Toast! Kitchen & Wine Bar

It was to my embarrassment that my friends and I met for a celebratory meal at Toast! at my suggestion. I visited Toast! about two months prior for a different celebration and had an amazing meal and perfect service. I raved to my dinner companions about my previous experience and all were excited to dig in.

Unfortunately, I have never had such abysmal service. At one point I wanted to ask our waiter if he was really that miserable waiting on us. By the end of the meal he had successfully put all of us in worse moods and put a damper on an otherwise lovely evening. I was really excited about taking my friends there after a previous great experience. Now I very much doubt I will be returning at all.

I ordered the shrimp and grits and was really disappointed to find 4 measly and overcooked shrimp tossed over grits that were swimming in a pond of grease/oil (not sure what it was, just that it was not pleasant looking or tasting). Overall, it was under-seasoned.

I also ordered the mac-n-cheese... which came out lukewarm. Although I am definitely a fan of fried eggs. it didn't work with this dish. The crab meat (that also was a part of the dish) felt out of place.

The baked brie was fine but its pretty hard to mess up melted brie, no?

The panna cotta had a good flavor to it, but had an odd texture and was overly thick.

The waitress did not help improve the experience. She literally rolled her eyes when she was taking our order. However, our water was constantly refilled by another waiter and the ambiance was nice.

I only had some wine and two small dishes so I feel like my review is semi incomplete. I had the sliced beef app that came with bread. It was ok to not good. Very dry and virtually no flavor. The baked brie with lavender honey and apples was awesome. Totally redeemed the flavorless beef appetizer. The wine was great. I had three glasses of Sauvignon blanc. The service was ok not to very good. The waitress had no idea what she was talking about. She must be new. That's fine...I can understand and be ok with that. But it probably would've been better if she just said so. She almost messed up my friend'a order but I quickly realized she was talking about the wrong dish. My friend was asking about the fish sandwich and she was explaining the ceviche. She said it was raw. I said there's no way your fish sandwich is raw. And she insisted the fish was so good it could be served raw. I insisted she was wrong. She checked with the kitchen. Sure enough she was wrong and admitted she was describing the ceviche. Which technically isn't raw since the juices cook the fish but I digress. Anyway, yeah, service not so great. Food not so great minus the brie. Wine good. Will I go back? Doubtful. For paying that much for apps--one of which was flavorless--I doubt I would be willing to pay a lot for a main dish. But I suppose the other dishes might be pretty good.