Saturday, May 2, 2009

Chloe is a Loser

Last night I went out to dinner with my friends Mira, Anthony, Sonj, and Scott to a restaurant in Old City (a section of Philadelphia) called Chloe BYOB.

None of us had ever been there but heard the food was excellent, and being a bunch of foodies we elected this spot for the gathering of our little dinner club.

There were some good points, which I'll share, but ultimately I will NEVER go back and will tell everyone I know and don't know they should never patronize this place.

The good:
  • The macaroni and cheese was the best I've ever had. Hands down, it was the #1 food choice at the table. It's baked and served in a little ramekin with a browned truffled crisp on the bottom of the dish. If you ever saw the episode of Top Chef where the guy made a truffle mac and cheese -- this was it.
  • The menu is small, but delicious, and there is a daily specials menu that will blow your socks off. We order a couple of appetizers that came a very close second to the mac and cheese.
  • One was a homemade gnocchi topped with a ragout of pork, beef and duck. The other appy we really liked was baked oysters topped with bacon, cheeses, and sumpin sumpin that tasted like a party in my mouth.
  • It's a BYOB, which I always love. We brough 5 bottles of wine plus a bottle of dessert wine. Scott picked out the dessert wine, Essentia, which was absolutely delicious. I'll be looking for that next time I'm at the liquor store.

The bad:
  • The ribs were terrible. I've had better ribs at Lone Star, where they fall off the bone. Not only did the meat not fall off the bone, but I felt like a savage beast trying to eat them. And not enough sauce on them to compensate for the extreme char. Very bad.
  • Some of the people at the table liked the salad, but I thought it was terrible (except for the goat cheese pancake on top.) It tasted like a pile of grass and didn't have any salad dressing on it. Terrible, as in inedible.

The Ugly (aka why I'll shout from the mountaintops not to go here):
  • We had barely finished our dessert and were drinking the last of our wine, when the owner/manager came over and asked us to leave. Um, what? We just spent $450 in your restaurant, we're not finished and you're asking us to leave? Yes, because people are waiting and they need the table.
  • To that, I say a big eff you!! There were open tables, and we weren't finished. And even if we were, why would you EVER treat your customers like that? Not only did they ask us to leave, but then they got nasty and indignant about it -- I thought there was gonna be a brawl in this teensy tiny place. We got up and left, with a few parting words outside that were not so nice. I was and still am completely baffled by this. Assholes.

See, the thing about dining in Philadelphia is this: there are hundreds of really excellent restaurants. Lots and lots of choices ... each one, better than the last. The competition is stiff, so it's not enough just to have good food, the service must also be impeccable. If the entire dining experience from top to bottom isn't flawless, there's no reason to ever go back.

I'm appalled by the way these people treated us after spending our time and money in their business. To her credit, our server was wonderful and very apologetic, but it wasn't enough to erase the major faux pas of the management.

So Chloe gets a unanimous 2 thumbs down. All of us agreed we'd never go back.

5 comments:

Gwen said...

Holy shit. That's just infuriating. I would have said, "I'll leave when i'm done drinking my wine." In fact, I would have ordered coffee just to piss them off. Then I would have lingered over it until the wee hours of the night. I will never go to Chloe and I will tell my friends to never go there. You're right, there are way too many nice restaurants in Philly to put up with that kind of disrespect.

schue said...

oh no...that's turrible! but it is a good mac and cheese. yeah, you should have lingered as long as possible and told all the people waiting you saw a rat.

well read hostess said...

NO WAY!

You need to trash them big and loud and proud.

Let 'er rip!

Sandi said...

Holy shit. They actually asked you to leave before you were finished?

Anonymous said...

That's happened to me at Dmitri's and Lolita. Two restaurants with excellent food that I have absolutely no desire to patronize ever again.