New Italian Restaurant Opens
by John Weckerle
On Tuesday of this week, a new restaurant – Gordon’s Italian Restaurant – opened at the former location of Kokopelli’s on State Road 14 just north of Frost Road. We went to dinner at the new establishment last evening.
We arrived early, and were greeted by a friendly, courteous, and humorous gentleman at the front desk. We were seated immediately – there were few other patrons in the restaurant when we arrived, and the parking lot was far less than half full. Each of us ordered a glass of Farnese Chardonnay, which was reasonably good and reasonably priced at $6.50 per glass. We looked over the menu, which had pasta dishes (these do not include a salad) priced from $9 to $12 and other, more expensive dishes up to $25. I ordered the linguine con gamberi (shrimp), and Lucy ordered the conchigle salsica (forgive the spelling if it’s wrong), which was shells and sausage. Our server, Tracy, brought the wine and some bread and butter, and then some water, and we began waiting for our dinner.
After a while, we continued to wait. Then we waited some more. During the waiting, our server, Tracy, was friendly, courteous, and very apologetic. She indicated that one of the owners, Randy, would be stopping by the table to apologize. While we waited, we decided on a side order of waiting. We finished the bread, and the basket was taken away without the offer of more bread. Eventually, Tracy apologized again and said that it would be another five minutes.
After another twelve minutes, as we were literally beginning to push our chairs away from the table and leave in search of an establishment that would actually serve us food, our dinner finally arrived, the better part of an hour after we walked in the door. Surprisingly, given the nature of the experience up to that point, the food was quite good. Lucy said that the shells were very good, but not excellent. Similarly, I found the linguine con gamberi to be nicely done; the shrimp were cooked just enough, and the sauce was interesting without being overbearing.
Tracy apologized again, and offered us a free dessert, which we declined – we only eat dessert occasionally, and we had been there far too long as it was. Randy did not come to the table to apologize. We got the bill, and were charged full price for everything.
We are going to be a little blunt here, in the hope that Gordon’s will take some constructive criticism. Bad food may drive customers off, but bad service will keep them away even if the food is good. There are restaurants in Albuquerque which serve very good food at which we do not eat because of problems with the service, especially with respect to interminable waits for the food to arrive. While the restaurant was full when we left, it was more than half empty when we arrived, so there seemed little reasonable excuse for having the food take so long to make it to the table. If, at times, such waits are unavoidable, consider offering samples of your appetizers while the customers wait, or at least seconds on the bread…and never, ever tell your customer that an owner is coming over to apologize and then have them not show up.
Also, make sure you keep Tracy working there – if it hadn’t been for her efforts, we’d have walked out 20 minutes earlier.
I cannot, based on this experience, recommend Gordon’s. However, given the quality of the food, the attentiveness of the server, and the fact that this is their first week in business, we will likely give them another try in the near future and will let our readers know how it goes.
3 Responses “New Italian Restaurant Opens”
Thanks for the review. At least there was no indication from you that they sold the wine before its time or before it was bottled. ;>)
Lori and I ate there last night (6/8/09) and the service was great! The food arrived very quickly and was excellent. We found out afterward that they will sell half portions, which would have suited both of us a little better. I had the same thing Lucy did (no attempt at spelling) and Lori had bow-tie pasta with Salmon. With their nice choices of wines that are reasonably priced, I’d have to recommend you give it another shot.
We’re planning on trying them out again when we have some time. It sounds as if they’ve gotten things running smoothly, so the next review may be much better.