Wow?

According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary "wow" can mean either a "striking success," or "a distortion in reproduced sound consisting of a slow rise and fall of pitch caused by speed variation in the reproducing system." I'm not sure which definition L Wine Lounge is using for their WOW (Wine On Wednesdays -- get it?). Katy and I were searching for wine the other night (seriously, is that hard to find?) and when we found 58 Degrees packed to the gills, we decided to try something new. Here's the thing--we really tried to go outside of our comfort zone. We tried something new. I think we should get points for that. Unfortunately for us, L was WOW "used to express strong feeling". This feeling was not pleasure.

We got there at about 10 to 6, and decided to wait for WOW (it starts at 6pm). Our server was very nice and brought us water and glasses. WOW works like this--every Wednesday L features a different winery, and you get 5 tastes and free snacks for $10. Brilliant! I don't remember what winery was featured last Wednesday (Siduri?) but they had a viogner, a couple of pinots (one of which was fabulous) and a syrah. The wine was good. It was fun. They also had a fabulous triple cream brie and salami to nosh on. It was kind of fun getting up, circling floor and getting our own wine. And we were having a good time until I was sipping wine and noticed something sharp in my mouth. That sharpness was a shard of glass, clearly from a wine glass. In all fairness, this was not L's fault. I'm not sure how it got in there. I used the same glass the entire time, and the wine-pourer (is that a word?) opened a new bottle for me for the last taste. I don't know what happened. The hostess saw that there was something going on and came over to see what the commotion was. She very kindly got me a new glass. I couldn't fault them for it--but the entire time I was wondering where our server was. (For more glass in the glasses experiences you can read my friend Dave B's review of Nishiki here)

We tried our last wine and decided that we'd stay for another glass of wine. Sure. the shard of glass was weird, but not their fault. We sat for a few minutes to wait for our server to bring us menus (she had to come back to fill our water glasses for the 15th time, we figured.) Katy used the restroom (too much water). I tried making the "please come over here" face at our server. She ignored me. I tried making the "I'm really bored and need some wine face." She was too busy wiping out clean wine glasses. Seriously. Katy returned. We sat some more. By this point we've decided that we just want our check. Still no server. Our water glasses were empty for the first time that evening. Meanwhile, the crowd becomes more and more pretentious yuppy (not our scene) and we REALLY want to leave. I'm guessing we sat there for a good 15-20 minutes until I finally saw some guy who seemed like he was the manager and I chased him down to get our check. He runs our cards, leaves the tab and says, "That was 2 WOWS!" Um, ok. Here's a tip--just because you call it "WOW" doesn't mean that it's the truth. Katy and I left saying "Wow--that was really crappy service." And our server, probably said, "Wow, they didn't leave much of a tip." (I left nothing I was so pissed. Katy left a dollar. We're not sure what was more insulting.)

You can make excuses for shards of glass in your wine, but there is no excuse for bad service! We went to 58 Degrees just to get the bad taste out of our mouth.