Gather All Day - Harbert

Service: Dine in Meal type: Dinner Price per person: $50–100 Food: 5 Service: 5 Atmosphere: 5 Recommended dishes: Crispy Brussel Sprouts, Wagyu Steak Frites

Very nice and fresh looking restaurant with perfect cocktails and delicious apps. Food: 5 Service: 5 Atmosphere: 5

TL;DR Fine dining aspirations ? , Chuck E. Cheese level service. For the prices you pay, this is a miserable experience. Scratch that, regardless of what you pay, this is a miserable experience. It 's as if a toxic VC tech bro thought he had a brilliant idea to revolutionize fine dining by making the experience more like a fast food one, via technology, and came up with this clunker. Walk in to the restaurant and it 's a hive of activity as food runners bounce all around the place delivering food and drinks and lending an anxious atmosphere to the place even when it 's less than half full. We 're all familiar with using QR codes for menus now, so that 's no big deal, but the ordering system is the major obstacle. The code takes you to Toast 's website, where I began a group order for our table. Then, oddly, the person who brought our water begin to tell another person to begin an individual order this was the least confused we 'd be. Have a question about the menu? Looking for a recommendation? Need to ask if something can be prepared the way you prefer? Strangely, you are your own waiter, so I hope you have the answers! Restaurants still qualify as guest services, right? There was no service and we were not guests, we were part of the labor. Which is all well and good if I 'm going out to Old Country Buffet or Luby 's, but at a place that fancies itself as a fine dining spot with prices to match? One of our party spilled their nearly full drink, and with nobody assigned to serve our table and, oddly, no staff in sight at the moment, we began cleaning it up ourselves. I walked up to the counter to ask for more napkins and someone soon appeared at our table to help the last of the clean up but never brought more napkins and left our soaked ones sitting on the table. I walked over to a water station and grabbed a chunk of cocktail napkins. We went on line to order a replacement drink and when it showed up, the runner began telling us about another drink that is even better and sold us on it a recommendation : after the fact : , only to then find out that it was no longer on the menu. This isn 't that person 's fault, they don 't need to know the menu, they don 't need to be trained to serve the guests. It 's a process and management issue the staff are set up to fail at anything more than running food to tables. And then our party decided to try and order entrees and that 's where the wheels came off for good. Attempting to order online there was no place to enter comments for personal preferences or notes. So, once again I made my way up front to ask a question about relaying that information to the kitchen and was met by a worker who was snarky, dismissive, and insulting. Again, it 's probably not his fault, he 's likely tired of having to answer questions that could easily be handled by professional waitstaff. It 's a process and management issue. The one positive to this convoluted ordering system is that you can pay and leave without talking to anyone, and so we did. Everything we ate or drank was good enough to make this one of the better spots in the area, but we will not come back. Should the, people will like what I tell them to like, owner or GM come to their senses and change the guest interaction system to something more inviting and friendly, we might give it another shot. But, then again... We drove back into New Buffalo, sat down in a high end restaurant, ordered drinks and entrees and were very well served by a person who did a great job guiding our experience true guest service! P.S. Oddly, not long after my party took a table at Gather..., a couple walked in and was seated, given paper menus, and was waited on by a staff member! Which, to me, clearly shows that they know this system is a problem but think it 's only a problem for older people, as this couple was clearly elderly. So, I guess if I just wait another 15 20 years and come back, I 'll be waited on appropriately! Meal type: Dinner Price per person: $50–100 Food: 3 Service: 1 Atmosphere: 1

From the outside and inside we had high hopes that this would be our new favorite spot. Unfortunately everything is downhill from there. The bartender free pours drinks which resulted in really great sounding and interesting cocktails being more like you were drinking straight syrup. For $17 that is just ludicrous. The crispy brussel sprouts were crispy which is great because most restaurants fail at just that but they were drowned in pancake syrup. The Wagyu Steak was tasteless. Just throw some salt on it and it’d be 10x better. The Black Garlic cauliflower dish was good but I don’t think we’ll be back. Please season your food better and balance your cocktails!! Service: Dine in Meal type: Dinner Price per person: $30–50 Food: 1 Service: 3 Atmosphere: 5

Great food and service The phone to order is cumbersome and completely disengages the staff from us as patrons I don’t go to dinner to stare at my phone Meal type: Dinner Food: 5