Is restaurant closed? I wonder why. Here was our experience at this place (and ensuing email/post I sent to my friends and family):Nov. 2005:
We ate at `THE ORLEANS HOUSE` in Arlington, Virginia the other night. It's supposedly a New Orleans themed restaurant, ironically (is that the right word? :)) run by Asians.
First, while we were waiting for our table, another group came in and just wanted to have a few cocktails. They were turned away, because they could only come in if they were going to eat. Hmm, if I were the business owner, I'd be *ticked at my staff for saying that, $$ is $$ and drunk people eventually get hungry, but hey...
So, the food was adequate, but very small portions and WAAAAYYYY overpriced for what you get. Big time. The service was incredibly poor (at the time we arrived, we were probably the third table, and they didn't even take our dinner order for a good 30 minutes, if that); The chef could actually been seen from the dining room - and he was sitting down doing nothing! My husband is a fine dining/gourmet chef also – 1) He NEVER has time to simply sit down; and 2) If that rare occasion actually happens, the professional chefs/restaurants to NOT allow their customers to see the chef's sitting down, they must do so out the back!
It was a slow night and the service continued to be INCREDIBLY slow - towards the end of the evening, it took about 30 minutes for the waitress to bring us our bill! These time frames are not exaggerated at all.
Then, the waitress `did us the favor` of adding the amount of a 15% tip onto our bill total (the menu did say, in very small writing, that a 15% gratuity was appropriate for groups of 6 or more - we had 6 ppl)....but we were all put off by her actually adding it on for us - like hell we were paying that much in tips with the incredibly deplorable service we received.
PART 2 coming, this program would not let it all fit in this one post... (edited)
- Is follow up to post by dstoltz648 ...
Sorry to learn that Tom Sarris Orleans House is closed. I have dined there many times and always looked forward to it everytime I went to DC. -- 3/27/2008 12:50:04 PM
