My most memorable is the worst dinner experience I have ever had anywhere... and it occurred at LeCellier.
We had a dinner reservation in February at 7pm (fireworks were scheduled for 9pm). It was raining that day. When we arrived 15 minutes before our ADR, the lobby was PACKED. We squeezed ourselves in, checked in, and were told the wait would be "15 or 20 minutes". 45 minutes later, we were still STANDING (no chairs available). We asked again, and were told "very soon now". After 75 minutes of waiting (i.e., an entire hour past our ADR time), we were taken to our seats.
The seat was in the middle of a banquette. To the right was a booth with 4 people. To the left was a booth with 6 people. This was in an alcove. Between the two booths was a table for two. One sat on a padded booth seat. The other, me, was given a chair. However, the chair was a high chair for a baby. After getting a chair that an adult could actually sit upon, we were greeted by our waitress.
The waitress took our drink order and disappeared for 15 minutes. When she returned with drinks, we placed our dinner order. While we waited for dinner, we got a lovely view of her back side as she stood between our table and the booths to serve both booths on either side. We were bumped by trays containing food, other guests getting out of their booths, and I had water spilled on me by a waiter refilling drinks for those in the booths. Our appetizers only took 25 minutes to arrive. When both booths emptied out to go to watch the fireworks, we breathed a sigh of relief.
I called over the guy with the tablet and asked if we could change seats before our entrees arrived, as both booths would return shortly. Despite NUMEROUS cleared and empty tables, he told us we could not exchange seats.
Our entrees arrived at the exact moment the people from the booths on either side came back, wet, and slid past us to get back to their booths. I got quite wet, as you can imagine, even though I did not go out to see the fireworks (as was our original plan booking dinner 2 hours before they would start). As I ate my entree, a cake appeared for one of the booths and they sang happy birthday. W finished our entrees and then waited, and waited, and waited, for our waitress to show back up for our dessert order. Finally, in disgust, I got up, found the ONLY waiter on the floor, and told him we had finished our entrees 15 minutes ago, and there's no sign of our waitress. He went back into the kitchen, and a minute later she arrived *with an attitude*. We ordered dessert, which came out in under 5 minutes. She slapped the bill down with the dessert, and then disappeared for 15 minutes.
We paid the bill with our KTTW (this occurred before Magic Bands) and gave her a $1 tip, which my wife thought was overly generous based upon the very poor level of service. All told, from the time we walked into the restaurant, to the time we walked out, was nearly 3 hours. As we left, my wife asked for the Manager. We recounted our 3 hour tale of woe, to which he replied "We are very busy tonight." We both walked out vowing to never return, and we have not.
Something so small made such an impression that we keep going.
