Vine Restaurant

02/16/08

Terrible service

by alarecherche at Citysearch

I've lived in Atlanta for three years, but I'd never been to the Vine, and since they had an open reservation the other night, I took it. I was so, so disappointed. Our waiter was just terrible, and everything took forever to come to the table. Nobody knew their right hand from their left. I saw a manager running food who ran it to the wrong table and just started walking around and asking each table if the entree was theirs. How incredibly unprofessional. It was like some bizarre reality tv show where people who've never worked in a restaurant try to run it for the night. The servers appeared to have tables all over the restaurant instead of sections, which had our server running like a chicken with his head cut off. Everybody looked confused.

The food was great, but no better than you can get at three dozen other places in town. I am not going back.

• Pros: Food was great
• Cons: Awful service and execution

02/16/08

They are at it again

by suehill72 at Citysearch

Looks like Vine/Sala marketing guy Eric H (ala destinationvideo) is at it again. He is leaving fake reviews when a bad honest review hits either Vine or Sala on Citysearch. It is too bad that a restaurant is so desparate to put their marketing guy up to such tatics to deceive the public that relies on honest reviews to spend their hard earned money. Look at the history, bad review and the next day a glowing review. Gee how coincedental that this happens. Both restaurants quality of food and service have gone way down, mostly due to the significant turnover in staff. You can go on Opentable and find reservations available anytime. It is sad, because both restaurants used to be great and very busy.

02/15/08

Reluctantly give one star

by Stevesst at Citysearch

My girlfriend and I made last minute reservations at Vine because it was about the only place left we could get in other than McDonalds. What a mistake, I am sure we would ahve enjoyed our meal and service much better at McDonalds. This place was totally disorganized, we ordered wine that took forever and then some slow moving heavy set guy brought it to our table and who was as pompus as they come. He had no personality, had a frown on his face like he did not want to be there and then tried to wow us with fake wine knowledge. It may have worked if it did not take 20 minutes to get a bottle of wine. When our steaks finally arrived they were over cooked and tough. We told our waitress and she said it was a new concept so the kitchen is still working things out. Why start something new on valentines day. We saw the menu on line and it no longer exists. We would have much rather had the menu that they advertise on the web site. What restaurant has one menu on their web site and it is totally different at the restaurant. The atmosphere is dark and manly like some boys club. Not romantic at all. Very bad experience and we will never go back. We are telling everyone how bad it was. We could not wait to leave. All I can say that is a sign of desperation when a restaurant changes a concept of what used to get a lot of awards (well at least their web site says they did). If the service and food stay as bad as we experienced, I am quite sure we will be seeing the last of vine very soon. We will go again once someone new takes over. My guess that will be very soon.

• Pros: none
• Cons: tough over cooked steaks, very bad service, ugly atmosphere

02/14/08

The worst service I have seen in a long time.

by rodlane1410 at Citysearch

I found this restaurant on Open Table and thought I would try it. I went tonight, on Valentine's Day, and I was amazed at the terrible service. We waited more than 15 minutes for our drinks, and our entrees came almost 45 minutes after the order was put in. Our server was probably the worst server I have ever had at a restaurant at this price point (and worse than many at places like Ruby Tuesday, even). He never came by the table, left empty plates and glasses for the entire meal, didn't refill our water, didn't bring the wine we ordered to come specifically with the entree, gave us butter knives for the steak (which we solved by asking another server for steak knives), and didn't remember who had ordered what entree. We asked to speak to a manager, who didn't seem at all concerned with the poor service. He eventually comped the meal, but he didn't check back with us and there was seemingly no sincere effort to apologize. We were seated on the patio, which was nice until I realized we were next to the server station, where servers were slamming silverware and plates so loudly that I jumped.

Our food was actually very good. It is shame that the restaurant is run so terribly that the food doesn't get a chance to shine. Keep the chefs, but fire the managers and servers. Not only would I not go back, I am telling all of my friends about it.

• Pros: Food
• Cons: Horrible service and unconcerned management

01/28/08

Vine has turned in to a joke.

by gooodeats at Citysearch

This restaurant has gone from great to being one of the worst run restaurants in Atlanta. The service is horrible for a restaurant with the highest prices in Morningside/VH. The food is OK, nothing great but not bad, just way over priced for the quantity, quality and service. The place looks run down and when we were there on Friday we were even served drinks in different glasses. When we pointed that out to the server she said we ran out of the other kind. What kind of restaurant is this? I would expect that at some low end tavern, but not a restaurant that is suppose to be somewhat upscale. Why doesn't the management get it? Every other place in the area is packed to the gills on weekends and you walk in to Vine anytime and get seated. This place needs new management badly, it used to be one our our favorites but has gone way down hill, which is very sad since for a while it was the best place in Morningside/VH. I was talking to my neighbor that said they used to go to brunch at Vine all the time then and stopped going because they changed it to a buffet and said the quality was terrible, so now they are part of the crowds at Babettes, Murphys, Food 101 or LaTavola.

