The Butcher Shop & Grill

Shocking service at The Butcher Shop & Grill!

My partner and I had lunch at The Butcher Shop earlier today. In my arrival, the restaurant front had dining tables stacked on top on one another with staff running around chaotically while I stood there waiting for a host\ess to attend to me. It was clear that they were scrambling to get the place set up and ready to receive patrons for lunch. The time was minutes before 13:00.. they ought to have been ready at that time, in my opinion. When someone finally noticed me there in my confusion, I enquired whether the restaurant was open for lunch to which I received a positive reply. A lady took me to my table and left me there with the menus without as much as a word. A few minutes later, another server came to offer me a drink and left to bring me the water I had ordered for the table. Then, a different server brought bread and butter to the table and took our food orders. My order included mashed potatoes which she suggested were “finished” at that time thus offering me chips instead. We were the first seated patrons for lunch at that time so items on the menu being “finished” was strange. Our meals arrived in good time, the plates were placed on the table and the server disappeared, without a word, for the duration of our stay. As the restaurant filled up, the environment seemed to get more chaotic with servers moving frantically across the floor without any acknowledgment of our existence. We eventually flagged a server down to ask for a side of caramelised onions.. he hardly made eye contact and hurried away only to bring us raw red onion slices! He took off again before we could make him aware that he got the order wrong. By now it was clear that we were not going to get any quality service from anyone there given that we had already had encounters with 4 different servers who each gave us poor service. So we left the raw onion order unchanged and finished our lunches. It took more than 5 minutes to clear our plates off the table, and which point we asked for the bill. We wanted nothing more to do with that place. When the bill arrived, my partner complained about the shocking service and the server gave an unqualified, lukewarm apology for the bad service. Our jaws were in the floor the entire time we were at this restaurant because we have dined there many times, respectively, in the past and could have never come to expect such substandard service from such an upmarket restaurant.