Phantom, I appreciate your kind words and we do try to let our reputation speak for itself. However, there are a couple of issues to weigh in on here.
First, reservations or no reservations..... what a slippery slope that is. We recently received an email from someone who had a dinner reservation and though it was their first time the couple they were with have been here on numerous occasions.
I will not copy the customer's email here, but only my response.
Thank you for your email and thank you for coming to the Lyons' Den. I am glad to hear that you enjoyed your food and your server. We have been operating for 11 1/2 years now and as I'm sure you noticed we are quite small. We seat only about 44 patrons at a time. Part of our success and reasonable pricing is attributable to our ability to utilize a table more than once in an evening. We have been taking reservations for 10 years and most tables of 2 to 4 people average 1 hour and 25 minutes from beginning to end. I checked your ticket and found that you were here a bit over 2 hours. I am sorry that you felt rushed. Should you decided to give us another try then I would ask that when you make the reservation you request a 2 1/2 to 3 hour table. We will do our best to accommodate you but may not be able to take a 2 1/2 hour reservation on a busy night. We do have other regular customers who make this request as they are aware of our size limitations.
I did also want you to know that when your server made me aware of the timing issue with your table I did make every effort to relocate the party of 6 that was waiting for your table but was not able to reconfigure any group of tables successfully to avoid rushing you. Again, my apologies.
I am not sure if there is a better way to have handled that situation but we seriously make every effort not to "rush" people with reservations. Accordingly, due to our size when people make reservations and we have another reservation before or after theirs we try to let them know that going in, so there is an expectation of any time limit or possible wait that there might be.
As for miscellaneous food complaints, especially portion size and pricing. I keep myself very well informed about pricing in the surrounding area restaurants and we are definitely on the low end of the scale price wise for the quality and portion sizes of our food. And, given the opportunity to "fix" a problem with price/portion we are very receptive to making adjustments. That being said I cannot fix a problem that I do not know exists. If someone leaves The Den unhappy and they have not brought it to the attention of their server or me directly then I am at a loss as to how to fix it. To hear about a complaint by reading it in The Forum or on one of the other social media review venues for the first time is irksome. We do our very best to make sure everyone has the best dining experience possible and on that point I will happily stand on our reputation and end my diatribe.
Lauren