Old Town Kitchen & Cocktails

We can title this "A Cascade of Failures". This place is not bad, especially if you want to spend a few hours dining casually and prefer your server to have little to no contact throughout your stay. First, our host. She seems like a nice girl, so I'm thinking it may be an operational choice that walk-ins be least accommodated. She asked if we had a reservation (we didn't) and seemed stymied how to manage the reservations with this 8 top that walked in at 4pm with an indeterminate impact to their staff plan. With a restaurant GM and a career server among us, we suggested the simple solution of sitting in 2 four tops next to each other. 5 stars = offer to push them together rather than a resigned "sure I guess we can do that". I am extremely sympathetic to staffing challenges in restaurants and one girl was clearly in training. My suggestion is to own it. Apologize when you haven't refilled our drinks, check in to see how things are going AFTER our food comes rather than before, and proactively tell us that our to-go banana pudding is individually prepped and cooked to order so we're not left wondering how it took 25 minutes to scoop this southern standard out of a half pan. A few other tips to exceptional service: notice when someone took two bites of their food and didn't eat the rest, more frequently check in, try not to be seen standing in the pass looking out at the dining room while your trainee is trying to figure out where to go next. Now to the food: the bang bang Brussels sprouts were bang banging, mashed potatoes were delightful, and the coconut chicken soup was incredible. The Mac and cheese they tell me was undersalted, that is subjective. Mornay is acquired taste, just my opinion, it doesn't a "mac and cheese" make. Finally, I had such high hopes for my fig and feta burger. Medium is hard to hit, but it wasn't well done so thank you for that. Fig is expensive so I get using it sparingly, which is likely why I couldn't taste it at all. A brown sugar caramelized onion sounded so much better than the soft sauté I got. Chef, this burger sounds amazing, I don't know if it was executed to your expectations. And huge kudos that my very celiac friend (no, really this time) was able to enjoy her food without getting sick. Although the parmesan crust was missing from the chicken? Finally, and most egregiously, was the automatic gratuity for a "large party". We were not seated or served together, as we would have liked to be. This felt like insult to injury. One of my friends was, vocally, expressing her dissatisfaction, loudly. If there was a General Manager on staff, we never saw them. So the cascade of failures could reasonably be tied to poor scheduling, staffing shortages, and a definitive shift in what is expected of a server in a post-covid world. The world is on fire, I genuinely don't blame anyone for being a little checked out. Maybe you do and want them to try harder. I ain't mad at ya, just own it.

Fantastic service that went above and beyond when they were low on a whisky I ordered. I wish the few gluten free items they have weren't cross contaminated, but that's not uncommon.