Zola: Uncommon Service

I never thought it was possible to be scarred by Restaurant Week, but after going to Zola, I now realize how wrong I was.


My friends and I picked Zola mainly because it had a vegetarian-friendly menu, which is surprisingly rare for many featured Restaurant Week establishments. Also, it's website describes it as "beyond cooking, eating, and drinking. It's the promise of an uncommon experience."


It was an uncommon experience, but not in the way the website lead us to believe it would be.


I made reservations weeks in advance, so I was shocked when we arrived and the hostess said she could not find my reservation. Fortunately we had made reservations for early in the evening, so they were able to seat us promptly. Sadly this was probably the best customer service we had the entire night.


Zola has only Restaurant Week options on its menu, so if you don't want a RW meal, you're out of luck. This wouldn't be so bad if the kitchen wasn't out of many of the menu items. Twenty minutes after ordering appetizers, half the table was informed that the appetizer they had chosen was unavailable. Later, the kitchen was out of three dessert items, which is roughly 1/3 of the entire dessert menu!


But missing menu items pale in comparison to the service. My friends and I waited 45 minutes before we got bread, and we had to ask for the bread. Then, we got multiple baskets of bread from various servers. After greedily eating the bread and nursing what was left of our $5 Restaurant Week sangria, it appeared that our appetizers had arrived! But it was a false alarm. When I pointed out to the random server that I did not order the tuna appetizer, she rudely acted like I was making it up! An hour and 15 minutes later, our waiter presented our appetizers to us. Famished, we tried to be patient as he went into great detail describing every dish. Even when there was nothing to describe. When presenting the rutabaga soup, he explained it was "pure rutabaga," before pouring it into the bowl with great flourish. Before he launched into a full-on description of what qualified as "pure rutabaga," we took the opportunity to politely express concern about the situation thus far, noting that the other patrons didn't seem to be having this problem. He was overly sympathetic and brought over the restaurant manager, who was appalled on our behalf and offered us a round of drinks to make the situation right. When one of us couldn't find a drink she wanted on the menu, the manager went out of his way to offer her a custom cocktail. We were cautiously optimistic that things were getting better.

Our hopes were dashed five minutes later when the manager brought out the drinks. Those of us who ordered off the menu had delightful cocktails, but my friend's "custom cocktail" was the $5 Restaurant Week sangria! What's worse is that she had an empty sangria glass in front of her, so it was clear that if she had wanted to refill her sangria, she would not have asked for a custom cocktail. I could understand a mix up like this at Chili's, but at a hyped, pricey restaurant, I expect more.

After the manager resolved the drink fiasco, things got even weirder. The server and the manager dramatically cleared the table. It was too bizarre to describe with complete accuracy, but they were overcompensating so much that it seemed like the were acting in a bad movie. While clearing the table after the appetizers, they made a big show of giving us cheese popovers - this would have been great two hours prior when we were starving and couldn't get bread, but at that point it didn't really make much of a difference. Not to mention, they had another server bring out what looked like Metamucil tablets, but were actually orange meringue pallet cleansers. She handed the dish to me, and I tried to take it to pass around the table, but she wouldn't let go of the plate. This resulted in an awkward tug-of-war that ended with her curtly informing me that I had to take a tablet off the plate, but couldn't take the plate.

You know that point when you are in the midst of something terrible like moving, and you get delirious and start laughing because it's so bad? By the time our main courses came, we were at that point. The manager and waiter ceremoniously presented each dish to us, taking as long as humanly possible introducing each entree. Fortunately the food was delicious, but this was only time in my life when that just didn't matter.

After the main course, we just wanted to leave, but had to wait another ten minutes to have our dessert order taken. But that didn't happen without one of us physically waving the menu in the air to flag someone down. With the three best options unavailable, we suffered through dessert (I never thought it was possible to "suffer" through dessert before that night). The one bright spot was the Sommelier, who chose a lovely dessert wine and actually seemed to understand wine and service.

In all, we were at Zola two and a half hours. Even with comped drinks, the service was so abysmal, the restaurant never redeemed itself. Uncommon indeed.