Don't go if disabled, if there are children or if you want to receive your salad
We visited the sand key Columbia location and had a few issues.
The first happened upon arrival. My wife, myself, my son and my daughter who happens to have special needs came in to get a table after I had talked up your restaurant to my wife for years. The hostess was getting us a table in the system when the shorter woman helping the hostess made an almost repulsed look at my daughter and leaned in and said “table 24”.
Table 24 turned out to be a low top in the noisy and chaotic (compared to the nice dining room I was expecting) bar. Sort of a stupid place to seat children but if you want them out of the way of the other diners for some reason that’s about the best place to stick them besides out on the curb.
As my daughter is autistic, the chaos of the bar was the exact OPPOSITE of why I had come to Columbia to eat.
I sucked it up and we sat and waited to order. We ordered a couple kids meals, some tapas, the salad which I had talked up to my wife and our entrees. The tapas came out before the salad or bread with the kids meals. Next came the entrees. After a fairly long wait for the tapas and the bread the entrees hit the table about a bite into the tapas.
We ate our dinner as long as we could until the wait and the noise and chaos of a busy bar was finally too much for my daughter.
My wife took the kids outside while I waited for the bill. I paid it (189.00 with tip) and left without the opportunity for bread pudding and deserts for my wife and kids not coffee - frankly having had a terrible experience in the restaurant.
In the rush to leave after the chaos and wait, it wasn’t until I was back at the resort till I realized we never even received the amazing tableside prepared salad. Checking my receipt I did indeed pay and tip for the privilege of being sat in a bar with children and for not having the damned salad we came there for in the first place.
I thought I would email them and give them the opportunity to respond first as simply leaving a 1 star google and yelp review wouldn’t allow them to correct the situation if they felt it didn’t represent Columbia correctly. I got a couple of emails back from the communications people saying I would get a call. I never did even though we were in town through Friday and they could have at least had us come in for the salad we paid for but never got.
Sadly a very unacceptable response to a very unacceptable experience.
UPDATE EDIT: While I appreciate the response from operations, it doesn't compensate for the paid yet not received food. Also the lack of initial response while they could have invited me back while I was still in Sand Key for a couple days to make it right shows a bit of a lack of urgency when it comes to the customers and the customer experience. Based on my amazing past visits to Columbia on Sand Key, this wasn't only disappointing but it was also very unpleasantly surprising as I didn't expect this sort of experience and then this sort of lack of response.
