won't return. my wife and i went to himalayan last night and don't plan to return.
first impressions: my wife dropped me at the door and then proceeded to circle the block three times in order to find a parking space. i waited inside the restaurant for 10 minutes until she finally came in. additionally, the restaurant is incredibly small, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. but the tables are crowded together. the people behind me kept bumping their chair into mine and when they went to leave their coat sleeve brushed me several times, which i find incredibly annoying. further, we could hear every word of the couple's conversation next to us as their table table was only about six inches away from ours. and when the man decided to take off his jacket (we kept ours on, but more about that in a minute) it brushed against me several times.
now, about leaving our jackets on...as i mentioned before the restaurant is incredibly small. when someone opens the door it creates a perfect pneumonia tunnel into the restaurant. we were alternately freezing and too warm. every time someone opened the door the cold blast of air would come in. with that said, even if we wanted to hang up our coats it would have been nearly impossible. a table was placed right next to the coat rack and the coat rack itself was apparently mounted high enough on the wall to accommodate a yeti from nepal. seriously, it's mounted at about 7'.
ok, so maybe first impressions aren't everything. people on here have been frothing at the mouth about the food. and having eaten at taj hundreds of times (where this owner/chef used to work) we did not doubt the food would be good.
for the most part, the food wasgoodand the prices were very reasonable. but some problems...the service was terrible. it took forever to get our food. the people at the table behind us were audibly commenting about how hungry they were and how long it was taking to get. the wait was unacceptable. although i will say that the apps flew out of the kitchen.
on top of the slowness of the kitchen, the staff seemed disorganized and their service was terrible as well. we waited for a long time to have our order taken (the menus are made from corrugated cardboard with fabric glued to it, you'd think they would have spent a few bucks for better) and then the waitress disappeared. we scarcely saw her. maybe she was in the kitchen trying to help get the food out. or maybe washing dishes. either way, it just wasn't good. the staff didn't seem very friendly, but maybe they were shy, i'm not sure. i know at taj we have agoodrelationship with their servers.
lastly, my wife was brought the wrong entree. she specifically asked for a dish she wanted and the server read our order back and she still got the wrong thing. i wanted to send it back, but it had taken so long to get we didn't want to chance it. i understand this happens, but this is unacceptable as well given that the server reiterated our order to us.
finally, the last straw came when we were finally finished with dinner and finally were able to locate our server. i asked her for a refill of my drink, which she took care of. but the problem was with the bill. we were actually charged for another drink soda.
now, nothing pi**es me off more than when a restaurant charges you for refills. this is the reason we don't go to bube's anymore and the reason we're not going to himalayan anymore. this is bs given that this is an accepted practice in every restaurant. shame on the owner for doing this. my wife and i are both professionals and work very long hours. the last thing we have time for is cooking so we go out to dinner nearly every night. we spend about $30 to $50 per meal usually and frequent restaurants that we like...pressroom, characters, taj, fiorentino's, gibraltar, fenz, etc. but we won't be going back to himalayan.