit because maybe it was also contributing to the sogginess. You should also maybe bake the Flatbread to a more crisp state, then top it. But again, it probably sat in the back waiting for other items as nothing on it was hot or even warm, my added egg on top was cooked to death, hard yolk, also weird a chef or cook would serve that. Flavors were there, but poorly executed, so so soggy flatbread.
We ordered a side of fries, which were the best thing we had. They were hot, crispy, not greasy and perfect. The side of fried chicken had good flavor, but the breading was all falling off. As a seasoned fried chicken fryer, I will tell you, this is from excessive moisture before frying. You guys gotta start over on the breading process. What you're doing is not right. After I brine my chicken, I dry it and if I dip in egg batter or a batter of some type, I will still dip the pieces of chicken in a little flour and sit them on a wire rack and let them dry out a bit either on the counter for 15-20 min if I'm ready to fry or in a fridge, then I let the chicken sit for 15 min so I don't try to deep fry super cold chicken. But your breading has to be dry, needs a bit of time to dry out before you fry in oil or all your breading will fall off, which is what happens to your chicken. I read a few other reviews with the same complaint.
The last thing that was super odd and uncomfortable was that when you pay, the server just brings you this credit card machine. No check, just a total. I am never going to feel comfortable paying $100+ bill without seeing it, even if it was $25, I want to see my check. This is obnoxious and honestly a very unethical way to ask diners to pay. You're put in an uncomfortable situation and even when we asked for the check the server acted like we were the obnoxious ones! As long as this is how you run this business, I won't be coming back to give it another try. It's just wrong, and I know others must feel the same.