NOT A RESTAURANT REVIEW

One or two restaurant owners or managers have taken exception to my review of their establishment in the past few years. That's alright: I'm entitled to my informed opinion, and they are entitled to take umbrage when I say what I think. I'm not a perfect critic, but a review I recently spotted on Urbanspoon San Antonio makes me feel like one by comparison.

This appeared on the page for Il Sogno, a trendy, new-ish, Italian place in the Pearl, owned by a guy who's as close to being a celebrity in this town as anyone who owns a mandoline, Andrew Weissman:

Bad service
by Food Lover (1 review)

I took my guest for a birthday dinner. There were six of us.

The food was great, but the service was unbelievably terrible.

First off, our waiter could not pour a bottle of wine evenly. Two people, including the birthday guest hardly get any and he suggested us to order another bottle when we had a plan to order a different kind of bottle next to match the entrée.

Secondly, he could not get our orders right. In addition to that, he kept rushing us. We felt at the point we sat down, they were already trying to hurry us out for next customers.


Thirdly, we order a cake with a candle on it, of course, it is a birthday dinner. They brought a cake with a candle on it, but they brought the cake when the birthday guest was not at the table!!! The waiter did not know what to do so we had to ask a manager to take it back and wait for a right timing.


Lastly, we ordered two pots of coffee, but we had to use a desert spoon to stir the coffee .not to mention they did not bother to bring any sugar when there is a party of six.


I will never use the restaurant for a company event.

I don't know who "Food Lover" is. The fact that he (or she) has only posted one review (and — why pass up the opportunity to quibble? — that he doesn't know the difference between a "dessert" and a "desert") indicates to me that he doesn't really take any serious interest in restaurant dining. 

The fact that he thinks you can get six glasses of wine out of a bottle makes me think that he's the sort of person who either drinks wine straight from the bottle, or gets looped by the second glass & so doesn't know how much he drank after that. 

The fact that he blames the waiter for his guest of honour's not being at the table when the birthday cake came indicates to me that he is a person who looks to place blame anywhere but where it belongs. 

And that makes me think that, if the waiter really did have a problem getting the table's orders right, it was probably their fault, not the waiter's. 

And I will even go so far as to assume that the reason his party was being rushed was because the house staff wanted these people out of their restaurant, but were too considerate to simply throw them out. And I reckon that, if the people at Il Sogno read the review and remembered this party of six, they're very glad not to have the threat of a company event for Food Lover.

All in all, it makes me feel like I'm a damn good restaurant critic. And maybe I'll take the wife to Il Sogno tonight.