01/01/08

New Years Eve Huge Mistake

by twohills at Citysearch

My boyfriend and I decided on Vine for NYE since we wanted a smaller more intimate spot. Little did we know we would be just a handfull of people that selected Vine. The special menu was horrible and way over priced for the small portions and poor quality. We had 8pm reservations and by 10pm the place was nearly empty. We were talking to another couple earlier that told us they were going up the street to Wisteria after dinner since that is where they really wanted to go but was sold out by the time they called. Not wanting to ring in the new year in an empty restaurant, we drove up there. The place was jammed. They were still seating people for dinner at 11pm. We had a blast at the bar. It was a little bar but they had to bartenders on to handle the crowds of people. The people at Vine were very nice and we actually felt sorry for them because they were so slow on one of the busiest nights of the year. It is unfortunate since the place is cute and has potential.

• Pros: Cute, intimate restaurant
• Cons: over priced, poor food quality, poor service

10/28/07

What happen to Vine?

by seodessa at Citysearch

We had dinner at Wisteria Saturday evening and they were so busy we had to wait close to 30 minutes to be seated even with 7:45 reservations. While we had a wonderful meal, we decided to venture to Vine for an after dinner drink since the Wisteria bar was jammed when we finished dinner around 10pm. We walked in to Vine and there was no one there! What is going on? Wisteria was booked all night with a wait and Vine is dead. We decided not to stay because it looked like they were closing up and we did not want to be the only people there so we went to Food 101 which also was still pretty busy. We used to like Vine but have not been back in a while and by the look of things others have not been either. I really felt bad for them as Vine used to be such a popular spot in the Highlands. We decided we would go during the week and check them out again.

10/27/07

Don't waste your time or money

by ray_ts at Citysearch

We went to Vine last evening (one of the few in the whole restaurant on a Friday night). Our server was terrible. She had no business trying to wait on tables in a restaurant as expensive as Vine. This must be her first job which is a shame the restaurant hires people like this or can not train them. My scallops were so over cooked they were like rubber. My wifes salad had brown lettuce through out. At the end of the meal they were telling us about their wine dinner on November 6 featuring King Estate wines. Sure we will rush back for that. You can find King Estate in any grocery store at the end on isle. What a joke that they would feature a mass production winery that you can buy anywhere. We drove from Midtown to Vine for something different and what a mistake.

• Pros: If you can't get a table elsewhere you can at Vine
• Cons: service, poor food quality, over priced

08/05/07

What happened?

by texasgirl42 at Citysearch

This past weekend my husband and I went to what used to be our favorite after dinner spot, only to find that it has turned into a cluttered, discombobulated wannabe lounge. VINE used to have an elegant, sophisticated, cozy atmosphere and now it just looks cheap and rundown. We noticed some changes over the past few months ? I am told due to a change in ownership ? starting with the addition of cheap water fountains, ridiculous looking columns with pillar candles, and the replacement of beautiful wine-themed artwork with almost cartoonish posters. At least the food was still good. Now the posters have been replaced with for-sale artwork which is way too big for the walls, the food menu has been whittled away to nothing (and what they have isn?t that good), and the after dinner drink menu has vanished. They aren?t fooling me with the giant wine book either ? most of the pages were half empty! And now the by the glass list is smaller than most restaurants that don?t even specialize in wine. Oh, and how can I forget ? VINE has added a live musician on the weekends. Um, ask yourself: how many of the best restaurants in the city feel compelled to clutter the restaurant with musical equipment and drown out would-be pleasant dinner conversation with tacky lounge lizard music? What are they thinking? If I wanted to go to a seedy bar, there are plenty of better ones in Atlanta. Sorry, VINE, we won?t be back.

04/28/07

Don't trust recent reviews

by aparsons at Citysearch

We have not been to Vine and we do not intend to go now. My wife and I were looking to make reservations for tonight and looked on OpenTable and the pickings were slim. We saw Vine had pleanty of availability so we read about them on opentable and it sounded good, we looked at the web site and it looked good, so we came to CitySearch to see what other diners had to say and at first we were excited by the recent good reviews and did not know why they would not be already full with all these great reviews. Then we saw they were all written the same day and obviously by the same person. There are similar misspellings, the punctuation like multiple commas between thoughts is the same and sentences ending in exclamation points. As we read on we came to the conclusion these were written by the restaurant to try and bury the recent bad reviews that seem to have been well thought out and detailed. We think this is very dishonest to mislead guests this way. We will pass on Vine and feel the availability on OpenTable on a Saturday night is the better indicator of what diners really think.

• Cons: Dishonest reviews