Convivium reccomendations

Well, here's the update in case anyone cares....we had a HORRIBLE customer service moment at Convivium - so much so that we did not stay for dinner. However, since they have promised to make amends by treating us to dinner, I will withold judgement until we actuially go....keep you posted...

Well, it is finally time for me to fill everyone in on my total Convivium experience. It has taken this long because our original visit in March was marred by piss poor customer service (as mentioned above) so much so that we did not dine there that evening. We spoke to the owners a few days later and they promised to make it up to us, so I did not post any negativity to give them chance to make things right. Well that's over now. Here's the deal:

March 15 was my wife's birthday. We wanted to go somewhere local and had always heard Convivium was an excellent choice. We were very excited (as you can tell by my original post in this thread).

I called the restaurant to make the reservation a few weeks ahead of time. I said specifically it was a special occasion and that I wanted a romantic table - we don't go out to eat very often and we try and make each time as memorable as possible. We weren't too picky on the exact time...I said 8, 8:30 or 9 - whatever was best for them. They set the reservation at 9pm on that Saturday night.

We arranged for a car to pick us up at our apartment (South Slope) at 8:50pm. As most car services are wont to do, they showed up a little late - we probably got into the car at 8:55 or so. I wasn't concerned - we would only be a couple of minutes late, and we had a reservation after all.

We arrived at the restaurant at what was probably about 9:05. First of all, may I say that they are not set up to have any customers wait for tables. The front door to the place plops you literally into a dining room where you are surrounded by people eating. There is no bar (well, there literally IS a bar, but it seats about 4 people with no allowance for overflow) so if there are more than a few people waiting you are put in the very uncomfortable position of standing over people while they eat, and having to constantly move out of the servers way as they delivered food and cleared tables.

There was no clear host presence at all to welcome us. After some confused milling around we found a harried server behind the bar who was not much help. We told her our name, she looked at a book, looked confused, and said the host would be right back. Fair enough.

Within a minute or two, the host did indeed show up. We gave our name and explained we had a reservation at 9:00pm. His response: "You will have to work with me. I gave your table away since you were late."

At this point I looked at my watch. It was 9:10. Now I myself have worked in many a restaurant in my day, and there is usually some kind of unofficial courtesy reservation policy that holds a reservation for a brief period if the guest is running late. I have asked some friends and most believe there should be about a 15 minute hold before the table is given away.

Since we were having this conversation at 9:10 and he had just come back from seating someone, I can only assume he decided to give our table away at around 9:05.

My response was predictable: "We had a reservation, We are not that late. I want the table that I went to the trouble of making a reservation for."

Him: "Sir, you need to work with me. We are very busy. It's a Saturday night."

I was obviously getting nowhere with him and started to lose my temper to a degree - "I don't care what F%$#ing night it is and I don't want to work with you. I want my table".

His response: "Sir, if want to use that kind of language, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." I said, "With pleasure" and off we went, fuming and stranded on 5th Avenue on a Saturday night with no birthday dinner and no reservation anywhere. We ended up at Moutarde, where we treated very nicely, although the food was mediocre at best. Kinda like a French restaurant at Epcot.

More to come.......