We come here all the time, but after tonight, I ne...

We come here all the time, but after tonight, I never plan to return. We had been planning my wife's birthday dinner here for weeks...had the babysitter lined up, excited to come here and have a great meal, reservation was at 8. Got there at 8. We were told it would be a 20 minute wait, so we went to sit down in the lobby. 8:20 came and went, 8:30 came and went, 8:40 came and went, at 8:45, after we were sufficiently starving, we went up to the host, at which point, they told us they had been 'looking' for us for the past 20 minutes! pure confusion set in on our part, and after barely an apology on their part, they took us to our seats. We called the manager over, Jay, and asked what happened. His response? "we had went to the bar calling out for Laura multiple times, but we didn't hear any response..." ??? first off, the beeper never went off, 2nd, we were sitting in the lobby the entire time, literally 10 feet away from the bar, because the bar was literally full and didn't see anybody come by...a totally ridiculous statement. after he suggested that he would 'see what he could do', i told him that this was not a financial issue, and we simply wanted to hear them take responsibility for what happened, that they didn't really look very hard for us, and the beeper that supposedly wasn't working looked fine to us - light was on and everything
so he came back, offered a $25 gift certificate, and then advised us we can't use it the same night! which was even funnier...
needless to say, close to 1.5 hours after our initial reservation was, we finally got our food, after we were officially starving, and the experience was totally ruined....waiter was really not friendly whatsoever, and nobody even brought my wife a candle with her dessert to offer her congratulations on her birthday...
Really not impressed with what happened there tonight. As a physician, when my office makes mistakes or things don't go right, I/we apologize, which is all that needed to be said here. rather than coming up with all sorts of reasons why it was 'our fault', accepting some responsibility for what happened is all that needed to be said. i wasn't looking for any financial compensation, or anything of the sort, just a simple, i'm sorry things didn't go right, we'll do better next time would have went a long way...instead it ruined what was suppose to be a night out to celebrate my wife's birthday and left a very sour taste in our mouths. needless to say, i returned the gift certificate on the way out.