Afternoon All,

Went to Rue 127 on Saturday night for a 7:30 reservation to celebrate my mom's birthday with my sister.

We were at least seated on time. And the lady at the bar wished my mom a happy birthday. Other than that...I can't say there were any positives.

Our waitress was cold and uppity right from the get-go. Not a good start.

It took somewhere between 20-30 minutes to have our drinks served to us...they didn't apologize for the wait - the waitress only mentioned that the drinks were still in the process of being made.

This was a little strange to us, since the restaurant has no more than a dozen tables, and the bar was not exactly slammed.

For that long of a wait, I've most definitely seen a few places comp a drink...but not these folks.

So,we decided to split two appetizers between the three of us - the risotto and the tortellini scallops.

For our entrees, we ordered two batches of mussels, leek soup, gumbo and the grilled pork chop. The waitress actually asked if they could serve the dishes in a certain order to benefit the kitchen! We didn't want anything special...just wanted it all served together, and then she said, "Okay, we can do that." Hmm...

Bread was never brought to the table (they call it brioche, but it looked just like a roll from Picadilly), so we had to ask them to bring it. It was very fluffy and tasted good - but not hot or even warm.

Both the scallops and risotto were lukewarm - and the risotto had too much salt - very odd to have a lot of that in a risotto dish. It was also bland - risotto is supposed to be creamy and rich - not light or unflavorful. I'm no scallop expert, but according to my sister, they were served inside a tortellini that was very low-grade - and caused it to taste pretty nasty.

We enjoyed the bread enough to want some more, though. They never inquired to see if we'd like any more, so we had to ask once again.

And our waitress told us the following - "Well, it's made in house, so I'm not sure if we can. Do you think we can bring 1 to 2 pieces?"

Never in my life have I seen a restaurant try to negotiate with a customer over bringing a little more bread to the table. It might be the most absurd thing I've ever seen a waitress/server say to me.

Then...everything else was served. Leek soup, two orders of mussels, gumbo, and the pork chop.

Took one bite each, and discovered that everything was lukewarm or cold - save for the french fries served with the mussels. And again - the pork chop was overloaded with salt, and so were the fries.

At this point, we'd had enough of their crap and asked a busboy for either our waitress or the manager. The busboy didn't actually say anything - he just walked away after we asked him.

So our waitress came to the table - we told her that the whole experience was terribly disappointing. When we pointed out that 4 out of 5 things on the table were cold, she had the nerve to tell us, "Well, I've never heard that before."

What kind of an employee would try to counter a customer's justified unhappiness by suggesting their kitchen is infallible?

So, we just said that we'd like to pay for the drinks and entrees and call it an evening. We got an extremely insincere "I'm sorry" from the waitress - and I was very pleased to see my sister tell her, "No, you're not."

And still...no manager in sight.

A few minutes passed, and a woman came to the table. No apology and no introduction. She simply said, "Here's what we did with the bill..."

So my sister stopped her and asked, "Are you the manager?" She responded, "Yes."

Unfortunately, we had to point out the obvious to her by telling her, "Don't you think you're supposed to start out by saying, 'Hi, I'm the manager. I'm very sorry you had a bad experience'?"

All we got in return from her was, "Well, I hadn't finished yet."

They should have comp'd the entire thing - that's what a professional establishment would have done. And a professional establishment knows that you err on the side of graciousness whenever it's possible.

You have been warned...