When TGIFridays is your saving grace...

My wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to go out for a rare date night last night (Friday). We had a restaurant.com gift cert for Maker's Mark on 4th street so we decided to go there for the first time. We we seated around 5:45 and ordered a few minutes later. I ordered the Bourbon Sirloin medium and my wife the pork tenderloin. Somehow this order managed to take over 30 minutes even though we were literally one of 2 tables in the place at this point. Both servings were amazingly small. My steak was very good, but not $31 good. The pork tenderloin contained an unusual amount of fat (my father owned a meat market). We left hungry and unimpressed.
We decided to go to Coldstone Creamery for dessert, however, we learned that it was closed (this shows how much we go to 4th street). With about 45 minutes until the show at the Improv, we decided to grab dessert at TGIFridays. After a quick look at the menu, we decided we were both still hungry enough to split the 3 course meal (fried green beans, chicken caesar, and brownie a la mode. I feel much more satisfied with TGIF than MM.

MM wasn't bad enough to ruin the night, but I wasn't expecting to need to grab another meal within 5 minutes of leaving there. I really should have went with my initial instincts and went to Bank St., but what can you do?

Maker's Mark is having some issues for sure. For anyone who missed it, they are being sued by a former employee based upon their profiling of their clientele. http://www.wlky.com/news/21511871/detail.html

This could be just a disgruntled employee, but I actually have a friend who worked there for a couple of years that said something similar. His issue related to the price of the day's special. Apparently the servers were allowed to profile tables when deciding the price they would sell the special for. For instance, a trashy looking table might get the special for $30 and the table of business men might get charged $45. If anything, it's reverse profiling. Bilking the upper class.

I don't mention this to trash Maker's Mark. I drink Maker's on occasion. It just made me wonder when you said your entree wasn't $31 good, if it was ever supposed to be.

I worked at Maker's Mark Bourbon House & Lounge when it opened and was only able to put up with it for five months. While I never saw any racial profiling or daily special price adjusting, I certainly believe that it's probably happening now. Without going into too much detail about the mistreatment that I experienced, I can testify that everything is not as it seems. Also, the restaurant's only real connection to its namesake is the name and the decorative collector bottles on loan from the family. So, don't feel like you have to like the restaurant to enjoy the bourbon or vice versa.