review: great bay - confusion and disappointment

i guess that the hostess not being able to choose between taking our coats and checking the next group's reservation was already a bad sign. half of our party (my parents, my sister, her fiance and his parents, and me) left for the table as the rest of us stood around awkwardly holding the coats we'd taken off. though we were standing right in front of her she couldn't seem to decide if she should take our coats first, then ask the next group for their name, or to talk to them first, then take our coats. eventually - eventually - she decided to take our coats.

the restaurant itself is a little too self-consciously hip, though the layered window curtains are pretty cool and the lighting is at the perfect level. the menu was so-so, in terms of being adventurous, and the food was pretty good, but all of this was marred by the unexcusably bad service. when our waitress poured the wine, she dribbled some of it down the side of multiple glasses. when the busboy came with his crumb-scraper, he seemed to view the crumbs as some sort of large, looming monster because he scraped them off so forcibly, not into his hand, that most of the crumbs got flung into my lap. we waited an interminably long time for the check after we had asked for it, and had to flag down some random busboy to get them to take our check to someone who could take care of it.

i would like to say that otherwise, our experience was good, but how can one have a good experience at a restaurant without good service? if i had expected bad service, it would be a different situation entirely, but at a restaurant like this i had expected good service. getting bad service at a nice restaurant just ruins the entire experience. the food we had was good, but not sparkling, as it is wont to be at many other restaurants of the same level. it was merely average - no technical perfection, nor anything that was particularly exciting. the fromage blanc ice cream that came with the blackberry cobbler was good, but the gelato version i had of it in san francisco two months ago was far superior to it. my sister commented that the cider doughnuts she's had at apple orchards were better than the one we had at dessert.

now, the spaetzle i had with my roasted monkfish was excellent - slightly truffled with some faint lemon - and the monkfish was wonderfully crusty on the outside. i didn't really understand why it came with a prawn and would have preferred it without. my father's short ribs were fantastic - the best i've had in quite a while. the rolls were excellent, and the wine we had (a sauvignon blanc, andrew rich from willamette valley) was great, too, but the service just cast a shadow over the whole affair. i can now only fixate on what bad service i had - the last time i had such bad service was at stella, and theirs was a fault of having been open for only a few days when we went (great bay has been open for an entire year). it's true that the "poached" egg that was really a softboiled egg, that came with my entree at stella, was a travesty, but i'm sure they've fixed that problem by now. i sure hope that great bay is going through some sort of flux, but i guess i won't be finding out, because i won't bother to go back.