"About a week ago, my wife and I wanted to celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary together with our kids and grandkids. We had planned to go to the west coast and watch the Astros play, but feeling a little guilty about not celebrating with the family we changed our plans. We can always follow the Astros to watch them play out of town at another time. Also, we were celebrating my daughter-in-law birthday. Due to the boys work schedule, it’s always hard to get all the family together. With that being said, we decided to stay close to home instead of going to Houston, because some of the kids had to work the next day. We were looking for a restaurant that could accommodate all of us. El Toro on Garth had a back room, away from the normal seating section that would be nice, close to home. So, my wife called and made reservations two weeks in advance to sit in the back room. They said we were good to go! We left for the restaurant early to make sure everything was good to go, needless to say when we got there the seating lady told us the room was full with two parties. Jana explained to her we made reservations two weeks in advance, so the waitress said let me get my manager. The manager explained to us if you don’t pay to reserve the room that they couldn’t guarantee we would get tables in the back room when we got there. When we made reservations no one explained that to her, which wouldn’t have been a problem. The look on her face just broke my heart!! I was pretty mad at this point, I really let the manager have it, explaining to him he didn’t understand this was a special day for us, our forty year Wedding Anniversary, then he said we could put you in the bar section. Wow, eight little grandkids along with their parents, along with my wife and me, packed in the bar area! What a way to celebrate a special day! That wasn’t going to happen. Finally, leaving the restaurant, my wife was upset crying, asking me what were we going to do! Remember this was not only our special day, but we were going to celebrate one of our daughter-in-law’s birthday! As I was backing out to leave the restaurant the manger was standing at the passenger side of the car. Jana rolled down the window, the manager said we could put you on the patio. It was raining at the time, we said that’s OK we’re leaving. So we called all the kids, telling them to met us at Olive Garden. Hopefully, this would work out for the best of a bad situation. At this time, I was praying for some divine intervention to help us with this situation. As we walked into Olive Garden along with all the kids and grandkids, bags of gifts and two cakes and bunch of hungry grandkids, My wife was explaining to the manger what had happened. The manager said we had a back section of the restaurant y’all could use, but it would take about 20 minutes to set up. Also, it was shift change at the restaurant so they needed to ask a couple of waiters to stay over to help serve our party. We had the whole back section of the restaurant, two fantastic waiters, one taking care of the grandkids and the other one taking care of the adults. I can’t say enough about how Olive Garden made our evening special! Several times I have driven by El Toro on Garth, every time I see the sign my anger resurfaces knowing I probably won’t ever eat there again. Here again there’s a great restaurant down the street from El Toro that has fantastic food and a great group people that can make your day special!!! I can’t thank the manager enough for how hard she worked to make our day a special one!"
