Ibiza Food & Wine Bar----- I went to dinner here last night with a group of about 12 friends. A mix of couples and singles we stretched a pretty long table by the back of the restaurant. A string of about 5 tables put together neatly laid with white linens and flickering candles. The light was dim but inviting and although the restaurant was packed, you were not overwhelmed with the obnoxious clatter of silver on plates.
The night started out great... yepp you know what that means... it started out wonderful, but didn't end on such a high point. We ordered our cocktails and wine, and chatted and the mood was light as it should be on a Friday night after a long week.
The server presented the specials entirely too fast but we managed. After placing our orders came the heavily anticipated bread course. I don't care who you are, or what restaurant you are at EVERYONE looks forward to the bread. Dun-dun-dunnnnnn! It's there to comfort you and say, "Don't worry, have a snack and your delightful meal will be out shortly" with a smile of course. The bread indeed lived up to the hype and the butter?-oh sweet Jesus the butter was out of this world! We all savored our buttered bread, and thought "There is something in this butter, but I just can't put my finger on it". And then my friend did just that. Cheese. OF COURSE! How could we not have known from the start? Some sort of Parmesan or close cousin was disguising itself. We were glad. It was a heart attack-packed delight. Yum.
Our appetizer course arrived and I wasn't sure if the server had it right. I had ordered crab bisque, but the bowl he presented me with contained a soup that from the color more closely resembled split pea. He assured me it was the crab bisque and I saw that a couple others at my table had ordered and received the same. OK- green Crab Bisque. Now this was interesting! And probably the best crab bisque I ever tasted. It's pure fresh taste smothered my insides and the creamy richness of crab bisque as it should be enveloped my whole being. I was in heaven. I am not sure why people don't refer to crab bisque (or any other bisque for that matter) in the "Comfort Food" category right there with Mac 'N Cheese and Chili, but it sure as heck is comfort food in my book.
Our meals arrived and I had ordered a Chilean sea bass with a chutney sauce served over parsley puree with roasted vegetables. I was going to dive right in! The fish was perfection. Buttery and light, flaky and moist. It was wonderful. The chutney however was almost non-existent. I expected this mound of warm chunky chutney salsa smothering the fish exploding with flavor and highlighting the bass's own, but really it was a thin sauce with not that much to write home about. I didn't mind. The fish is strong enough to stand alone, but it was kind of sad. The bass was lonely and I could tell. I was a little skeptical about the parsley puree, but pleasantly surprised non-the-less. The bass was perched on top of a small mound and it felt surprisingly guilt free compared to if it been served with mashed potatoes instead. I always look forward to the veggies. Not this time. It was nothing more than some wilted leeks with a few brussel sprouts thrown in. Brussel sprouts? How did the server not warn me about this when he read the special?? Or maybe he did, and was just talking to damn fast? Yepp that had to be it. I am NOT a picky eater, but come on now. There are a few vegetables that the majority of the world doesn't like, and sorry little brussels you are at the top of that short list. For good measure I did try one of them. It had been ages since I actually ate a brussel sprout but it only confirmed my previous feelings. I am not a fan.
As always we stuffed ourselves with bread, appetizers, and full plates, which scarcely left room for the best part- DESSERT! Thankfully a friend at the table ordered 4 different choices for all of us to indulge in. Wow. Amazing. Genius. Can I tell you that I love Carrot Cake? Can I tell you that I love the cream cheese frosting even more? It is so yummy I would be OK eating just that for the rest of my life. This version was marvelous. Two petite triangular wedges of moist and spicy cake, married to thin layers of cream cheese sin? If that doesn't make your taste buds sing to the Heavens above I don't know what to tell you. To top it off it was presented with a scoop of what seemed to be blood orange sherbet. Homemade? Possibly. Fantastic. The other sweet treat I sampled was a warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and Carmel drizzle. The cake was so rich, and the creamy vanilla cut in so well it was obviously destiny. Clearly. Out of the four desserts I limited myself to two (aka I couldn't reach the other two). Someone has to draw the line with me and desserts.
We were all satisfied and feeling overcome by post feast sleepiness, or as I like to call it, the "Itis". Now let me preface this paragraph by saying that since we were in such a large party combined of couples and singles, we requested at the beginning of our meal that we have separate checks. Now I know as I was a server for four years during college that sometimes this can be a royal pain in the elbow, but with 12 in our party it probably would have only been 6 separate checks, not 600. Not the end of the world. To our request our server replied: "Oh, sorry our system doesn't allow for that." Excuse me? Your system doesn't allow separate checks? Somehow this is hard for me to wrap my noggin' around. Your system allows for separate tables, separate parties, so there fore it MUST allow separate checks. OK splitting ONE table into separate checks, well that shouldn't be that hard either. Most restaurants these days are equipped with electronic POS systems(Point of Service, people- though sometimes they really are P's OS that is beside the point), and it is mind boggling that the systems in place at Ibiza seems to have left out the functionality for separate checks. Bizzarre.
(Count the times I write "Separate" in the paragraph above. Hilarious.)
So we all get out our credit cards and cell phone calculators. I am not one to say just split it evenly, because we all did not consume evenly. Some are couples, some are singles, some ordered appetizers or alcohol as where others didn't- you get it. Even if it is easy, it isn't fair. So we all calculate what we owe. All the while, our pest of a server is hovering like a shadow over our table. He even tried to pick up the bill and ask if we were done not once but TWICE when clearly people were still examining the bill. I mean did you think it would be easy for us to calculate from one grandiose bill? What would have been easy would have been.... you guessed it! SEPARATE CHECKS!!! Which we asked for. And were denied. Really unbelievably tacky. That pretty much ruined it all. Ruined the crab bisque, the lovely sea bass, the desserts, the BUTTER oh the butter!! It was all forgotten. I could only focus on the man who was stalking our table, and how he needed a private lesson from Emily Post.
We were kind enough to arrange our credit cards in order with a list of credit card names and amounts to charge. Needless to say he screwed it up. While consulting my online banking, me and my spouse were charged $27 dollars MORE than what we should have been. We took the time and effort, and clearly he couldn't. My theory is that this particular server COULD (caps, bold and italic- that means I mean business)have split our bill easily but didn't want to because then he wouldn't be able to add the 18% tip for a large party. I am and always will be a generous tipper, as are our friends. Most if not all have worked in the restaurant industry, and even one in our party last night has a family who owns several high-end restaurants in Houston. He missed out on an extra 2% from our side. He refused to split the bill (I am convinced it was possible), then was impatient waiting for us to calculate our totals, mis-charged me (and probably others), AND lost out on 20% tip versus the 18% he added himself. It would have been a heck of a lot easier, and he would have made out on top tip wise had he just split the damn bill.
I enjoyed my meal at Ibiza. It was a relaxed and inviting environment, which I shared with great friends. But unfortunatley some things I cannot stand. Bad customer service is one of them. Especially when you are dropping a good amount of moo-lah. So because there is such a wide variety of dining establishments to choose from here in Houston (and throughout the world), I am saying it might be a while before I return to Ibiza Food & Wine Bar.
