I occasionally do some freelance web work for a couple different people, and included as a bonus to my last payment, one of the guys I work for included a $75 gift certificate to Soho, a restaurant/music club in downtown Santa Barbara. I of course took Steve to make use of the gift.

What follows below is a somewhat long rant on our experience at this place which took place last night.

While the food was pretty decent, the service and ambiance left a little something to be desired. This restaurant provides live entertainment nightly, and last night was a Jazz band. Jazz is ok I guess, but this band was really loud and disjointed-sounding. This definitely wasn't an atmosphere for a quiet place to talk. It was either too loud to be heard, or when they were in between songs, the other diners were so quiet that you felt you couldn't say anything at all. The privilege of seeing this live entertainment also requires a cover charge of $12 per person.

Apparently this is the type of atmosphere where you go to dine, but mostly you go to sit and watch the band all night. I suppose this makes sense since you've just shelled out $12 for the honor and want to get your money's worth, but it means that the waitresses aren't too concerned about turning over tables in a timely manner. They took our order fairly quickly and the food was received without too much delay, but after we were done we sat there for at least 40 minutes after finishing our dessert and there was no sign of our waitress.

When she finally did reappear, she didn't give any indication of coming with our bill, and another chick must've known that we wouldn't be leaving any time soon because she refilled our water glasses several times after we were completely done eating. When the waitress finally walked by, Steve was able to ask her for the check. She asked if we paid the cover charge already, and since the guy at the front said we could just add it to our food bill, the answer "no" popped out of my mouth instantly. In hindsight I probably should've lied.

When she brought the bill I saw that the total came to around $82 for everything, including the cover charge. Since my gift certificate was only for $75, I also included my credit card for her to charge the difference. After being gone for quite awhile, she finally came back and told me that the gift certificate doesn't apply to cover charges, so $58 of the certificate was applied to the total cost of the meal and tax, and the credit card was charged $24 for both cover charges.

This means that almost $17 was still remaining from my gift certificate, but they didn't provide me with any of this balance, either in another voucher or in cash. Steve was very upset by this and wanted me to refuse to pay the charges on my credit card, walking out without signing the receipt and leaving no tip, since in theory they have $17 from us that they are withholding.

I would have preferred to discuss it with the waitress and figure out what could be done, but of course she was nowhere to be found, and I didn't want to wait 40 minutes for her to re-emerge and then another 40 minutes for her to sort it out. I also didn't want to essentially leave without fully paying by not signing the receipt and leaving behind a note. I suppose part of the reason I was reluctant to make this a big deal was because I didn't pay for the gift certificate, and I am not even sure the guy I got it from paid for it. I have no way of knowing if any cash exchanged hands to buy this certificate or if it was donated for some function by the restaurant owners.

So in the end, against Steve's inclinations, I signed the receipt and left a $6 tip, making the total I paid an even $30. Given the extra money from the certificate he didn't want me to leave a tip either, but I felt bad doing that too. Not to mention, they now have my name and credit card number. A $6 tip was shorting her by at least $2 but her service wasn't that great, we were made to sit and listen to music we absolutely didn't care for--made a captive audience by the fact that we waited so long for our bill, and of course the whole situation regarding the unused portion of the gift certificate.

The dining experience turned out nothing like I had hoped or planned. I was just hoping for a nice evening with Steve in a somewhat pricey restaurant where we had never been before. Instead we both left the restaurant a little bitter, though for not entirely the same reasons. I was more upset by the issues caused by the stupid certificate and how it ruined the end of the night than by having to pay $30 to take Steve out to dinner. He was of course more upset by the principle of the restaurant not honoring the full value of the certificate and me not fighting it. But since it was my money and certificate and not his, he conceded that I could handle it however I wanted. Of course, this evening most likely would have had an entirely different outcome if he was the one with the voucher and payment.

Maybe his method for handling it would have been better, but I suppose I couldn't bear to walk out, disputing the charges, when my name was attached to the encounter both on the certificate and on my credit card. I also didn't want to potentially battle with the credit card company if the restaurant still ran the charges through and I decided to continue the dispute.

So in conclusion, I most definitely DO NOT recommend Soho unless you are a fan of the music, plan on staying the entire time, and do not come attempting to redeem a gift certificate. For me and Steve it was just too loud and the service too slow to make the food worth it. We will never go there again, which is too bad, because they did have a good chocolate pudding cake.

Posted at 4:01 PM |

Yea I agree that the music was part of their advertised environment. I can’t really fault that, as that is what they are known for, and everyone else seemed to be into it.

I guess the music was only an issue because we were ignored and it seemed like the assumption was that everyone there wanted to stay the whole time. And that wasn’t the case with us. The music also would’ve made it hard to have a conversation with the waitress.

At any rate, it just wasn’t our kind of scene. And that’s ok, since they are obviously a niche establishment. In hindsight I was probably a little harsh on the music aspect, but everything just kinda culminated into a not-so-great experience.

And Keir, any place that doesn’t book Honey White is obviously crazy! ;)

4 | Posted by: Jennifer on October 19, 2005 @ 12:34 PM