I posted the following review of the Apollo Restaurant in Boston a few hours ago on Yelp, a peer-review website enabling anyone to post candid reviews of any storefront or office, though mainly restaurants and bars. Not just good vs bad, but why? While Zagat and similar guides provide objectivity, they lack emotion.
Despite dozens of good reviews on Apollo, a Korean-Japanese joint in Boston’s Chinatown, my experience was horrific:
Can’t I give zero stars?
I don’t know where to begin.
I ate here with some friends last night and it was among the worst restaurant experience of our collective 120+ years!
We arrived at Apollo around 2:30 a.m. after other Chinatown places were mobbed. We were hungry and were happy the place sat us after 10 minutes.
The waiter came over. We wanted spicy shrimp, so asked for something like Kung Pao shrimp. The waiter got IN OUR FACE that Apollo served Korean, not Chinese. Yeah, we knew that, but did they have any spicy shrimp dishes? They had soups with shrimp and spicy sauce but couldn’t do a non-soup dish? Whatever.
We ordered scallion pancakes, steamed dumplings, crab rangoon, and seafood teriyaki.
That’s when it got annoying. See, we were hungry. We had been drinking and needed food. The food arrived…dig this..MORE THAN 45 MINUTES LATER! Other parties came in, ate, and left; and we had nothing! What the?
You don’t want to know how many times we asked for our food from the waiter and the manager. The waiter said something about a computer problem but fact is he forgot our order, or didn’t type it in, or who knows. We should have left but were hungry and everything else had lines.
By the time the food came, the scallion pancakes were not crispy. They looked like soft pancakes with onion. Eww. The dumplings and crab rangoon were fine.
And our seafood teriyaki? The waiter forgot to re-ring it, finally brought the dish…but he MISTOOK SEAFOOD FOR BEEF. I ordered the dish by number, saying A14. He heard A13. Back and forth, took the beef back and the kitchen started making the seafood teriyaki… and another 20 minutes go by.
About TWO HOURS AFTER entering the place, and telling the kitchen to stop the teriyaki dish, we want to leave. We can’t. We have a bill for $32. That was after taking the teriyaki dish off the bill. Why should we pay for food that arrived OVER AN HOUR LATE due to waiter forgetfulness and then bringing out the wrong teriyaki dish? Back and forth with the manager, yelling match ensues, we refuse to pay the bill but they won’t let us out without paying.
Did I mention the large-framed bouncer at the door? What restaurants have bouncers? For the drunks, obviously. We couldn’t leave… so I finally bit the bullet and paid the bill that any reputable restaurant manager would have immediately comped.
Pathetic. Disappointing. Worthy of zero stars!
I’ll hazard a guess the management and ownership isn’t watching Yelp. I love surprises.
Photo credit: Atrebor B on Flickr
Restaurant managers: Are you listening?
Using Apollo as a case study, here are 77 reviews on Yelp with an average 3-star rating (out of five; and given some reviews, like mine, are required to give one star at a minimum).
Over at CitySearch Boston, I note 8 reviews–and the first two listed also mention horrible customer service experiences. Do we sense a pattern yet?
Zagat shows 11 reviews, City Voter has 4 reviews.
There are no Apollo reviews–yet–at Urban Spoon and City Squares, but wait. In time, reviews will pop up everywhere!
This isn’t new
Chowhound–a site like Yelp that enables people to ask and answer questions through different forums–shows some comments about Apollo from 2005.
Every minute a restaurant waits to listen–and respond–someone else writes a review. I wrote a bad review of Apollo, but I could just as easily written something praising them. But if Apollo isn’t watching, who really cares what’s written, eh? I’ll tell you: We care. We use search engines to find information; and review sites, like blogs, are preferred by engines for their changing content.
If I haven’t sold you yet, think about peer reviews on Yelp, Urban Spoon, TripAdvisor, Craigslist, and other sites from the perspective a restaurant opened yesterday and people showed up all day and night. Whether excellent or disgusting food, someone–maybe many people–will write a review. People will read that review, beginning with the poster’s friends. Business may suffer as a result.
Do you want your restaurant to suffer? Do you want it to get rave reviews? Without knowing about peer review websites and reading–and replying–to the reviewers, you might as well refuse to provide good customer service when you admit you failed to deliver food on time. Oh, wait. Am I talking about Apollo again?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Fantastic article! Lots of empathy for what you went through – it must have been frustrating beyond belief. And the manager didn’t offer ANY compensation? Heck, our local Friendlys will do that….
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They offered a 10% tip.
Think this might have had something to do with the fact that you went into this restaurant at 2:30 a.m.???
No, I don’t. What if I was a food critic for the Boston Globe?
Bad customer service is a good way to kill your business in any service industry, espescially with how powerful word of mouth on the internet is today.
We went to Sophia’s on VFW Parkway last night. The chicken has the tiniest piece of a burnt corner, but the rest of it was fine. The bartender took the price of one glass of wine off the bill, informed us that he spoken to the chef, and siad it never comes out that way. Nice customer service.
Sounds it. Thanks for sharing. What sort of restaurant is that?
Most restaurants don’t watch the web, however, like anything, problems usually will show up or be noticed.
If it’s a Korean restaurant, don’t expect a “scallion pancake” to be crispy – they’re not, they’re supposed to be soft, and are called pajeon.
I am reading this just after reading complaints from @sassymonkey on Twitter about West Jets customer service. A lot of folks don’t get that Customer Service is marketing and customer retention too. Two friends shared a menu item from a restaurant in their Boston neighborhood; both were sick all night. One person went back to the restaurant to tell them, and to ask for a refund. They didn’t get the refund. Some people might have called the health department. They didn’t, but it does seem that a little compassion upon receipt of complaints would go a long way.
I have worked in the restaurant industry for years, and I have noticed that a large number of restaurants don’t even look at their online brand. Unfortunately, if someone is looking for a new restaurant and their are bad reviews, that can mean the difference between a life long customers and a lost opportunity. Good post
The business is stressful and I would hate to be in PR. If your McDonalds you pay 1 million dollars for having lard in your grease.