Captain's Quarters.... How to complain, and how not to

[Robin Garr]

I'm down with CQ for the food.

Robin-
This could be interpreted two ways. Was that intentional?
BP

No. I'm agreeing that CQ is a reasonable destination for food, not just for ambience.

I think the food is overpriced. But, then again, everything is pricey on my budget. Sure seems like plenty of people are enjoying the food and view out there.

It's not my favorite place in Louisville, but I enjoy it.

Seriousy, who goes to CQ for the food? The food there is awful. I do enjoy the view, that awesome deck and the cocktails! I just eat before I go lol. It's a shame, gorgeous spot.

Michelle,
I strongly disagree- we go there for the food too! We love the ambience but wouldn't go if the food wasn't good. I've found their food to be very good with everything I've had; really like their burger and the fish tacos.

Deb

Seriousy, who goes to CQ for the food? The food there is awful. I do enjoy the view, that awesome deck and the cocktails! I just eat before I go lol. It's a shame, gorgeous spot.

We certainly go for the food of course the view and cocktails are not bad either! We wouldn't go to a restaurant that didn't have good food. Ambience only goes so far.

They do a serious Old Forester pour

Seriousy, who goes to CQ for the food? The food there is awful. I do enjoy the view, that awesome deck and the cocktails! I just eat before I go lol. It's a shame, gorgeous spot.

I am in complete agreement. Over the years , I have found that CQ's food is mediocre at best. However, I still go for the view, cocktails and general atmosphere.

With so many great or even notable restaurants in Kentuckiana, it is a shame that none of them have a view of the Ohio River. Instead, we have CQ, Joe's Crab Shack, Rocky's etc.

Exactly! Why is it that all the restaurants on the river have very mediocre food? Louisville has some FABULOUS restaurants! It's a shame to waste that space. Oh well...can't have it all! I plan on going to CQ this weekend, and will eat before I go. But I will have many drinks . Miami Vice! Woot!

Just my $0.02 but I don't think diners/online reviewers are under any real obligation to "have a quiet word" with management before giving negative online reviews. You might do so if it's a favorite joint and you really want to remain a return customer. I suppose it's a factor of the size of the local market. Louisville, despite punching well above its weight-class food wise, is still a mid-market city with only X number of indies going against the chains. One too many negative reviews without a large number of reviews to provide statistical relevance can really hurt a place's survivability.

OTOH, I live in a metropolitan area of 6 million and I generally wouldn't spend a minute of my time correcting someone else's business failings. Management MIGHT do something about it...or maybe nothing at all. In a big market there are just too many other options for me to wonder if they tried to fix what was broke. I just go elsewhere.

I use online review sites a lot and I want to see as many reviews as possible, good, bad, and ugly. It's like reading the thoroughbred racing form. Too many negative reviews in a row and you can see who's trending poorly and avoid them. The more online reviews available, the better you can filter for obvious shills and those who are writing unfair negative reviews for whatever reason.

Michelle and Ray, when were your last visits to CQ to dine? I ask because, I too found CQ's food to be mediocre when I was there about 2-3 years ago. However, upon a more recent visit, 3 months back and with Alan at the helm, I noticed that the food...taste, quality and presentation was head and shoulders above previous visits. You migjht want to give the food another chance...or not.

Thanks. DD

Just my $0.02 but I don't think diners/online reviewers are under any real obligation to "have a quiet word" with management before giving negative online reviews. You might do so if it's a favorite joint and you really want to remain a return customer. I suppose it's a factor of the size of the local market. Louisville, despite punching well above its weight-class food wise, is still a mid-market city with only X number of indies going against the chains. One too many negative reviews without a large number of reviews to provide statistical relevance can really hurt a place's survivability.

OTOH, I live in a metropolitan area of 6 million and I generally wouldn't spend a minute of my time correcting someone else's business failings. Management MIGHT do something about it...or maybe nothing at all. In a big market there are just too many other options for me to wonder if they tried to fix what was broke. I just go elsewhere.

I use online review sites a lot and I want to see as many reviews as possible, good, bad, and ugly. It's like reading the thoroughbred racing form. Too many negative reviews in a row and you can see who's trending poorly and avoid them. The more online reviews available, the better you can filter for obvious shills and those who are writing unfair negative reviews for whatever reason.

I agree 100%.

Just my $0.02 but I don't think diners/online reviewers are under any real obligation to "have a quiet word" with management before giving negative online reviews.

You are not under an obligation to do that but you should in order to enhance your dining experience. Why should you let a problem with your meal or service go unreported to management? Yes it does give them a chance to correct the problem and possibly look better but the real reason in my opinion is so you can salvage the rest of your evening. Reporting an incident will also help the restaurant to improve in the future instead of thinking everything is going well.

I may be a lowly musician, but I have a degree in Biology. The comment about food poisoning specific to chicken is ridiculous. It could have been caused by a careless teen who touched a pimple. It could have been any number of factors and many types of bacteria. Mayo gets a bad rep- most mayo is pretty acidic and doesn't usually harbor the bad boys. However, eggs definitely can cause problems as we've seen recently. My husband and I had dinner in CA last year. He had a filet. We also had breakfast (same thing) at the same place. He got violently ill the next morning and had to go to the ER. I called management of the B&B....he called others who had the filets and nobody else was ill. The ER doctor said definitely food poisoning. It's a slippery slope, but not always easy to identify the culprit

You are not under an obligation to do that but you should in order to enhance your dining experience. Why should you let a problem with your meal or service go unreported to management? Yes it does give them a chance to correct the problem and possibly look better but the real reason in my opinion is so you can salvage the rest of your evening. Reporting an incident will also help the restaurant to improve in the future instead of thinking everything is going well.

Because...and this just may be me...my evening isn't going to be salvaged by someone comping me some cocktail or dessert to make up for some other failing. Since I'm cynical, I'll just assume they've got comp budget "X" to deal with number of complaints "Y" and they've got it down to a science. This may not be the case, but with many, many options, why bother? Plus I can think of other ways to "salvage my evening" if you know what I mean and I think you do..

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but we managers really do appreciate hearing about issues. I certainly try to be aware of everything on the floor, but on a busy night it's impossible to be everywhere at once and sometimes servers don't want to tell you about an issue because they don't want to get in trouble. It's not a matter of plying guests with free stuff "x" for issues "y," it's about improving. Whether or not you'll give us another chance I like to know so issues don't happen to someone else in the future. If you're so cynical that you don't care enough to help a small business improve, think of it as paying it forward and alerting management so the next customer has a better night than you did.