Last week while attending a conference in Las Vegas some colleagues made reservations for Aureole. I'm vegan, so I usually like to call ahead and just mention that and make sure something can be done, but someone else made the reservations, and it was last minute. I've never been treated as poorly or snottily from a supposedly high class restaurant as I was at Aureole. I discretely asked the waiter if something could be done vegan when he came by initially to introduce himself. He replied "oh, it is very difficult, but we will try." I should have left right then. "Just pick something out and I will talk to the chef." "OK, I'll take a look." Every dish headlines with animal protein, but a fennel orzo that came with one dish sounded nice and maybe close to vegan if the fish that came with it was left off. When the waiter returned, I asked for the green salad and asked if the fennel orzo that normally came with fish could be made vegan. The waiter,without checking with the kitchen,said "no, that would be difficult" and offered no suggestions and asked no other questions. I said, "OK, how about the spring rolls?" "Yes, that will be easy." 5 minutes later - "the spring rolls cannot be made vegan - they have a lot of wheat" ... and that was all he said without offering anything else. Now, there should be two obvious things wrong with this, but I just said "Oh, that's OK, wheat is vegan. If that's all, the spring rolls sound good." The waiter didn't look happy but said OK and left. When our meals come, a fairly plain fish served over nothing is put in front of me. I said, "I did not order this" and the servers looked confused. The waiter returned a minute later, looked at my dish and asked "is there a problem?" I looked at the fish, then the waiter. After our conversations I have a hard time believing this was not intentional, but like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I simply said, "I didn't order this." It was not a busy night and the waiter, same one I had been speaking to all night, didn't acknowledge any previous conversation or apologize and said, "well, it is already made, so you might as well have it." This exchange of "I didn't order this / I don't want this" and "you might as well have it" went on for a few exchanges before, looking and sounding irritated, the waiter said "OK, why doesn't someone else at the table have this, what would you like then sir?" "I ordered the spring rolls." A couple minutes later I get what appears to be a big pile of spring roll filling without the wrapper, plainly presented in a heap in a bowl - not quite what I expected but at this point I'm hungry so I eat it. I should say, the salad was quite good and I loved the abundance and selection of fresh herbs, but the service was awful and the chefs unimaginative when challenged. At best the waiters don't know what vegan means, don't care to find out and the chefs can do nothing but replicate the same 10 dishes over and over. At worst some of the staff are extremely rude and intentionally offensive. I emailed the only email I could find, which is the general email for Charlie Palmer, so I'll see if they care to reply. Its interesting there isn't an obvious email for the restaurant itself.
Is this review positive or negative?
OPTIONS: (i) negative. (ii) positive.
Answer:
(i)