This is a nice venue on a warm night, but you need more than that to make for a satisfying restaurant experience. I arranged to meet some friends there and arrived a little early, so I tucked into the bar, a mostly comfortable space overseen...by a couple of hunky barmen whom I found aloof and condescending. The first bartender took my martini order as if he were doing me a big favor and then looked insulted when I asked him to stir rather than shake it--he may have been planning to stir it all along, but why get huffy about it? I've been to dozens of bars where you have to be specific to be safe. So he made an obvious "screw you" gesture by over-stirring the drink. He didn't speak to me again, ask me how the drink was, whether I wanted to keep the tab open, or anything, and he sent the busboy to give me the check.
Haughty bartender number two took the order from a couple next to me who wanted margaritas and then asked if he could "put strawberries in them."
"Yes," the barman said, "but we don't recommend it."
The customer asked "why?" and the barman said something like, "Well, you may like it, but a lot of people don't. But if that's what you want.."
I think strawberries in margaritas is a bad idea, too, but if I were a barman who works for tips I wouldn't go all Downton Abbey butler on a customer.
It was a little tense for a moment but the couple and Tom Cruise made up over the music, which, by the way, was much too loud. People had to practically shout over it. The guy half of the couple said that "you have good music here," and the bartender agreed but then added that, "Well, in the morning, the old owner comes in and makes us listen to his elevator jazz, but in the evening we have our way."
Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett did not make "elevator" music, an ignorant, adolescent assertion, though I suspect the barman's pal who wanted strawberries in his margarita would probably agree with him.More