2 /5 Edwin Walrad: I really wanted to give this a better rating — 45 Bistro is an excellent restaurant once you get in the door.
We had an 8:00 PM reservation to celebrate a milestone birthday for my husband. We met some friends at the bar for a pre-dinner drink and I checked in with the host about 20 minutes beforehand. Unfortunately, our friends waited nearly 20 minutes just to get a drink at the bar, which didn’t feel very welcoming.
Then came the real issue — we weren’t seated until 9:00 PM. You might ask, why wait an hour? Because it was a special occasion, and the restaurant came highly recommended. Once seated, our server was wonderful, and the food was excellent — truly no complaints there.
That said, a few of the dishes and glassware were not completely clean — like they had skipped a run through the dishwasher — which was surprising for a place of this caliber. And before we even finished our entrées, we were asked to order dessert because the kitchen wanted to close. That felt rushed and disappointing after waiting so long to be seated.
What really stung, though, was that no one ever apologized — not at the bar, not at the host stand, not even when we left. Sitting in a nearly empty dining room after all that waiting was not the evening we had planned.
I’m sure not everyone has this experience, but the lack of attention to detail and the complete lack of acknowledgment for the inconvenience made what could have been a fantastic evening feel disheartening.