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California Pizza Kitchen: Unsatisfying at Any Speed
location: CPK Deer Park
mood: 
pissed off
pissed offMy wife and I arrived around 8PM. My wife reached the hostess first, and received a rather unexpected reaction. The hostess looked up, made eye contact with her - and then resumed some form of animated conversation with her co-workers. It was only when my wife cleared her throat and resorted to -glaring- at the hostess that she broke off her conversation. It was no more than a momentary annoyance, to be sure. But this was an omen of things to come.
We were seated in ten minutes - a usual and expected delay for that time of night on a Friday. The server asked for our beverage orders - I ordered an iced tea, and my wife ordered a water with lemon. But we were then asked specifically if we wanted a spirit, to which we indicated we did not. I can understand some zeal in regard to selling these high-margin items - but in this day and age, is *pushing* alcohol consumption really appropriate? He returned with our drinks, and there was no lemon with the water. The iced tea had a lemon (part of the standard iced tea kit, apparently, as I also received a small rack of sugar packets). I simply gave her my lemon wedge, and we accepted the error. But this was an omen of things to come.
For our entree, I ordered the new Meat Cravers pizza, and my wife ordered "the garlic cream fettuccine with chicken". There was some crowd noise, and the server asked her to repeat herself. She replied, "Chicken with fettuccine." The server acknowledged this, and took our menus. Seeing that he was about to leave, I was forced to ask, "Is there still complimentary bread?" The server said there was and that he would bring us some. I was disappointed that I would not otherwise have received this relatively inexpensive and standard pre-meal item. Sure, times are tough - but that's exactly when service and courtesies like this are needed to retain the loyalty of customers. He brought the bread and we talked while our food was prepared. Another server brought our dinner - and my Meat Cravers pizza was indeed quite appetizing. However, he brought my wife a bowl of plain fettuccine with dry chicken slices on it. Something few people would order, and fewer would find actually appetizing.
So this concept, this idea that my wife wanted dry chicken and noodles, had spawned itself when the server took her order of chicken and cream sauce on fettuccine, or had introduced itself as a miscommunication between server and cook or second server and cook. Here is the bare pasta she received:
I don't say that NO ONE would order this, as it is a low-fat meal. But I would certainly think that if the server is going to push alcoholic beverages on people, there is a general lack of concern for "healthful eating" that would provoke the question of why the cream sauce was being withheld. I am surprised that all three employees failed this simple sight test and presented the plate to my wife without question or comment. She was not even asked if she'd ordered the chicken *tequila* fettuccine - the only other item on the menu with both chicken and fettuccine in it.
Needless to say, my wife called the server over after determining that there was no garlic cream sauce underneath the pasta, and told the server this was not what she ordered. The server apologized, and said he would bring us the cream sauce. He left the pasta dish on the table, and returned after about ten minutes' delay - while other customers in the restaurant received their meals. Sure, there were many customers in the restaurant - but to ask someone who has received poor service to sit and wait while she watches others being served is needlessly provocative and inflammatory.
The server brought us a ramekin on a saucer. Here it is:
The ramekin plainly contained garlic butter. No cream, no flour, no *ANYTHING* other than garlic butter.
This was INSULTING. The menu item is fettuccine in a white garlic CREAM sauce with chicken - plainly a variety of fettuccine alfredo. It is about as simple a sauce as can be imagined, and has a wide variety of applications. There is no reason why there should not be sufficient quantity of the sauce on-hand in the restaurant to provide for all dishes requested - and CERTAINLY no reason why more cannot be prepared on a contingency basis for problems such as this.
At this point, my wife was understandably upset by the whole affair. She called the server over and told him that she was no longer even interested in the suspect dish - and with her last vestiges of goodwill for the restaurant, ordered a pizza. The server told her he would see that the pizza was prepared as soon as possible, but then LEFT the offending pasta bowl on the table - apparently at this point too concerned with rushing to attend other customers to consider the consequences of leaving the evidence of poor service right on the table.
And this proved the fatal error. After a few minutes of staring at this glaring reminder of the staff's carelessness - and discussing with me that the garlic butter was *ridiculous* as an idea given what had been explained regarding the serving of the bare and dry chicken, my wife became alienated at the whole process. She could not rid herself of the idea that either the staff was so careless that the replacement pizza would also have problems, or that the double-complaint would mark her out as "a whiner" and that angry waitstaff might tamper with the food. I tried to reassure her that this was a somewhat unreasonable concern - but I kept coming back to being offered the garlic butter as cream sauce. We're not stupid.
So the kitchen manager came out to our table, and my wife asked for boxes for our pizzas. It was obvious she hadn't been able to bring herself to touch the pizza she'd been served. The kitchen manager mentioned that the restaurant manager was on medical leave, and offered his apologies and gave us a free piece of cheesecake. But he compounded our agitation by attempting to offer -excuses- for the evening's disappointments. Miscommunication among the staff, new people handling key positions, and the Friday night rush. These excuses made him appear defensive and even arrogant. The fact that the staff saw my wife couldn't even eat the pizza should have suggested the situation had moved beyond simple annoyance. A simple "I'm sorry this experience was so upsetting to you - let me cover your entree, so that you know we are sorry your meal here was unsatisfactory." would have been appropriate and appreciated. But no, he comes over and gives us a bill with both pizzas charged at full. To charge for a pizza that the staff KNOWS has been looked upon with so much suspicion as to be inedible is plainly inattentive.
I suggested, and my wife agreed, that we tip $0.02 as an unmistakable signal of our dissatisfaction. At this point, we may be willing to give the Schaumburg CPK a chance - but the unreduced bill was the final straw for our willingness to revisit the Deer Park location.
I do not wish anyone to lose their jobs over this incident. I suggest this situation can be prevented in future with a few simple steps:
1) Hire more people to cover dinner rush. One reason the staff were so distracted and inattentive was that they were darting from table to table. Less tables per server means better service, better tips and more repeat business.
2) Extend the training period for new hires. The art of meal service is NOT one that can be covered in a seminar. If the server had been more aware of both the restaurant's dishes AND the likelihood that someone coming to a CPK would order dry chicken on noodles, this whole situation could have been avoided. Invest in your staff, and it will be returned in customer satisfaction.
3) Ensure enough management personnel are on staff so that each area is properly and independently covered. The fact that the kitchen manager has to act as restaurant manager diminishes both areas. If a defensive coach has to coach offensive teams, you get poor offense AND poor defense. There is no difference here.
4) Widen the scale of the restaurant open spaces. This would help in reducing cross-traffic between servers and customers, which is a partial cause of server tension and server distraction - and therefore, server error.
If I have reason to believe that the situation at Deer Park has improved, I may visit the restaurant again - and if I find the service to be relaxed and attentive, I will certainly report so here, and make some attempt to convince my wife that the restaurant has seen the error of its ways. But right now, I cannot recommend the Deer Park restaurant to anyone reading these words. You, my friends, have been warned.
annoyed
happy
relaxed
cheerful
bouncy
0 (0.0%)
uncomfortable
hungry
bored