SSW Complaints Dept: Terrible Service at Matsugen

From: [an eater]
Date: Friday, August 14 2009
To: Shitshow Week complaints dept.
Subject: Terrible Service at Matusgen

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After reading your shitshow posts this week, I had to throw in one of my own. This is bad not just because of the experience we had, but because of the completely different experience we had when we fled Matsugen for greener pastures. Couple of friends and myself went to Matsugen. One of us arrived late, and we should have known there would be trouble when the rest of us, sitting in a completely empty bar, were unable to get the bartender’s attention to order a drink. Once we were seated, the fun continued, with our waiting 20 minutes for a menu.

In the end, our only saving grace was Water Guy – I don’t know Water Guy’s name, or how much they pay him, but he was our one lifeline to the rest of the restaurant staff. Every 10 seconds he was refilling our water glass, while our waiter would disappear for half an hour at a time. Eventually, the only way we could get a drink, or ask for a utensil, or even get our empty plates cleared was to ask Water Guy, who inevitably looked embarrassed we had to ask him and would go procure our waiter.

The food was fine, except for a nauseating dessert course, but the pacing was so uneven, sometimes half-eaten plates were being cleared five minutes after they were delivered, and other times we would have to wait 15 minutes followed by invoking the hallowed name of Water Guy in order to get our next course.

We explained what had happened to the manager, who laughed politely and walked away. Water Guy was slipped a $20.

Now for the good – at 10 minutes to 10pm we called Bouley and asked if we could be seated just for dessert. They said fine, we were wildly underdressed, and not only did they seat us right away, but we got the full sorbet+dessert+mignardises+takeaway lemon cake for our dessert+after dinner drink. If Bouley can do that for shabbily dressed dessert-eaters, why can’t Matusgen muster a waiter who swings by to keep an eye on things from time to time?
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