My heart always sinks when I walk into a restaurant only to see tables full of dirty dishes. It's a dead giveaway that the restaurant is either understaffed, or that they have little to no skill when it comes to time management. Unfortunately, this was the case when we walked into Hearth Pizza Tavern in Sandy Springs last night. We probably should have just turned around and gone to Canton Cooks next door, but something compelled us to stay.
Had driven by the place several times, so hubs and I decided that next time we wanted some pizza we'd give them a try. Having looked at their menu online, the place looked promising. I'm a lover of the hearth fired pizza, so I was excited to try a new little neighborhood place. The hostess cleaned off a table for us, and we were seated. Immediately I began feeling my seat vibrate because the music was so damn loud. When our waiter finally came around (10 minutes later), he was happy to turn it down for us. We ordered our drinks, and after another 8 minutes or so, those arrived. 1 water, 1 beer. The whole time we were amusedly watching the bartender make key lime martinis with little tubs of coffee creamer, as apparently they had run out a decent sized container of cream. We ordered an appetizer, two salads and pizza. At this point, hubs sarcastically commented on how great it would be if everything came out at once. I was hoping this wouldn't happen.
Anoter 15 minutes pass by, and voila... salads and app show up at the same time. 45 seconds later, pizza comes out. GREAT.
Overall quality of the food was just so-so. The eggplant chips we ordered as our app were just ok - lacking salt and flavor overall. But it's eggplant, so what can you expect. The salads were a nice size and had some good extra veggies -- cukes, red pepper, onion, carrot, etc... not just lettuce which I appreciated. The salads also came with their "hearth bread" which to me looked like it had just come out of the oven at Subway. Meh. Hubs had the chicken/pesto/goat cheese pizza which was better than my meatball pizza with caramelized onions and roasted red peppers.
Our waiter never came back to check on us, however the manager did stop by to refill our waters. We mentioned the timing to him, and he just gave an excuse that we came in during the busy time. Nice. He offered to buy us dessert, but we declined... however when he brought the check he did include a few cards for free 8" pizzas. After we paid the bill and were walking out, I noticed more dirty tables and what looked like some chicken on the floor. Free pizzas or not, I'm not sure we'll go back.
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