⭐ 1/5 — COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. WE WILL NOT BE BACK.
We should have left the moment they seated us upstairs.
At 7:00 p.m., it was 100 degrees outside in Austin. When we finally walked out of the restaurant, IT FELT COOLER OUTSIDE THAN IT DID IN THE UPSTAIRS DINING ROOM.
That is not an exaggeration.
It was like eating in a sauna. Who wants to sit and eat a meal in a sauna?
We were drenched in sweat. I am extremely cold-natured — I am normally the person who is freezing in restaurants — and I was soaked. It became so unbearably hot that we couldn’t even finish our meal. We ate what we could, packed up the rest, paid our bill, and left.
There appears to be ONE table upstairs near the AC where the temperature is tolerable. The rest of the upstairs dining area was unbelievably hot. There were no auxiliary AC units and not even a fan in the area where we were seated.
What made me especially angry was seeing babies and small children being seated up there.
One infant in a carrier near us had a very red face from the heat. We saw other small children with red faces as well. If grown adults are drenched in sweat simply sitting at a table, that is not an appropriate environment for babies, children, senior citizens, or anyone particularly vulnerable to excessive heat.
When we finally got downstairs, it became even more frustrating.
Downstairs was pleasant, and I saw an auxiliary AC unit running. So clearly supplemental cooling was available and being used elsewhere in the restaurant.
As we were leaving, I specifically told the hostess, “You should not be seating ANYONE upstairs, especially babies.”
To be clear, the hostess was polite. She wasn’t rude or argumentative. But she also seemed completely unsurprised by what I was telling her. Her response was essentially, “We’re sorry, it’s just the way it is.”
That response made the situation even more unacceptable to me.
If this is “just the way it is,” then the restaurant KNOWS how hot it gets upstairs.
Yet NO ONE WARNED US.
Nobody told us before taking us upstairs, “It’s extremely hot up there.” Nobody gave us the option of waiting for a downstairs table. We were simply seated in an area that was so hot we ultimately couldn’t tolerate staying long enough to finish our food.
There was even a young woman standing behind the hostess holding a fan. I told her she should take that fan upstairs for the baby.
After all of this, there was no discount or adjustment to our bill. We paid for a meal we couldn’t even stay and finish because the dining room was unbearably hot.
This is Texas. Of course restaurants have to deal with extreme heat. But if you KNOW an area of your restaurant cannot be adequately cooled, you don’t shrug your shoulders and continue seating people there.
CLOSE THE UPSTAIRS.
Or properly cool it.
At the absolute minimum, WARN CUSTOMERS BEFORE TAKING THEM UP THERE and allow them to decide whether they want to sit there.
It was like sitting in a sauna trying to eat dinner. We were soaked in sweat. At 7:00 p.m., we walked outside into 100-degree weather and the outside air felt COOLER.
That is absolutely ridiculous and completely unacceptable.
We will not be back.
