About the meal I didn't have at the new Gaithersburg location:
I wanted to have dinner here tonight with my family to celebrate my birthday. Not because I am in love with their food, but because it is an easy place to make sure everyone can find something they like (with a large group there are always picky eaters and we have 4 children in my family). I also wanted to check out their newest spot.
I called about a week ago and asked if I could make a reservation. The person who answered the phone said that they are not taking reservations, but with the size of my group (14) I could call the day of in the morning and they would have no problem accommodating my group.
My wife called this morning and she was assured that although they do not yet take reservations, they would put a table together for us at 6 pm. My wife asked a second time: "are you sure you will have a table for us? I don't want 14 people getting there and you tell us there won't be a table." She was assured that they would accommodate us. Before heading to the restaurant we called ahead a second time, an hour before our 6 pm arrival. We were again assured there would be a table for us.
I guess you can see where this is going. We got there a little before 6 and were told that they would be unable to accommodate us in one table. The manager said that based upon the design of the seating, they are unable to seat a group of our size. Funny thing is that there was a row of tables and they had just seated a 2 top in the middle of the row. This row of tables could have easily accommodated our party. It became clear that they were unwilling to seat our party.
Someone might read this and say "hey, the place made a mistake, which happens." Well, there were two other larger groups behind us that were given the same story as above and the management wouldn't honor their reservations either.
Finally, and I know this is a bit long winded, but they have a whole room in the rear that the manager was unwilling to open. Maybe they are just new, maybe the management is bad, maybe they had miscalculated the staffing needed for tonight, but if they had just told us up front this morning that they couldn't accommodate us, we would have found somewhere else to go. Its really hard make alternate arrangements though at 6 pm for that sized group.
Furthermore, the manager was unwilling to apologize. I will never be back!